SPIRO: The ARU must honour the Anzacs by creating the Tom Richards Shield

Here is a modest proposal for the ARU to connect generations of rugby players and supporters.

Now, and into the future, with the stories of the Anzacs and to honour the memory of all the Australian men and women who served in the country’s call, the ARU must create the Tom Richards Shield for competition between the five Australian Super Rugby sides.

The model for the competition would be along the lines, but not exclusively, of New Zealand’s Ranfurly Shield. The Tom Richards Shield would be on the line whenever the holder plays another Australian Super Rugby side.

The first all-Australian Super Rugby match of 2016 could start the competition.

Why Tom Richards?

Because he epitomises the Anzac ethic and its connection with the rugby game. Richards was one an original “rugby troubadour,” in the lovely phrase of his biographer Greg Growden.

He played rugby at a high level, including the Wallabies and the British Lions, in Australia, South Africa, France and England.

There is a terrific story about Richards playing for an English club side against the famous 1906 Springboks and causing havoc in their lineout. The Springboks could not understand how Richards was decoding their lineout calls.

They forgot, or didn’t know, that he had played in South Africa and had some understanding of Afrikaans.

Jim Boyce, a wonderful Wallaby winger in the 1960s and an expert now on local history, played a leading part in identifying and restoring Richards’ grave at Manly in 2013. There was a ceremony to mark the occasion which was attended by several of the British and Irish Lions players, including the captain Sam Warburton, and some Wallabies, including James Horwill, the Wallabies captain.

Richards was one of the greatest rugby players of his day and a candidate for the Greatest Wallabies XV as a flanker. He was in his 40s at Gallipoli where he worked as a stretcher bearer.

He was one of the first to land and the last to leave. He has form in this context, on and off the field.

Jim Boyce has done research on the stretcher bearers’ job during World War I. This is what his research told him: “Apparently you had to be able to move at speed carrying an injured soldier (100kgs with full kit sometimes) for at least 100m.”

“You also had to be able to make a quick assessment as to who could be saved and who was beyond saving … while dodging bullets.”

Richards wrote up his World War I experiences in a collection of diaries that Greg Growden has transcribed and edited under the title Wallaby Warrior. Many of the diary entries, including a moving account of the Gallipoli landing, run into thousands of words. These diaries are now a national treasure.

Richards has now become identified with the Anzacs and with the diggers on the Western Front (where he won a Military Cross) through the publication of his biography and his diary. I see him as the epitome of the rugby man doing his duty, as he sees it, in the service of his embattled country.

This is why he is the right person to be memorialised with the Tom Richards Shield.

There is a deeper reason to all this commemoration, too. The Richards name embraces all the men and women who served.

This weekend of rugby, with the moving ceremonies at the beginning and end of the games – at Christchurch poppies were strewn on the field after the Crusaders-Blues match – has created a strong connection between our generation and the generation of Anzac soldiers who fought in the Great War.

Throughout the weekend, I have been thinking about this and why this is so. Why has a military expedition whose only success was in the withdrawal of the troops had such a profound effect on Australians and New Zealanders, of all ages and backgrounds, 100 years later?

As I pondered this while watching the games, my thoughts went back to my days as a small boy at a convent school in Wellington. The nuns taught us the poem Gray’s Elegy, a poem that resonated for me throughout this weekend.

Full many a gem of purest ray serene/ The dark unfathomed caves of ocean bear/ Full many a flower was borne to blush unseen/ And waste its sweetness on the desert air/ … The paths of glory lead by to the grave.

This notion that most of us are capable and often do lead great lives but that this greatness is not recognised is a telling insight. We tend to think or are taught that greatness is the quality of the great leaders of history. But the Anazacs showed the shallowness of this thinking.

Just because something is not recognised does not mean that that it doesn’t exist.

So many Anzacs like Richards kept diaries and hundreds more wrote detailed and often harrowing letters back home. This surging tide of paper has meant that lives that might have flowered “unseen” aside from their families and work and play colleagues are now known, honoured and treasured.

The Gallipoli landing and fighting was the first time in Australian history that thousands of Australians were able to share with their communities and over the years to many other generations of Australians their experiences in one the pivotal events in our nation’s story. This was the sort coverage that only the great experienced in the past.

Virtually every article about Gallipoli over the past weekend marking the 100th anniversary of the landing recounted stories and names of Anzacs who we know a lot about now, their lives, their background, their exploits and their families.

The more we know, the more there is to admire about these men and women. Their lives are no longer gems hidden in “unfathomed caves”.

Prime Minister Tony Abbott, in his address at Gallipoli, made this point much better than I can.

“The first Anzacs were tradesmen, clerks, labourers, farmers and professionals: they were from every conceivable occupation, from every rung in the ladder of society, and from every point under the South Cross … But ordinary men did extraordinary things … like every generation since, we are here on Gallipoli, because we believe that the Anzacas represented Australians at our best.”

To change the metaphor. Thier lives are now open books to inspire us in life and in play.

So to return to my modest proposal. The ARU should allow Tom Richards to honoured as the figure head for his generation of men and women who made the sacrifice to serve with the creation of the Tom Richards Shield.

Lest We Forget

***

And now back to the splendid rugby that was played over the weekend.

