Following the Rugby World Cup, there has been the expected hand-wringing in the ever delightful English press.
They are a savage pack and they love to turn on the defeated. Presently Stuart Lancaster and Sam Burgess are their target. As was Martin Johnson before that. And Brian Ashton before that etc.
But as well as playing the blame game, they also tend to ask ‘what went wrong?’ and ‘can anything be done?’ in fairly plaintive terms.
Reading this journalism online is like watching re-runs of famous All Black victories – it keeps me smiling all summer long. Schadenfreude (malicious joy or delight in the suffering of others) is the marvelous German word for this sort of feeling and I love it. It keeps me warm.
But they do this after every Rugby World Cup and amazingly in over two decades of near constant failure they ask almost all the right small questions, uncover all the information that would enable them to solve the big problem – but then fail to spot the actual answer to the right question.
The question that they set themselves to answer is “Why are the southern hemisphere sides so good?” This, of course, is the wrong question entirely.
But they keep asking it – and they keep answering it correctly – and they keep failing to go the extra step and ask themselves the right question.
Here are the smaller questions they ask and answer correctly on their way to answering the wrong question:
• Is it the weather – No
• Is it the pitches – No
• Is it because they have better ball handling skills – Yes
• Is it because they are better at making good decision under pressure – No
• Is it because they constantly play the finest teams each year in the Rugby Championship and therefore can’t help but improve, while we have to play turnips like Italy – No
• Is it because the colonies just want to win more than us – Yes
• Is it because their children have a genetic advantage – No
• Is it because of Rippa Rugby – No
• Is it because they buy Pacific Islanders with a boatload of money and make them play for them – No
• Is it because it is every kid’s dream down south to play for their national rugby team while ours just want to do stupid stuff like make money and raise families and enjoy a well-rounded life – No
• Is it because they coach their kids to play better footy at an early age – No
• Is it because they have a better club structure – No
• Is it because they have a better national structure that owns all the clubs and organises things to support their international competition calendar– Yes
• Is it because they have Super Rugby – No
• Is it because they play fewer games per year at the top level – Yes
• Is it because they have better coaches – Yes
• Is it because they place an emphasis on character in player selection – Yes
• Is it because they mostly refuse to select overseas players – No
• Is it because they don’t pollute their domestic competition with hordes of super-annuated foreigners (like English Premier League does) – No
• Is it because they just hate to play ten-man rugby – No
• Is it because they think about rugby more than us – Yes
• Is it because they are smarter – No
• Is it because they are braver – No
• Is it because they are fitter – If they were actually fitter that would be ‘Yes’ but they aren’t so it’s ‘No’
• Is it because we have too many players to select from and so we never know who is the best choice because we can’t test them all fairly and so we dither and faff around trying to make up our minds – Yes
• Is it because God hates us – No, he loves you – with very tough love every four years
• Is it because our Test teams don’t have enough time playing together to be able to play instinctively alongside each other – Yes
• Is it because we are run by a class-obsessed bunch of old school tie incompetents that would rather preserve their own power than take a morally courageous risk and try something new – No
• Is it because we have more desk wallahs with titles like ‘Elite Rugby Director’ than an anthill has ants – No
• Is it because we hired the wrong coach – No
• Is it because we keep changing our selections – No
After getting all those answers correct, you’d think they might stop and think and then spot the one question they should have been asking.
“How do we play better rugby?”
Then they could look at that list and answer that question in a flash. The answer is found within all the questions they answered with a Yes.
Then all they’d need to do is… do it.
Look at the list again and you can see the ‘Yes’ ingredients necessary to play better rugby immediately. But they won’t do that. Instead they’ll have some giant complicated plan to incrementally improve the entirety of English rugby at every level from primary school to professional clubs in the absurd and feeble hope that somehow this rising tide of competence at every school and club in the land will lift all the boats – including the stranded boat that is the England national rugby team.
That is the stupidest and slowest and most expensive ‘solution’ to the problem that can possibly be imagined.
