Rico Gear: The quiet influence behind a Colts title charge

Rico Gear might have expected a few questions from his players last week when the Crusaders lifted another Super Rugby title. 

After all, the Bull Sharks Colts 1 coach was part of the Crusaders’ golden era, winning back-to-back championships in 2005 and 2006 — and collecting the Super Rugby Player of the Year award along the way.

Or maybe some chatter accompanying the arrival of the British and Irish Lions to our shores. 

Gear’s signature moment as an All Black came in the 2005 clean sweep of the Lions.  His long-range intercept try in the final game at Eden Park remains remains one of New Zealand rugby’s most iconic highlights.

But the questions never came.

Gear is content that his players seem to be oblivious to his achievements - but admits it highlights a shift in the approach to football he has noticed in young players in his time in coaching.

“The boys probably don’t even know I played in those games, it feels like ancient history to me,” he said.

“Once the Wallabies start playing, they might have a question or two, but it won’t be something I’ll bring up unless it is something that is relevant to what we’re trying to achieve.

“It is certainly different these days. It always seems to me the boys don’t watch as much footy as we used to as kids, we lived and breathed the game.

“And you can tell that pretty quickly based on their footy IQ. 

“Some of the decisions we see in our games, if they followed the elite level competitions more closely, and tried to model their games on the world’s best players like we did, they would be across a lot of that stuff.”

The occasional mental lapse aside, Gear has his Colts 1 side humming.

They currently sit three points clear in first place on the ladder, with a game in hand, having knocked over the previous ladder leaders UQ by a whopping 49-24 on the weekend.   

As the countdown to finals begins, we caught up with Gear to unpack the UQ win and the evolution of a Bull Sharks outfit that looks increasingly like the real deal.  

It was a statement win on the weekend against UQ, a side many tipped to be the premiership favourites. 

Did you see that coming? 

“It was a top of the table clash, neither team is under too much pressure, and we knew we needed a bit of an edge going in. We can roll in and just assume we’ll get the job done at times, so we really revved them up before the game and they came out pumped up. That intensity was what we were after, and it put UQ immediately on the back foot.” 

It puts you in a strong position on top of the ladder. Do you feel comfortable? 

“I think the good thing about us is we know what we are good at. There is plenty more we can do obviously, and we’ll work right to the end on improving our game, but we know how we want to play. So we put a lot of focus on the intent and the discipline to commit for a full eighty minutes. And as good as last week’s win was, I think we only saw that for a half a game.” 

What is the key ingredient to Bull Sharks Football? 

“We know we have really strong set piece and in the backs we are really strong at 9 with Sam Howarth and Callum Simpson at 10 and we combine those strengths really well. The result is we create a lot of opportunities for ourselves and earlier in the year and last year we probably weren’t really capitalising on them enough. But as the season has progressed the backs are starting to find their flow. 

Earlier in the year you often spoke about silly mistakes, we haven’t heard that much recently.

“I think knowing our game plan and trusting in that and sticking to it has been really good for us. We're still not there yet, the boys can still drift off and do their thing. But when we stick to what we want to go into the game with, we actually do really well. And I think the boys are starting to see the benefits of how we're playing in some of the outcomes that we're getting. 

Is there a secret weapon? 

Sam Howarth and Callum Simpson’s game management and kicking execution is a key for us because a lot of our success is coming from our ability to put sides under   pressure. But Jackson Jury has a massive boot on him too and we’re really only discovering what he can do. So, we can definitely get more out of him in terms of his kicking game and that is exciting moving forward.”

And a not-so-secret weapon?

Fergus Gillan is in awesome form, his set piece is strong, he makes great line breaks and is a very good attacking player. He is a standout in the competition and the exciting thing is there’s got scope to get better. He has still got a bit of work to do in the physical stuff, he is tall and athletic and deceptively strong when he has the ball and I think we’d like to see him be a bit more physical in defence, but I think he’ll get that as he matures.

Compared to last year what has clicked for this group? 

“The good thing is we score a lot of points, 50 points, 40 points, something we struggled to do last year. We won a lot of games last year, but they were tight margins. This year we know how to score.”

Is there an area you will really knuckle down on in the lead up to finals? 

“I would just like to see our defence toughen up a bit, we get a bit comfortable, and attack focused and when it comes to defence the attitude can be well, ‘we can score a lot of tries so we’ll be ok’. But as the competition gets harder that attitude can be dangerous so over the next month leading into finals, we will be focusing a lot on defence.”