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Italy's Mauro Bergamasco, left, is tackled by Ireland's Brian O'Driscoll in their Six Nations rugby union international match at Croke Park, Dublin, Ireland, Saturday, Feb. 6, 2010. (AP Photo/Peter Morrison)
Nick Mallet is a sophisticated man: he speaks several languages. He is bright: he was a Rhodes Scholar. He has been a very good coach: his Springboks in 1998/199 won 17 straight Tests, a South African winning sequence record. He is, however, a very poor coach of Italy.
He has set his team a goal of losing by no more than 15 points. That margin or preferably fewer points represents, Mallet has told his team, a sort of victory for Italy.
And to consolidate this negative team ambition, Mallett has imposed a style of play on Italy that ensures that his team can’t win Tests but will invariably lose in as ugly a fashion as possible.
This ‘losing ugly’ style makes Italy a difficult team to play expansive and attractive rugby against, as Ireland found on Saturday at Croke Park. They did, though, win 29 – 11 and this score reflected in a curious way a sort of double loss by Italy.
Ireland went past the 15-point mark and were never in any danger of losing the Test. Given the extremely negative nature of Italy’s play and the fact that this was the opening match of the Six Nations tournament, I thought Ireland were quite impressive.
There was nothing in the England-Wales match to suggest that these team will stop Ireland’s unbeaten run which now extends to 12 Tests, a national record for Ireland.
As well as being difficult for oppositions to play attractively against (the All Blacks and the Wallabies have struggled to put Italy away comprehensively in Italy), Italy plays (if such an active verb can be used in this context) the most unwatchable rugby that can ever have been inflicted on spectators by any team.
Every ball is kicked away. We don’t know if the backs can run and pass and make breaks because they never try these rugby basics.
They cheat at virtually every scrum. Against the All Blacks last year Stu Dickinson had a rare off day and let them away with this. On Saturday the French referee Romain Poite did not tolerate the boring-in tactics from the Italian front row and penalised them frequently, and correctly.
The worst aspect of their play, even worse than the never-ending kicking (with no one actually chasing the high balls), is the way the Italian halfbacks allow the ball to sit at the back of the ruck for more than 10 seconds. You feel like screaming out, ‘Use it! Damn you!’.
The sooner referees start applying a use-it or lose-it call, giving teams like Italy (and other ‘sitters’ like England and Wales to only a slightly lesser extent) five seconds maximum to play the ball, the better.
Italy, too, like all the European teams play their first five-eighths mainly in the quarter-back position, directly behind the half rather than almost in line with him. The result of this senseless positioning is that most of the European teams, even Ireland and Wales – teams that actually try to run the ball – have to kick away possession quite often from turnovers rather than launching wide attacking raids.
Talking about senseless play, Alun Wyn Jones, the Wales second-rower lost the Test against England at Twickenham when he stuck out a leg to trip the English hooker Dylan Hartley right in front of the referee Alain Rolland. The score was 3-3 at the time just five minutes before half-time with Wales looking like a side that could continue its run of victories at the home of English rugby.
Ten minutes later when Jones came rather shame-facedly back on the field the score was 20 – 3. Even though Wales came back strongly and scored 14 unanswered points, the game was effectively lost by an action that Brian Moore (who is turning into an excellent commentator) called a ‘half-witted’ and ‘silly cheap shot.’
England’s lineout was good, with Steve Borthwick doing a Victor Matfield in organising no fewer than six steals against the throw. The scrum was barely adequate, though. Jonny Wilkinson kicked too much and poorly and his positioning was in the European disease mode which made it virtually impossible for England to have any fluency in their backline.
England were an improvement on the side that performed so poorly against the southern hemisphere teams at the end of last year. But this was an improvement from someone on a life-support system to someone who is off it, for the time being.
Whether Saturday’s performance reflects an actual improvement or that Wales seems to be on another slippery slope to rugby mediocrity remains to be seen.
By far the best thing about England was their playing strip which reflected the strip used back in 1910 when Twickenham hosted its first Test. The off-white of the jerseys, with real collars, the band of blue around the waist of the white shorts and the blue socks looked terrific. The current jersey, with its red slash on the white, looks as if the England players have had their throats slit and blood is streaming out of the wound on to their jersey.
What a pity that Wales didn’t wear their 1910 playing kit, the famous scarlet jersey, the black shorts and the scarlet socks. The current outfit, a sort of Miami Vice red, with no collar, white shorts and green socks with a curious white pattern on them, looks like a dog breakfast.
Is it a coincidence that Wales played in a similar dogs breakfast fashion?