If I want to lift a boat, I don’t wait for the tide, or inspire the tide or support the tide or develop the tide or restructure the tide. I don’t actually give a %^@andamp; about the tide.
What I do is this. I lift the actual boat that needs lifting and bugger the rest.
Developing rugby generally in the hopes of eventually finding a team like the All Blacks is like saying that you want to create the SAS by improving the skills of a 1,000,000 soldiers over a period of many years and then you plan to wander among them picking the best out from the herd, one by one and then giving them a few dozen hours to sort themselves into a team before parachuting them into the battle.
The actual SAS wasn’t created this way at all. Instead, they asked for volunteers who really wanted to stick it to the Hun and then culled them with a ferocious training programme and finally sat them down together and let them figure out for themselves how to be a thorn in Jerry’s side.
Raising the average competence of a large population by a percentage point or two is very hard and will still not create the talented freaks you need to win a Rugby World Cup. Nor is it necessary to create an elite academy to very very slowly breed a super-player.
New Zealand had no academy in 1905. Nor did they have a huge playing population that had slowly been developed at every level over ten or 20 years and finally produced exactly 27 senior players to form a perfect team.
They just grabbed 27 likely looking lads and let them play and train together a lot. Tours were long in those days – 35 matches. By the end they were a team playing on instinct. Winning 34 out of 35 matches.
Ah well – I can hear you say – very good – but how would you actually do it? For that we need a history lesson.
In an effort to get to the Moon before 1970, NASA had a choice of building components for the Saturn V rocket and the Lunar Landing Module and testing each element separately to ensure that each piece functioned properly and would not cause the loss of the very expensive craft and the very precious crew.
That would have taken decades. And cost a fortune. And still not proven that each element that worked flawlessly in isolation would also work flawlessly in combination with all the other six million parts.
So they bravely chose to assemble the whole thing – untested – and cram the crew – (volunteers chosen from hundreds of thousands of applicants and ruthlessly culled to a team of three) into it and blast them off into space in a single concurrent test of all the technology.
That was Apollo 8. It worked. They saved about 10 years of incremental progress and they beat the Russians to the Moon on Apollo 11 and still had time and money left over to take a spin in a dune buggy and play some golf up there as well.
Now, because I know you are pressed for time and haven’t re-read the list of Yes/No questions, and because you have a reasonable expectation that I will get to the point before the battery on your iPhone gives out, here is the answer.
The (England) Rugby Union should create (or buy) their very own club to play in the senior English rugby competition and should cram it with some volunteers who want to play running rugby.
Answerable to no one else but the rugby union. They should staff it with a decent coach (probably from down this way) who believes rugby is about scoring tries.
The coach should hire a handful of specialists to help him – but no more than that. He should then advertise for rugby players among the 1,990,000 registered rugby players in England for men that really want to be in a team that scores tries and who believe that winning rugby games is very nearly the most important thing in their life at that time.
I refuse to believe that he couldn’t find 200 or so truly talented mostly native English players to staff the club’s age grade teams. The senior coach should then get on and do just what southern hemisphere coaches do and select whoever he wants to play for his A team and he should ensure they are fit, can catch and pass and that they really do want to score tries with every fibre of their being.
He should test their character in training and watch them behave outside the club. He should have a club motto to guide their behaviour and establish a culture for them. It should be displayed publicly and should say “Commit no nuisance” but players should be told that it really means “Don’t be a tool.”
He should set a very ambitious goal of winning their club championship inside two years. Then they should play in the senior club competition and thrash the opposition. At the end of two years, the majority of those players should be in the England team with good reason for their selection.
All you need to do is ask for volunteers to do a very hard task, cull the feeble and deluded and get busy with training up a team from the remnants.
