Like last week the best performance this week comes from the highest ranking teams clash.

The Australia v Ireland game was amazing to watch and I was thrilled for the Irish.

The whole team played well, but in particular the Irish forward pack as a whole were immense. The front row were all exceptional and destroyed the Australian scrum (I talked about some of the reasons why I think this occurred in – Lessons in Rugby Power from the RWC 2011 Round 2 Weekend Fixtures).

Then we take a look at the back row. Surprisingly Heaslip was the quietest of the three. O’Brien and Ferris were so powerful and strong both in attack and defense. When Ferris picked up Genia, like a rag doll, and drove him back from their scrum you got the sense that it might be Ireland’s day.

My physical performance of the RWC week 2 was Paul O’Connell. He (a bit like Roberts last week) was back to the type of form he showed a few years ago. He was hitting the ball at pace and taking contact on his terms not the tacklers.

The type of weight training that you should be doing in order to get more powerful and stronger in contact are things like deadlifts, front squats, hang power cleans and Olympic pulls. These types of exercises work the hip and legs in conjunction with the core and are how you build a foundation in explosiveness!

Make sure you check out this post – Developing Powerful Athletes for Rugby