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There are certain sentences a rugby writer believes he will never write, and one them was (notice the past tense): “Al Baxter monsters Andrew Sheridan, reducing him to a limping wreck wandering off Twickenham with all the dejection of a whipped schoolyard bully.”
But this is what happened on Saturday night when the Wallabies humbled and outplayed England by a convincing 28 to 14.
By my count there were 16 scrums in the Test. The first scrum went down twice before the Wallabies won a penalty. It was noticeable that Luke Burgess was feeding the ball as soon as the engagement was made, a sign that the Wallabies feared being driven off their ball if the scrum contest lasted more than a few seconds.
Then the Wallabies were penalised. This was interesting because this was the same pattern of scrum penalties that occurred at Marseilles in the 2007 RWC quarter final.
I was expecting, and no doubt the England pack, its supporters and the assembled rugby journalists were too, that the referee had twigged to Al Baxter and the scrum games were up for the Wallabies. And with the scrums going backwards, there was the virtual certainty that the Wallabies would be scrummed off the field.
But as the scrums continued it became obvious that a different script was being written. The Wallaby scrum was clearly dominant, even on its own ball when England could put on an 8-man shove. And then we had four memorable: ‘Well, I’ll be scrummed moments.’
First, just after half-time, with the Wallabies holding a precarious and slightly against the run-of-play 1-point lead, the Australian pack won a tight head.
Then in the 63rd minute of play the Wallabies smashed the England pack rather like a car being pulverised into a small square of metal.
With 13 minutes of play left, and the game still in the balance, Andrew Sheridan limped off the field. He was a broken and diminished figure and any claims he might have to be England’s iconic wrecking ball were now wrecked.
Finally, with minutes of play left and England 13 points down, they forced a short-arm penalty only a few metres from the Wallaby tryline. The much-feted great scrummagers, the masters of the destructive shove, the destroyers of airy-fairy southern hemisphere packs, opted to take a tap and run.
As the Bible might have said: ‘Those who live by the scrum will also perish by it.’
The knives are already being poised behind the massive back of Martin Johnson, the saviour-coach the UK rugby journalists demanded after the curiously successful 2007 RWC campaign. The argument is being made that the wrong forwards were selected. But when the other players were on the field the Wallaby pack became so dominant one thought that somehow the jerseys of the teams had been swapped.
What did stand out in England’s approach was that there did not seem to be a coherent game plan. What were England trying to do?
They had a very quick back three but the outside centre did not get the ball in a passing movement until the last quarter of the match. There didn’t seem to be a system to run the ball back from the inevitable kicks. The forwards had a primitive one-up barging game but where were the run-arounds? Where were the incursions from deep positions after a couple of phases?
We are beginning to see, I believe, the foolishness of English rugby, which has 500,000 players, allowing its premiership sides to be loaded with foreigners to make the clever plays, the breaks and the hard yards. What has happened in English soccer will probably happen to England rugby. The national side is being sacrificed in the name of club owners trying to establish the best club championship in the world.
How can a generation of good young players develop into Test players, as they do in Australia, NZ and South Africa, when access to first class rugby is blocked off for most of them when they are in their early 20s?
There needs to be more informed analysis about rugby, too, from officials, coaches, players and rugby journalists in the UK. My ancestors, the ancient Greeks, had a saying: ‘Whom the Gods wish to destroy, they first grant them their wishes.’
For over 100 years there has been a resistance in England to thinking deeply about rugby tactics, innovations, the laws and the organisation and practices of the game. It was typical of this attitude that when the IRB embarked on the most rigorously documented and thought-out revision of the laws of any major sports with its Experimental Law Variations project, the reaction from the English rugby establishment was to reject the idea of the ELVs on the spurious ground that the ARU (which did NOT even initiate the project) was trying to protect the Wallabies from their inability to scrum properly.
As a Roar blogger points out on another thread, the stupidity of this argument was revealed at Twickenham with the Wallabies scrumming England out of the Test. Moreover, any one who had even the slightest understanding of the ELVs would recognise that the change from long-arm penalties to short-arm penalties actually allows more opportunity for sides to have more scrums, if they want to.
The last England coach to actually think deeply about rugby tactics and strategy was Clive Woodward. Woodward was booted out of his job, after winning the 2004 RWC, by officials who are still in place. Under Woodward, particularly in 2003, England developed the kick-pass to ‘widen’ the field and a running, abrasive pack that fitted the traditional England approach of direct, confrontational rugby on attack and defence.
That 2003 side was probably England’s best-ever side. And the performance at Melbourne before the 2003 RWC against the Wallabies was one of the great displays any rugby side has put on. Instead of being given anything he wanted to continue the success, Frances Baron and the other nabobs of English rugby denied Woodward the training facilities and back-up he wanted to create an English hegemony.
Woodward told me that he learnt to think deeply about the art of coaching when he had a stint as a player at Manly in the era of Alan Jones.
Martin Johnson’s rugby improved significantly when he spent a year in NZ in the King Country, Colin Meads territory, and played for the Junior All Blacks.
My guess is that England, particularly, with its vast resources of players would be a perpetual top-three rugby nation if its rugby establishment had the nous to do what Woodward did at Manly to develop his coaching skills and what Johnston did as player to become one of rugby greatest ever second-rowers.
The bottom line on the Wallabies marvellous victory was that it was built on competitions at the provincial and international level between South Africa, NZ and Australia that continually test the physical and mental skills of the local players.
Would Matt Giteau have developed so quickly as an international star if he was blocked from playing Super 14 Rugby by an overseas player?
Al Baxter has had years of battling and being beaten by outstanding southern hemisphere props and their coaches forever trying to get an edge by developing a higher skill factor than the opposition to reach the stage where he can monster Andrew Sheridan.
With the stunning victory over England suddenly what looked like being a tour from hell for the Wallabies and Robbie Deans, with a run of hard matches against NZ, Italy, England, France, Wales and an All-Star Barbarians sides, now looks like it could result in a triumphant Grand Slam march through Europe, at least.
The Test against France next week will be interesting as France are the only unbeaten northern hemisphere team in the current round of international matches.
More importantly, there appears to be a great improvement in the French scrum from the past couple of years. More heroics might be needed from Baxter if this is the case.