To the naysayers, I remind you of two things:
A single club can supply a preponderance of Test caps for a national side and that club can also set the defining style of play for an entire country for a whole generation simply by winning everything on offer. The Auckland provincial team did this in New Zealand between 1984 and 1996. They held the premier rugby trophies in New Zealand almost continuously – the Ranfurly Shield for 11 out of 13 years and the NPC Championship for 10 out of 13 years. They also beat England, Australia and the Lions.
They supplied the All Blacks with 32 players in this period and at their peak the All Blacks who won the 1987 Rugby World Cup drew 12 of their 27 squad players from Auckland and of these ten Aucklanders played in the final.
Others from Auckland faced so much competition for game time in a team that was heavy with All Blacks that they moved out of Auckland to play for neighbouring provincial teams like North Harbour. Where they also earned Test caps.
In this period, the Auckland team also supplied an All Blacks coach – John Hart – and they were the first to employ Jim Blair – the legendary fitness coach that gave the Auckland team their competitive edge over everyone they played. He became the All Blacks fitness coach too.
The distinctive Auckland style of grinding out a modest lead over the first 70 minutes and then hungrily piling on 20+ points in the final 10 minutes became a trademark of New Zealand rugby that continues today. So many games were won this way that at half time, the crowds at Eden Park walked to the opposite end to be closer to where the remaining game would be played and all the ties would be scored in the second half. It was called the Eden Park stroll. Above all though, Auckland scored tries.
They shoved scrums around and kicked intelligently and scored tries because they could rely on their teammates to be in the right place at the right time doing the right things. They didn’t get that instinctive teamwork by playing a miserable handful of Test games each year. They got it because they played club rugby for literally hundreds of games. And they trained together for hundreds more hours too.
Take for instance the front row trio of Craig Dowd, Sean Fitzpatrick and Olo Brown. They began playing together for Auckland in the 1980s and in 1993 finally all played together as All Blacks. They stayed together for the next four years, by which time they had amassed 208 Test caps in total.
Add in the 300 or so caps they got for Auckland and you see that they played together for around 60 provincial games and about 50 international Tests. That’s a lot of time to develop teamwork and instinctive knowledge of how to work alongside your fellow pod member.
As for the speed of individual progress – well Jonah Lomu went from schoolboy rugby to a Test cap in two years. It can be done. Oh but that was Jonah and he’s a freak you say?
Fair enough. Then how about Ayumu Goramaru? He went from being an unremarkable player that would never get selected in any top international team, playing in a weak national competition, to being a bona fide Rugby World Cup hero and one of the best goal kickers in the world in less than three years.
Talent can be developed in a remarkably short time if it is snatched up and given a chance to flourish within a well-run team.
You don’t need fabulous talent and ‘marginal gains’ to create a winning team. You need a decent coach, some smart assistants and some madly keen, very fit and fairly talented players that play together a lot.
Still not convinced? How about one final story. Many English scribes assert that New Zealand only win consistently because they have an abundance of talent poached from the Pacific Islands. Talent is the key according to them. Lotsa talent = lotsa wins.
Utter nonsense. I’m not the only one who thinks that – so did my old Battery Guide – SSgt Te Pou. He taught me plenty about leadership and teamwork when we soldiered together. He also used to coach our regimental footy team.
But I digress. One of the Poms used that line of argument on me in 2007 (obviously a long time ago as they stopped saying such things as soon as they started hiring guns from the islands as well). I responded by saying that I wondered what would hypothetically happen if New Zealand fielded a team with no Polynesians in it at all.
He said we’d get thrashed by England. So I baited him by saying that I wondered what would happen if we fielded a team with no pakeha either. He said don’t be so stupid – England would bury them.
So I pondered what would happen if instead of playing England, that such a team with no islanders or pakeha played a much better team than England – maybe one with all the home nations in it. And then he smelled a rat and shut up. So I reminded him what happened when the British and Irish Lions last played the New Zealand Maori in 2005. 19–13 to the Maori.
But what else would happen when the New Zealand Maori team coached by Matt Te Pou took the field? He knew about teams and coaching and playing together and not being a twat and how to stay fit and he took that proud committed Maori team of mostly ‘second best’ talent to a record of 33 wins out of 38 between 1994 and 2005 including a winning streak of 26 games.
