- Video
-
Club Roar
Captured a great grassroots sporting moment? We want to see it!Content Collections
The Roar Community
- Join
- Login
Spiro Zavos recently wrote an article in which he lauded Stephen Larkham for coaching his Brumbies team not to take shortcuts and rarely being penalised.
The point is how valuable integrity is in sport.
As an army officer I like to equate sport with warfare, and therefore it is interesting to compare military and sporting leadership.
Lieutenant General Sir William Slim said that a leader must have integrity. Other military writers have said that leaders must have honesty.
These are admirable qualities for leaders, but armies have been most successful when they deceive the enemy about their intentions; telling deliberate lies, and taking the enemy by surprise. Predictability is not necessarily an admirable trait in a military leader.
Nor is predictability a particularly useful trait in a sporting team. Successful military leaders have often been those who show deviousness, an ability to think outside the square and catch the enemy by surprise – the same is regularly true of rugby coaches and captains.
During the Chiefs game against the Stormers, the Chiefs coaches showed a measure of deviousness in their thinking. The refusal to engage in lineout mauls was first used as a tactic at a high level by the Junior All Blacks last year, but the Blues and now the Chiefs have perfected the refusal and the Stormers’ much-vaunted maul was nullified. The Chiefs sometimes opposed it but at other times refused to engage, thus throwing doubt into the Stormers’ minds and defeating their maul.
The Chiefs also showed a new tactic of refusing to create rucks, leaving the tackled player on the ground and fanning out on the Stormers’ side of the ball because no offside line had been created.
Both these tactics are in keeping with the current rules of the game, but you could argue that they are against the spirit of the game. Rugby is supposed to be a contest for the ball at all phases. Not joining mauls or rucks is refusing to contest and therefore falls in the debatable area of what is right and what is not.
The Chiefs are becoming well known for innovative thinking which pushes the boundaries of the laws, and they have been rewarded for it with two titles in the last few years. This implies that complete honesty and integrity have less place in the professional game than deviousness and gamesmanship.
Such tactics are not cheating, just as Richie McCaw is not cheating when he attempts to disrupt opposition rucks. It is simply using the laws to best advantage, using a devious approach to the game which often surprises more straightforward thinkers who have not considered it before being confronted by it.
This explains some of the All Blacks’ recent success. Instead of simply improving the way they play the game, they have improved the way they think about the game. In the 1930s and ’40s this rethinking the game was the province of the South Africans. In the 1970s and ’80s it was Australian teams that were generally smarter than their opposition. Today it is the domain of New Zealand teams.
Winning teams today cannot simply play the game well, they must play the rules well. If you fail to think about the rules and how they are applied, you will fail.
If the rules allow it, then it is not cheating, it is innovative thinking, it will lead to winning and is to be applauded.
I am applauding the Chiefs – loudly.
Join The Roar rugby editor Christy Doran, former Wallaby Matt Toomua and a cast of regular and special guests as they look at the biggest issues in the game on The Roar Rugby Podcast. If you’re looking for great odds on the next game check out Aussie bookmaker PlayUp. Chances are you’re about to lose. Set a deposit limit.