It’s Game On for NH v SH rugby bragging rights

 
Spiro Zavos Columnist

By , 5 Nov 2009 Spiro Zavos is a Roar Expert

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New Zealand's Jerry Collins, center, attempts to get past Wales' Stephen Jones, left, and Robert Sidoli, right obscured, during their international rugby union match at the Millennium Stadium in Cardiff. AP Photo/Matt Dunham

New Zealand's Jerry Collins, center, attempts to get past Wales' Stephen Jones, left, and Robert Sidoli, right obscured, during their international rugby union match at the Millennium Stadium in Cardiff. AP Photo/Matt Dunham

On Saturday night, the Wallabies play England and the All Blacks play Wales, two intriguing Tests that have their origins back in the 1900s when New Zealand (1905), South Afrrica (1906) and Australia (1908) made their first tours of what was then, and even now unfortunately, called the Home Unions.

I say ‘unfortunately’ because this title of the Home Unions denotes a sort of proprietary and benevolent control over the rugby game, which the unions concerned, England, Scotland, Ireland and Wales, have not honoured.

Wales (the exception) in several different decades of the the last 100 years, Scotland in the 1920s, Ireland in the late 1940s and again in the last couple of years, and England between 2001 and 2003, fielded national teams that graced the rugby fields with their expansive, skillful rugby.

But most of the time their rugby has been what the veteran British rugby journalist, John Hopkins, described Gloucester’s play as being going down to the Wallabies last night: “Honest endeavoiur, plodding play and a lack of skill.”

Much the same sort of comment could have been made about Gloucester when they played the then Rabbits who later on the tour became the Wallabies in the first match of the 1908 Australian tour of the United Kingdom.

Aside from the Southern Hemisphere powers leading the way for rugby on the field (with 5 wins out of 6 in the Rugby World Cup tournament), they have also pioneered virtually every improvement in the game off the field.

In 1895, the Rugby Football Union (the English union) expelled the strong rugby counties of Lancashire and Yorkshire from the RFU because they wanted to pay their players, who were mainly miners, compensation for rugby injuries.

This injustice to the players led directly to the creation of the rugby league code, and destroyed rugby union’s strong chance of becoming the world football game.

It was the NSWRU in 1995 with its unilateral declaration that as far as it was concerned rugby was now a professional game that prompted the IRB to redress the 1895 decision and allow rugby union to become a dynamic world sport with a place (with Sevens Rugby) in the Olympics.

Many readers of The Roar with Northern Hemisphere allegiances get quite angry with me when I bring up all this history before the Spring Tours of the Southern Hemisphere rugby powers.

But there is a reason for continually re-stating this history.

The sad fact is that the reluctance of the Northern Hemisphere powers to embrace needed reforms in the laws and the way rugby is played has had a recent manifestation in the rejection of the IRB’s carefully designed and trialled experimental law variations (the ELVs).

It is up to the Northern Hemisphere teams in the coming Tests with their Southern Hemisphere rivals to demonstrate that at the Test level, the lack of the full ELVs regime is no impediment to them playing modern, attacking, skillful and successful rugby.

Mick Cleary, the experienced rugby writer for the (UK) Daily Telegraph, has stated in a recent article that it is time for the “European nations to front up.”

For Wales and Ireland, teams that are full of players who did well on the British and Irish Lions tour of South Africa, “there are no get out clauses.”

Cleary insists that “anything less than a clean sweep of victories would rate as a disappointment” for Wales and Ireland. Wales has three coaches who were involved in the Lions tour and there should be “some spin-off” from this.

As for Ireland, they are the Grand Slam Six Nations title holders, something that was last achieved by Ireland (in a Five Nations tournament) 61 years ago when the great five-eighths Jackie Kyle was at his mesmeric best. According to Cleary, Ireland “can’t afford to lapse now” if they want to be genuine contenders for the 2011 Rugby World Cup.

For England, Cleary insists that anything less than two victories out of the Tests against Australia, Argentina and New Zealand is unacceptable for their coach Martin Johnson. His position must be under threat if England, with its huge reservoir of players, can’t achieve a two-out-of-three result.

Cleary just accepts that Scotland, which wields far too much power within the IRB in my opinion, will probably lose all its matches to the touring sides.

England are greatly strengthened by the return of Jonny Wilkinson.

Wilkinson, like Morne Steyn for the Bulls (again in the Currie Cup final against the Cheetahs) and the Springboks, has the skills and the rugby nous of taking points, either through penalties, dropped goals and the occasional try, virtually every time his team is within goal-kicking distance of the opposition posts.

It was Wilkinson who turned around England’s fortunes in the 2007 Rugby World Cup.

The side was thrashed by South Africa in the pool round, when Wilkinson was out injured. When the champion returned, he kicked (literally) Australia out of the quarter-finals, France out of the semi-finals and then kept England in the tight final against against South Africa.

If Wilkinson is on his game, England have a chance against the Wallabies on Saturday. Hopefully, Robbie Deans will devise tactics to place the utmost pressure on England’s best player.

As for Wales against New Zealand, the All Blacks have not lost in Europe, aside from the quarter-final in the 2007 World Cup, since 2002. They haven’t lost to Wales since 1953.

There are two ways of looking at this run of wins. It has to come to an end, perhaps sooner rather than later? Or, the victories over Wales have become self-fulfilling prophecies for the All Blacks which are liable to continue for years to come.

My guess is (and a guess is a less confident assessment that a prediction) that Australia will defeat England on Saturday and then Ireland the week later. And the All Blacks will beat Wales and then England two weeks later.

If these results come through, then the bragging rights for yet another year will go once again to the Southern Hemisphere rugby powers. And sooner rather than later, these bragging rights will surely turn into real rights for the Southern Hemisphere in deciding the future course of the world rugby game, on and off the field.

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