The only team to break that streak was the Rugby World Cup champions of the time – Australia in 2001. He beat Fiji four times, Samoa twice, Argentina twice, Scotland twice and England twice. Plus all the minnows in the Pacific.
That’s what a team of ‘second best’ talent that is committed to the cause can do. Oh – and by the way, our old battery rugby team – coached by SSgt Matt Te Pou obviously, also beat the neighbouring hot shot army unit located in our camp – the New Zealand SAS. The man was a fearless giant slayer with complete confidence in his ability to turn silver into gold.
In short – put a keen, fit team together at club level give it a decent coach and turn it into the bulk of your national team.
And therein lies the answer for England. Or indeed any country.
Such as for instance Japan. Or Argentina. Both of whom are already engaged in their equivalents of an Apollo 8 mission. Both of whom have gone from laughing stock to serious contenders for a prize at a Rugby World Cup in less time than it takes to sack Rob Andrew.
Both of whom have now got a single club side, answering to their parent union, stacked with players who want to play running rugby and coached by men with a winning record and some mature leadership and coaching skills.
Either of those two countries can have the glory of being first to do the bleeding obvious – but if England joined the race, they could be on target within four years to be able to lift the Webb Ellis trophy.
Happily though, the grand panjandrums of English rugby don’t read The Roar, so this can remain our little secret and southern hemisphere teams (plus maybe Japan) can devour the England rugby team for a few more tournaments.
Meanwhile, the English can wait for that rising tide and experience the teasing disappointments of incremental improvements and marginal gains and can fortify themselves with a regular bloodletting too.
Lee Hughes is a former soldier, armchair fan of Auckland and New Zealand rugby and current amateur know-it-all. He played hooker once but he most regularly disappointed his team mates on the wing with his leaden running and flat footed sidestep. He also drops catches and once threw the perfect hospital pass.
Andy
Guest
Right so is your point that English players take it too much into contact or they don't like contact? Cannot be both. As somebody who watches rugby at all levels in England, the problem is that we have too much emphasis on gym skills rather than ball skills. At junior level it's all about the big lads rather than skills. And at premiership level, we do seek contact far too often. Think you are missing some great English backs such as Will Greenwood and Jason Robinson. Not much after that though..
Not Bothered
Guest
About every 10th time Eng beat Aus I crack a smile. It seems Im smiling more than you are enjoying English wins over NZ.
watcher
Guest
Some very erudite point of view on this thread. When I think back to great English outside backs the only name I could come up with was David Duckham. Wales had several, JPR Williams, Gerald Davies, John Dawes, John Bevan, then you had others like Ian McGeechan, Andy Irvine and Mike Gibson. For me English tactics is about running into players and not into space. Penalties being the main aim of scoring. That to me was why THAT decision to kick to touch against Wales was totally foreign to the players and they not unexpectedly stuffed it up as it was outside their comfort zones. The RFU has to take control of the game again, that is where the SH countries have it right. The national teams are the flagship, but development has an heavy emphasis as well. Kids from these countries want to play all the time, why, because it is fun. the ball is moved and passing skills developed. It is my belief that Nehe Milner-Skudder would not be selected for England because he would be perceived as being too small. Probably the same with Tim Horan. We know how good those two are, Horan being one of the all time greats. From what I have seen the best English passers are the ball boys. I spoke to a woman recently whose son had toured Britain with Tauranga Boys High School. She said the English boys disliked contact and were always going off (often carried off) and coming back on again. The Tauranga boys were told by their coach to tone down the contact so they could have some sort of game. However when they played Irish teams they faced very good, committed physical players, Apparently the Irish game is going places because they have a good development system for players and coaches. Martin Johnston has been the shining light in the last 20 years as a player and Captain for England. Coveniently forgotten is that he spent a formative time as a young player in NZ playing for King Country and learning from Colin Meads. He also represented NZ, under 20's from memory. Just a quick aside about John Hart, with his business background he was the best person IMO to coach the AB's through the transition into the professional era.
tc
Guest
rod I don't know if the figure is right or not, but when I was staying in the south west of England I was very surprised at how big the club game was, there were rugby posts in most towns where I went through.
