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The Wallabies 2014 season is over and 2015 World Cup speculation is already well underway. Stephen Jones has laid out his surprising predictions for the tournament.
With injured star David Pocock getting arrested and speculation over England’s capacity to hold the Cup, there is plenty to talk about in this week’s Rolling Maul.
1. Stephen Jones: An Australia-New Zealand RWC 2015 final
A warning to readers. This is not a spoof. It is not a satire. But in last weekend’s Sunday Times, Stephen Jones, the scourge of Wallabies and All Blacks, has made the fearless prediction that the RWC 2015 final at Twickenham will be between the Wallabies and the All Blacks.
In an illustration that went with his Test match report, Jones gave his 2015 Rugby World Cup knockout predictions.
The quarter finals will be between: Australia-Scotland, South Africa-Wales, New Zealand-France, Ireland-Argentina.
The semi-finals: Australia-South Africa, New Zealand-Ireland.
The final: Australia-New Zealand.
There is no prediction about the winner of this Jones-predicted final.
The most amazing pool round presumption concerning the fearless predictions involve England not emerging from the ‘Pool of Death’. England, Jones predicts, will drown in the Pool.
The fearless prediction presumes that the Wallabies will defeat Wales and England in the pool rounds before defeating South Africa and Wales in the quarter and semi-finals before taking on New Zealand in the final.
The basis for these amazing fearless predictions is the perceived lack of quality in the current England side. Jones makes this point in his Test report: “Imagine what would have happened had Australia had England’s scrum. Australia were so vastly superior as a rugby team that it was brutal, and effectively it was a match in which Australia’s superb backs were being defended against by England’s front row.”
Clearly, Jones expects the Wallaby scrum to improve enough so that it holds its own but does not necessarily overpower opponents. And England without total scrum dominance are a team that has no other way of winning the big matches.
This notion that the Wallabies only to improve their scrum to parity to be a real 2015 RWC tournament threat was endorsed by The Times rugby writer Rick Broadbent, who pointed out that the Wallabies carried the ball for 559m to England’s paltry 169m. The Wallabies made twice as many line breaks as England and achieved 17 offloads to England’s three.
However, this lack of enthusiasm about England’s prospects was not shared by the UK Daily Telegraph’s Mick Cleary with his remarkable Autumn International XV: 15 Willie Le Roux (SA), 14 Tommy Bowe (Ireland), 13 Robbie Henshaw (Ireland), 12 Jean de Villiers (SA), 11 Jonny May (England), 10 Johnny Sexton (Ireland), 9 Aaron Smith (NZ): 8 Jamie Heaslip, 7 Chris Robshaw (England, captain), 6 Jerome Kaino (NZ), 5 Paul O’Connell (Ireland), 4 Courtenay Lawes (Engand), 3 Owen Franks (NZ), 2 Augustin Creevy (Argentina), 1 Joe Marler (England).
This team raises the issue of how the All Blacks can expect to defeat Ireland in the predicted Stephen Jones semi-final with a lack of world class centres, number 8, number 7, and second rowers.
Just joking, or are Stephen Jones and Mick Cleary taking the micky out of the rest of us?
2. David Pocock can’t be considered for the captaincy of the Wallabies
Australia is a free country and if David Pocock wants to chain himself to digging equipment at Whitehaven Coal’s Maules Creek mine, that is his right.
He is opposed to a large open cut mind in the area. He is entitled to make this protest. And if he is deemed to have broken the law, then he has to accept whatever punishment the court deals out to him.
All this involves David Pocock private citizen. But there is another David Pocock, David Pocock the Wallaby (presuming his comeback next year is successful). In this context, it is appropriate to note that the ARU has sent this David Pocock a letter warning him that his protest activity is in breach of its Code of Conduct.
As Pocock’s employer as a rugby player, the ARU is entitled to make this warning. Pocock himself acknowledges that he has hesitated about taking direct action because of his concerns ‘about the impact this might have on my career.’
G.K.Chesterton in a famous definition stated that ‘freedom is doing what you ought to do, not what you want to do.’