Overall, it was a good weekend for the Australian franchises, or more specifically for the two teams – the Brumbies and the Waratahs – that have a chance to make the finals.

The Western Force were gutsy and resilient in going down to the Chiefs at Hamilton. There are some teams that play above themselves when playing teams that are better than they are. The Force are like that with the Chiefs. Last year they beat them at Perth. And on Friday night they were most unlucky not to get a bonus point in their 35-27 loss.

The Force’s feisty halfback Ian Prior was correctly handed a red card for dumping Tim Nanai-Williams on his head and shoulders. There is no excuse for this type of slam-dunk tackle. And no matter who the offender is, and whatever the circumstances – Nanai-Williams is small and easily lifted – this type of tackle is a strict liability offence.

SANZAR has acted promptly, too, in setting up a review, with Nigel Hampton QC appointed to act as the judicial commissioner. The full details of the incident, the sections of the SANZAR rules that could be affected and other matters are set out in detail in the SANZAR media release.

I make this point without additional comment. Why was this proper procedure not followed in the case of Michael Cheika talking to referee Jaco Peyper at the Waratahs recent home game against the Blues?

The Highlanders seemed to have conceded their away match to the Brumbies by resting their three outstanding All Blacks, Ben Smith, Malaki Fekitoa and Aaron Smith. They were, probably as a consequence, overrun in the first half and although the Highlanders fought back, the 31-18 points was a fair indication of the difference between the two teams – if illegal rolling mauls are accepted as part of the modern game of rugby.

David Pocock, who scored three tries from the Brumbies rolling maul, told reporters after the match that he didn’t have to do much in scoring them: “I was just on the back of the chariot.”

Good luck to him. All three tries came from a blatantly illegal play by the Brumbies.

It was hardly compensation for the Highlanders that their rolling maul try was also constructed illegally.

The referee Matt O’Brien, either does not know the laws regarding mauls or SANZAR has issued instructions to referees to disregard the laws.

I have never seen such a flagrant disregard of this law: “Players joining the maul: Players joining a maul must do so behind (my emphasis) the foot of the hindmost teammate in the maul. The player may join alongside this player. If the player joins the maul from his opponents’ side, or in front of the hindmost teammate, the player is offside. Penalty: Penalty kick on the offending team’s offside line.”

Referee O’Brien allowed the Brumbies and the Highlanders on their mauls to rush in (particularly the Brumbies) ahead of the player at the back, in the case of the Brumbies, David Pocock, and create a surge that could not be stopped.

The assistant referees were Andrew Lees and Damien Michaelmore, and the TMO Peter Marshall. They all must have seen the illegal play. Why wasn’t referee O’Brien told about it, with a view to warning the Brumbies to stop the illegalities?

I have ranted about the illegality of most rolling mauls many times. But somehow Lyndon Bray of SANZAR, who is in charge of these matters, invariably turns a Nelsonian eye to the criticisms.

Easlier this year he even suggested that disengaging by the defending side was a “very, very negative tactic”. The fact is that disengaging is smart and positive and one of the few defences available to sides against illegal and sometimes legal rolling mauls.

When you take away the three Brumbies tries from rolling mauls, their victory becomes much less impressive. And you would have to say that their progress to the finals is very much dependent on whether Lyndon Bray decides, as he should, that the illegal tactic of flooding a rolling maul with players joining in ahead of the ball carrier has to stop.

I notice, for instance, that the Chiefs are starting to develop mid-field rolling mauls.

Bray’s encouragement of the illegal play to help the rolling maul could ultimately return rugby to the days in the 19th century when the ball rarely emerged from extended rucks because players believed that the laws of the game did not allow healing back as the players in front of the ball in rucks were then placed offside.

This is theoretically correct, even today. But there is a dispensation for this offside play at rucks and mauls to allow the ball to be moved from the rucks and the mauls.

MEMO to Lyndon Bray: Start ensuring that the laws regarding mauls are enforced on the attacking side as stringently as they are enforced on the defending side.

The Waratahs toughed out a victory against a stubborn Rebels side. This moved them to within a point of the Highlanders. And within two points of the Bulls.

The Stormers did themselves, the Waratahs, the Brumbies and the eighth-placed (Lions) and ninth-placed (the Crusaders) sides a favour by beating the Bulls.

The final six is still hard to work out. But I think that the current top six: Hurricanes, Chiefs, Brumbies, Stormers, Bulls, Highlanders is most unlikely to be there at the end of the round robin part of the tournament.

And although the Hurricanes had a splendid win over the Reds at Brisbane, giving them five successive victories on the road (a terrific performance) they still seem to be lacking in focus from time to time.

Against this, though, is their ability to score tries which is reflected in their high tally of bonus points for scoring four tries or more in a match, as they did against the Reds on Sunday.

***

The final Anzac match for the round featured a splendid presentation from the Queensland Rugby Union. It was very moving to hear the people’s bard, Rupert McColl, a latter-day Banjo Paterson, deliver a special Ode for the occasion which mentioned a number of the Queensland representative players who fought at Gallipoli: “They were hard and humble but they loved their rugby too … They played the game of rugby for enjoyment and release/ May they rest in peace.”

And so the great games of life and rugby moves on …