Bakkies
Guest
'Or just constantly play more matches against SH teams between now and Japan.' er they already do. Outside Lions years there are three test tours and of course in November there's the AIs. Can't realistically play any more tests than what's already played.
Bakkies
Guest
Latho's original club was Randwick after moving down from Narrabri. Didn't take long for Campo to talk up his talent and he was right in the end.
Bakkies
Guest
They reformed under 6 to under 12 to help boost participation and player skill development a few years back. To me and it's not mentioned enough the elephant in the room is PRL. English Rugby has got a club body that goes and works against other unions, blatantly ignores the salary cap (especially Bath and Sarries), has two club owners having a big say and looks to punish smaller clubs rather than help them which has led to court cases (see London Welsh). Get players from that mess in to one unit such as the national team is really difficult and you couldn't blame players from outside Bath and Saracens if they have resentment towards the influence of those two clubs in the running and ruining of the game. In the past it was Leicester and they had the closest thing mentioned to the aforementioned Auckland model. 'Yes, they talk about the USA being a sleeping giant but right now it is really England.' The sleeping giant is really France. Get a proper coach that picks and develops the right talent and see them prosper. Novés is the closest thing they have and he's got the job with plenty of notice will be interesting to see how they go next year.
Bakkies
Guest
I enjoy it more when England beat the ABs.
Bakkies
Guest
England has a county RFU system where counties play against each other. The RFU's has all the clubs outside of PRL under their remit. There is plenty of development scope and younger players do get loaned out to RFU Championship clubs so they are able to have more of an input there. When Leicester beat the Springboks they fielded players that were loaned from RFU Championship clubs like Coventry, Bedford, Nottingham, etc. The PRL clubs have and are also responsible for Rugby development in their 'local area.' A lot of the players that go in to the England under 20s are from Worcester, Exeter, London Irish and Cornwall development. Most AP clubs play a wide game, Newcastle and Saracens play on 4G pitches, they have a strong 7s team and won the two of the last three JWCs. The tools are there but when it comes to the crunch the players don't play their natural game which is with width, they panic and the captain makes poor decisions.
Doug Blomberg
Guest
Thanks, Homer. I should clarify: Campese was the only "ring-in", moving to Randwick from Queanbeyan. The Ella brothers went to Matraville High, Col Windon was a Coogee boy through and through, and Catchy was from the Eastern Suburbs and went to Scots College. When I knocked on his door (with my mother) in 1963, he was living at Randwick; he lent me his file of newspaper clippings so I could write an article for our an school journal. Mr Musleah said to come back when I had something more original. I've been terrified of plagiarism ever since (important, as I do have write quite a deal in my trade).
Doug Blomberg
Guest
Certainly not just one or two clubs, OB :) North Harbour vs South Harbour were the selection games for Sydney teams, and NSW always had its fair share of "boys from the bush", the Jims, Lenehan and Miller (a relative) come to mind, but the list is long, even though there would often be a migration to Sydney (Hawthorne to play outside Catchpole, for example).
Homer
Guest
Thanks Doug - nice to know things like that. 4 out of 4 legends eh! That's hardly a coincidence then. Cheers Homer
Peximus
Guest
I suppose to much effort was spent learning the hakareena & hence good rugby tactics went out the window?
