“We came up in optimal shape”: the coach of the RK “Kuban” about bronze medals

Krasnodar “Kuban” won bronze medals of the Russian rugby-7 championship among women’s teams. The 2022/23 season ended in Moscow, where the 7th round of the competition took place. “Kuban” took it third place, which allowed to bypass “Yenisei-STM” in the dispute for bronze in the overall standings. The Krasnodar club repeated its success in 2019.

The head coach spoke about the performance of the team in Moscow and the past season especially for MK in Kuban Maxim Amonov.

– The team approached the final round not in the best shape, but in the optimal one. The point was to calculate the load on all 4 spring tours. After the training camp and test matches, we went into the second part of the season under a load, not quite in fresh form, but this was the expectation to play for a long time. We had a good bench – long and almost equivalent. Not all the main rugby players were able to play to the end, by the last round there were 4 starting positions missing, but we were able to compensate for them thanks to a fresh bench. The group stage in Moscow turned out to be stable, we planned to enter the playoffs from the second place. The champions of the country from CSKA are still beyond our strength, but we will try to beat them. Of course, the Permian Vityaz was worried, but they coped with it. Kazan “Zilant” did not cause such fears, they entered the first spring round too fresh and it was already hard for them by the last one.

The coach of Kuban spoke in detail about the key game of the season against the Krasnoyarsk Enisey-STM – the teams met in the match for 3rd place in the final round.

– In the semi-final “VVA-Podmoskovye” we were “moved” immediately by the mood, from the very first minutes the rivals created such an onslaught that we could not restrain. My decision was not to delay and change the remaining players, since the main match was ahead. The fight for bronze medals in the championship of Russia was precisely in the face-to-face meeting with Yenisei. This game was everything. In the standings, we were only 2 points ahead of our rivals, which would not give us an advantage in the final count if we lost. After a poor defense in the match against VVA, I once again focused on the game in defense, I even had to quarrel with the team leaders. But in a good way to quarrel is to remember this game and not to allow this again. It was also important to set them up psychologically for Yenisei so that the girls would forget all the negativity of the previous game, but not forget what we had been working on all this time. Yes, we played a lot on defense, less often than Yenisey, we had possession of the ball, but more often we were able to realize our attacks. The first attempt was made by Diana Kudzieva, successfully kicking the ball. This is not the first time Diana plays with her foot, in general, from time to time we work out the “leg” in training, and during this tournament we have already recorded such attempts. I myself do not like such crazy attempts, but I give free rein to the players to such decisions if they see that they are ready to run away.

The coach noted that some of the wishes in the season could not be fulfilled.

– I would like to reach the final of the tour, we have not done this yet. Although sometimes we play well against CSKA and VVA. At the same time, I think that in the previous round in Krasnoyarsk there were more interesting moments in our performance, even though we finished fourth there. 4th place does not mean a bad game of the team. This may be the wrong calculation of the coach, the wrong strategy and composition for a certain team. But these are my mistakes, not commands. I’m not chasing medals, I’m more interested in good matches. I don’t like “draining” games for someone in order to reach the next team in the optimal composition. I am against this, but sometimes you have to use such a move for the sake of the result. Although I would always fight with everyone to the end.

Maxim Amonov also spoke about the immediate plans of the team:

– We will celebrate bronze medals with a short vacation of 15 days, most likely, we will reward players. The team will meet again on June 15 and will begin to engage in general physical training and development of individual techniques. Lineup changes are also expected. Many players will leave the club for various reasons – age, injuries and sports results. We will start the first competitions with beach rugby, we will prepare in parallel. It doesn’t make much sense now to rest against the “beach”, because it will be difficult to rebuild later. Therefore, only a couple of times a week we will gather on the sand. The rest of the time we will give to our main form – rugby-7.