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London Irish add ex-Italian international van Zyl to their coaching staff
By Online Editors
London Irish have added former Italy international Corniel van Zyl to their coaching set-up, the Gallagher Premiership club recruiting the South African native from the Cheetahs where he had been working in recent years as their lineout coach.
With the Cheetahs no long participating in the Guinness PRO14, their squad has been targeted by numerous European teams. For example, out-half Tian Schoeman recently linked up with Bath as did hooker Jacques du Toit.
Now London Irish have got in on the act, opting to bolster their coaching set-up under Declan Kidney by signing the 41-year-old van Zyl who had been working with the Cheetahs as an assistant since 2015.
“I’m really pleased to be here and excited about getting to work with this talented group of players and staff," said van Zyl. “It has always been a goal of mine to coach in the Premiership, so I’m delighted to be a part of the London Irish family.”
Kidney added: “We're delighted Corniel has agreed to join us. His experience and know-how will complement the coaching staff that we've already got in place here, building on the excellent work Jonathan Fisher and Ross McMillan have overseen in the forwards department in recent months.”
During his playing days, van Zyl spent the majority of his career in Italy at Treviso where he amassed over 150 appearances in an eight-year spell. That move saw van Zyl take his first steps towards Test rugby where he represented Italy A before being named as one of two uncapped players in the Italians’ 2011 World Cup squad.
He played in four of the Azzurri's World Cup matches, starting three times, and would earn another four caps, the last arriving in 2012 against Wales. He retired from professional rugby in 2015, playing the last of his 160 matches for Treviso. Van Zyl then moved into coaching the Cheetahs, the franchise he had played for on 48 occasions as a player earlier in his career.
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Stephen Larkham, Mick Byrne, Scott Wisental, Ben Mowen, Les Kiss, Jim McKay, Rod Kafer.
There are plenty of great Australian coaches who could do a better job than Schmidt.
Go to commentsThis piece is nothing more than the result of revisionist fancy of Northern Hemisphere rugby fans. Seeing what they want to see, helped but some surprisingly good results and a desire to get excited about doing something well.
I went back through the 6N highlights and sure enough in every English win I remembered seeing these exact holes on the inside, that are supposedly the fallout out of a Felix Jones system breaking down in the hands of some replacement. Every time the commentators mentioned England being targeted up the seam/around the ruck or whatever. Each game had a try scored on the inside of the blitz, no doubt it was a theme throughout all of their games. Will Jordan specifically says that Holland had design that move to target space he saw during their home series win.
Well I'm here to tell you they were the same holes in a Felix Jones system being built as well. This woe is now sentiment has got to stop. The game is on a high, these games have been fantastic! It is Englands attack that has seen their stocks increase this year, and no doubt that is what SB told him was the teams priority. Or it's simply science, with Englands elite players having worked towards a new player welfare and management system, as part of new partnership with the ERU, that's dictating what the players can and can't put their bodies through.
The only bit of truth in this article is that Felix is not there to work on fixing his defence. England threw away another good chance of winning in the weekend when they froze all enterprise under pressure when no longer playing attacking footy for the second half. That mindset helped (or not helped if you like) of course by all this knee jerk, red brained criticism.
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