This is very relevant to the case of Pocock and his situation regarding the Wallabies. As Mark Loane argues, Pocock is not ‘free’ to be a Wallaby and put himself in the position where he is arrested and charged for breaking a law.
There is no doubt that any attention he gets from his involvement in a protest flows from the fact that he has been a former Wallaby captain, and the possibility next year that he returns to the Wallaby squad.
He has to exercise great care that he does not continue to politicise the Wallaby jersey. This is something he ought not do.
His actions at the Whitehaven Coal’s Maules Creek mine do this, and in a sense are intended to do this.
Without being too tough on suppressing the beliefs and actions of a person of conviction, he needs to understand that he has compromised his chances of being considered for the captaincy of the Wallabies.
The nature of protest is to divide opinion. The nature of the captaincy of the Wallabies is to unite Australians, many of whom disagree on many social and political issues, behind the team.
Already two distinguished Wallabies on and off the field, Mark Loane (a humanitarian eye surgeon) and Tony Abrahams (an international tax lawyer), are in disagreement about the appropriateness of Pocock’s behaviour. Wayne Smith in The Australian has reported on this debate.
For Abrahams, what Pocock has done is something to be praised, a sportsman ‘making a stand on principle.’ For Loane, ‘it’s probably not his right to be there … when he is contracted to the ARU.’
My position aligns with that of Loane.
3. Can England run a decent and fair 2015 Rugby World Cup?
Despite the incessant and inaccurate claims by Stephen Jones and the other usual suspects that the Wallabies and the All Blacks are ‘cheats’, the only major cheating incident at World Cup tournaments has involved England.
During the 2011 RWC tournament, England officials provided rugby balls that Jonny Wilkinson used at practice to the kicker during matches at the enclosed stadium at Dunedin.
Wilkinson found that the match balls were difficult for him to kick accurately. So he was given balls he had practised with when England had shots at goal.
England should really have been deducted their winning points from the matches Wilkinson used the ‘wrong’ balls. Wilkinson, who must have known about the cheating, should have been fined and booted out of the tournament.
Instead, two England officials were prevented from being in the stadium on match days.
Talk about white wash. This was the IRB helping a northern hemisphere power in a manner that should have been unaccepted.
This matter provides an example of how unscrupuluous Rugby Football Union (the English Rugby Union) officials have been, and may well be when they get to run the 2015 RWC touranment.
This November we, rugby followers from around the world, have been given a glimpse of how nasty and parochial England’s administration of the RWC tournament might be from behaviour of the crowd at Twickenham in several of the big Tests.
There was the homophobic abuse directed at Nigel Owens, a referee who is openly gay. Owens’ refereeing, for whatever reason, perhaps he heard a lot of this abuse, refereed very poorly and seemed to be intimidated by the crowd’s antagonism to the All Blacks to such an extent that he began to favour England unduly in his decision-making.
There was also the boorishness of spectators (including Prince Harry) in trying to drown out the All Blacks haka with the inane singing of a spiritual Swing Low, Sweet Chariot that has no identification with English rugby.
Much worse than all this has been the way the incessant TV replays were designed to put pressure on the match officials to change decisions into England’s favour, and to arouse the easily aroused drunken and abusive England supporters.
The point about all this is that when the ARU, under the leadership of John O’Neill, ran the 2003 RWC in Australia one of the most important considerations was that it was a World Cup tournament, not an Australian tournament.
Every one from outside of Australia, especially the journalists and the competing sides, was given the fairest of treatment. O’Neill was punctilious about this. Every one had a great time as a consequence.
From my experience at previous RWC tournaments in the UK, this warm attitude that it is a World Cup, an experience to be shared and enjoyed by visitors and locals, was not reflected by treatment of visiting journalists and teams in RWC 1991 and RWC 1999.
I hope I am wrong. I hope that the typical English triumphalism that is exhibited at Twickenham won’t sour the 2015 tournament.
But what happened in the Twickenham Tests this November, on and off the field, doesn’t give much comfort that Rugby World Cup 2015 is going to be a true World Cup tournament.