The Connacht man is made of concrete, but he is surprisingly light on his feet.
Bundee Aki was in top form during Ireland’s open training session, in Athlone, and many of his involvements drew cheers for the packed stands and galleries. A proud Galwayman, Aki did all that Joe Schmidt and his coaching staff asked of him and still found moments to put on a show.
Following the session, Ireland U20 captain Tommy O’Brien told SportsJOE that it was a pleasure to watch Aki at such close quarters. “He’s an amazing talent,” said O’Brien. “He has such power but is agile and has great footwork too.”
That footwork and agility would come in handy for Aki at the end of Ireland’s hour-long session.
Following the training run, and still covered in mud, Ireland lock Devin Toner spoke of the final drill that every senior player kitted out had to go through. “Yeah it was tough enough,” he began.
“We do this drill called the sausage bag drill. It’s pretty tiring, especially for the 9, so I don’t know how Conor Murray is feeling. Good hit-out and chance to blow the cobwebs off… [Defence coach] Andy Farrell calls it the contact corridor, so getting few contacts in, getting the hits up. A bit of physicality.”
There are a few different names for this notoriously testing drill – ‘tackle corridor’, ‘sausage bag drill’, ‘the gauntlet’. ‘tackle alley’, ‘The V’ – and a few different ways of going about it.
For the Irish players, the drill involved them running towards four of the biggest Ireland U20s [all manning tackle shields] at a decent clip. They took a pass on the run from scrumhalf Conor Murray and had to negotiate the gauntlet of shields.
Basically, it is the equivalent of the drill [below] but multiplied by four and carrying the ball.
Schmidt and Farrell ran eight, three-minute drills in the second half of the session with only 30 seconds in between each scenario. It was a way to keep the players breathing heavy and to test their decision-making.
At the end of the session, the likes of Toner, Andrew Porter and Peter O’Mahony all ran through the ‘sausage bag drill’ and took some hefty dunts. So did Munster centre Chris Farrell.
When it was Aki’s turn, however, he took a different approach.
Nimble on his feet, Aki managed to avoid all four tacklers and their shields. The Athlone crowd absolutely loved it and cheered the Connacht man off the pitch.
Stepping this way and that at serious, serious pace. Sounds like the Bundee Aki we know and love…
For those that do prefer to take contact, they can get some fun out of it too. Munster and Ireland back-row Jack O’Donoghue recently recalled what it was like to be holding the tackle shield and facing off against a fellow forward.
“It before I came into the academy and was playing with the [Munster] underage team. We were doing a tackle corridor and James Cronin was running down the channel at me.
“He absolutely sprawled me on my back. Absolutely panned me out. That was probably the first instance I had of someone properly bouncing me.”
Well, that’s certainly another way of getting through the drill.
One suspects that some of those Ireland U20s won’t mind Aki avoiding their blocking attempts too much.