Phantom
Roar Rookie
Consider if the decision to go for the try against wales had been successful then it would be Gatland who would be squirming at the moment. England had the beating of wales well and truly in hand and then threw it away. IMHO
RobC
Roar Guru
First if all Eng Rugby measures success in terms of grassroots before anything else. Secondly,youre talking about the national team, which is whilst integral to their ethos. Is not as important as the first priority. I think that is excellent way of looking at this. The exact opposite of Aus for example. Finally, as I mentioned the Poms are also working hard on the national team to deliver a 23 man game. And will try a few things to get the balance right. But like SA, they are unsure how to go about doing it so quickly Those who think they are gonna get it right so quickly, need to have a rethink.
cuw
Guest
first of all - the figures re player numbers, club numbers, etc shud be taken with a pinch of salt. just like in english footy, some of these guys are regular job holders, who just play for fun in the weekend. in fact the data that irb show for their member nations are rarely accurate. ( i know its rubbish for my country :) ) secondly, there is an issue with the club and country decisions, just as in france. in england too there are the individual money men who own the clubs, who wield more power than the powers that be. (bruce craig - bath, nigel wray - saracens ) ultimately u will see that the better performing clubs with the better squad depth are those with owners having deep pockets. the simple example is the sam burgess issue. bath paid a hell of a lot of money to bring him, becoz rfu asked them. true they got compensation when they left BUT, bath also had to make rroom in their squad so they sold carl ferns to lyon who had been with them for a couple of seasons and did not ask to be sold. then consider what happened with SB. bath said he is a flank, that is why they sold carl a flank. but england said he is a center. there was no proper coordinated plan to convert him to whatever. no wondrer he was confused!! there have been other issues too many, regarding players' fitness, releasing for training, best position etc between club and country. for example when lancaster took , over he took a while to name his skipper. there was talk of asking robshaw to swap sides beecoz it was common knowledge that he was not on par with the world's other opensides, irrespective of country. however the quins insisted he is a 7 and thus ended the argument. there was also a talk about robshaw shud not captain club as he was country captain and is too much of a burden. this too did not happen, till this year when care took over. am not clear about the ownership structures of sh clubs and franchises and their profit motivations, but the english and french in particular are run as profitable ventures with other considerations secondary or tertiary. also they are operating in different business culture with salary caps and player limitations and development requirements and what not. while some of these are introduced to ensure the growth of the game in the country it also provides restrictions to the operating scope. that is why things like "bloodgate" happen :)
cuw
Guest
saffers do have better ball handling skills compared to england. also not sure about the club structure but i would ssay the super competition is better than the tournaments in europe. simple reasoning is while the europena teams have some of the older players from the sh the super competition has the current and up-coming guys. thus the game is faster than in europe and there is more emphasis on running than forward play. that would also explain why the sh forwards also have very good running and passing skills. do saffers think of rugger more than footy? i was under the impression that the black population are more into footy and the white population into rugger and cricket. saffers may also be fitter given they have the chance play at higher altitudes, which increases the blood hemoglobin that carries oxygen to where it is needed. however, what shud be the comparison point is weight to power ratio. this is something that was defined for vehicles but can be applied to humans as well. a simmilar concept is the "pound for pound best" in boxing and ufc and the like. basically it is the power of a person compared to his weight. imo the saffers have more power if two guys of equal weight are compared.
Garth
Guest
There used to be. The Original All Blacks played against a few regional teams.
Dean
Guest
Part of the problem is that the teams England play against have the same problems as they do. When it comes to 6 nations time they're just about top of the pile and it constantly makes them think they're better than they are. Meanwhile the SH teams are constantly improving, driven by the All Blacks. Australia and RSA measure themselves against the All-Blacks and strive to beat a team which is basically playing the local religion/sport. England don't only need to improve themselves, they need some of their 6 nations rivals to improve as well. Or just constantly play more matches against SH teams between now and Japan.
Billy G
Guest
There is a small problem with the elite rugby club concept. They would ultimately be boycotted by the other clubs as they would end up head and shoulders above them in talent and ability, winning everything, thereby removing all competition. Also, club/provincial rugby is 'tribal' and fans are fundamental to the success of rugby teams as witnessed with Australia's NRC, so who changes colours to support the team? Structure, playing season, coaching staff and management are the key. Long long way to go!