Leinster captain Doris was a surprising sight in the coaches box at the Aviva Stadium last week for the win over Dragons as he viewed the work of Leo Cullen et al.
Neinaber did it regularly when with South Africa where the likes of Duane Vermeulen, Siya Kolisi, Handre Pollard, Lood de Jager and Willie le Roux have done it.
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And Nienaber believes it can improve communication between coaches and players, where chat is relayed via a waterboy who is often a coach or player not involved – last Friday it was Jamison Gibson-Park.
Nienaber said: “He was the first one but we would probably like to have more players with us, it just gives them a different idea of how we see the game and how tense we are.
“Sometimes it looks perfect up there but it’s nervous and you’re trying to find solutions and sometimes you disagree and sometimes you agree.
“I think it’s just good for a player to have that transparency, to see how it operates, it’s not calm.
“It looks like a duck but underneath (the water) it’s crazy and it’s good for him to experience it.
“So when we give messages, I think it just improves the alignment between what the coaches box is experiencing and feeling and seeing.
“And obviously what they are seeing and feeling on the pitch.
“With Jamo carrying water. It’s great to get their feedback, so Caelan will tell him what we were thinking.
“The message that got to him, that he has to transfer to the players. There’s a good link between ‘this is what they tried to say, this is what I understood’.
“Because communication is always a two-way street. You say something, but that person needs to grasp what you’re saying.
“He has to formulate what he thinks what you are trying to tell him and then he has to get that message onto the pitch.
“Then the captain on the field has to formulate that again and hopefully there is alignment.
“When we say we give a message, it will be a suggestion. This is a suggestion, this is what we’re feeling. Obviously we’re not playing the game. We don’t see it the way they see it.
“I would probably say, even from their point of view, obviously English is not my first language so sometimes my messages can be bulky. I don’t get to the point.
“So they’ve (the players) given me ‘Listen, you need to shorten it up. Think what you want to say, shorten your message, it’s too clunky’.
“Which is brilliant and that’s the transparency you want in a team. It should be transparent like that, I love it like that.”
Nienaber, a qualified physio, has often worked on the sideline during his career rather than in the coaches box.
And he did so last season on occasion too, most notably at the Champions Cup final with Toulouse.
And he said he may do it again as it can help him understand what the players are thinking on the pitch.
COMMUNICATION IS KEY
He said: “Obviously not being the head coach, I’ve got licence to go and become a water carrier.
“I’ve done it in the warm-up games, so maybe at half-time I’ll change and go down. I think it’s always a good thing, when you’re carrying water, you’ve got a much better understanding of what they are feeling.
“Standing there in a huddle, you can see are they blowing? Are there solutions, are there emotions? So you can get an emotional connection.
“When you see in the box, there is not an emotional connection. And emotions of ‘are they confident, are they frustrated, are they angry?’
“That’s the beauty of if you are closer to the team. You can feel the emotion of where the team is currently at from a mindset point of view. Then hopefully you can add to that.
“If there’s frustration, you can try and get them not to be frustrated. Or if there is anger, you can make a joke and laugh, and remember to enjoy it.
“It’s because sometimes in a game, you go through disappointment, emotion, confidence, lack of confidence. Fear to make errors, fear of ‘please don’t let the ball come to me’.
“It’s nice to manage that and when I was a physio, that was always the beauty when I was roaming. It’s nice to be that close to the field.”
