Is rugby really better in the professional era?

Back in the seventies I used to take the steelworkers bus to school in Wales. I was the only kid on it, but they would always welcome me – and if it was full, someone always made sure I had a seat.

During the trip they would tell me the stories of their latest rugby adventures in Dublin or Edinburgh – or, if they were lucky, Paris. Wales versus Ireland, Wales versus Scotland, Wales versus France.

There was emotion shining in their eyes after those long weekends, enough emotion to shrug off the long shifts of unbearable heat and toil at the steelworks.

Some of the Welsh players, like Bobby Windsor, were steelworkers or miners too, and they would go back to their day jobs and become just ‘one of the boys’ again – at least until next Saturday, when they resumed the mantle of sporting idol, living out the unrealised dreams of the fans.

Those were some of the greatest days of rugby union. In 1975 104,000 people crammed into Murrayfield to watch Wales play Scotland – 20,000 more than the official ground capacity.

There was no such thing as an ‘all-seater’ stadium back then; you stood shoulder-to-shoulder on the terraces hoping to catch your next breath in the press or, if you were really lucky, a glimpse of the action.

There were no toilet breaks, because you could not move. Relief was provided by empty beer bottles, and everyone had their own ‘first aid kit’ in that respect.

It was the same on the club scene. Hours before the match began thousands from the neighbouring village would march down the high street in an impenetrable phalanx, and the local shop owners would rub their hands, anticipating a roaring trade with their ‘special offers’ for the visiting supporters.

Supporters would attend club practices in their hundreds too. Those practices were so important that even a Pontypool, Wales and British and Irish prop like Staff Jones would walk eleven miles after his shift at the colliery finished – just to stagger up a steep local hillside called ‘the Grotto’ to the point of exhaustion, swap punches and boots with aspiring wannabes in the scrum and endure a shower of public humiliations from his coach, the legendary Ray Prosser. ‘Pross’ would call Staff ‘fat-ass’ and demote him to the second XV if he made a mistake.

The sharp sting of nostalgia for that era makes itself felt every time someone who belonged to the golden period of rugby passes on. Last week it was the great Wallaby Ken Catchpole, one of the two best scrum-halves of his time along with Gareth Edwards.

The difficulty of comparing eras is notorious, especially in respect of a sport which has endured the transition from an amateur to a professional game. But if both Edwards and Catchpole were reincarnated at their athletic peak today, there is no question in my mind that both would be representing their country once more.

On the playing and coaching front, the beauty of the seventies lay in the jewel of a rare balance between the hemispheres and the rapid pace of innovation in the game which derived from that. The British and Irish Lions had just won successive series victories against the two Southern Hemisphere superpowers, in New Zealand in 1971 and South Africa in 1974.

While the All Blacks had temporarily lost track of the coaching thread trailed by Fred Allen in the sixties, the British sides had picked it up through the advanced coaching of Carwyn James and men like rugby’s first true ‘performance director’, Ray Williams in Wales.

It didn’t last very long of course, and the Blacks and the Boks were soon back on top. But for three or four halcyon years the rugby world was in balance on and off the field in its own sweet, politically incorrect way – complete with its flying boots and fists, its seething overpopulated crowds and pitch invasions, its political naiveté and above all its wildly optimistic community spirit. Rugby was perfect in its imperfection for a short time.

As it’s a new year, let’s choose to suspend time for one week at least and compare those eras side by side by examining how a set-piece play worked back then and now.

One of the great games in the early seventies was the Scotland-Wales encounter at Murrayfield in 1971, a few short months before the Lions undertook their historic tour of New Zealand.

Wales were setting the template for that future victory with the quality of their back-line play, based on overlaps generated by introducing their outstanding full-back JPR Williams into the attacking line.

(Tries at 0:01 to 0:20 and 10:15 to 10:36 on the reel)

The differences begin with the extreme compression of the ‘amateur’ lineout, which is squeezed into approximately half the space occupied by the professional version; with the wingers throwing the ball into it (Wales’ Gerald Davies at 0:05, Scotland’s Billy Steele at 10:20 on the reel), so that they cannot be involved in the backs move. Even Wales’ blindside winger (John Bevan) is standing in the five-metre corridor to no particular purpose on the Scottish throw on that final try.

Wales create overlaps and make scores on both occasions against a simple ‘man-on’ defence. John Williams simply surges into the line and Wales achieve the two-on-one situation they are seeking. The only difference is that the Scotland open-side wing stays out with his man in the first instance (allowing Williams to go through the gap inside him), but marks JPR in the second (giving up the overlap outside).

The inadequacy of the front line defence against overlap plays is matched by the paucity of the second tier, or cover defence. In the first example there are only two cover defenders attempting to make tackles – the Scotland number six on JPR and the number nine on John Taylor after he receives the pass inside from Williams. In the second example there is only one – the Scotland full-back, who has covered across from a starting position in midfield.

There is of course ample scope for development on both sides in this snapshot from 1971. The forwards, with their ‘amateur’ level of physical conditioning and compressed into that claustrophobic zone near the five-metre corridor, could improve their contribution in second-tier defence; the front line could (and would) use a drift or one-out pattern to cover the full-back entering the line and the blind-side wings on both sides could enjoy a much bigger role on offence and defence rather than just throwing the ball into the lineout, or watching it happen.

Now let’s move on to 1988, and a Six Nations match between the same two opponents.

(Try at 32:55 to 33:20 on the reel)

The attacking situation is similar to the example from 1971, a set-piece (this time a scrum) out near the left-hand touchline. But in this instance the involvement of the two blind-side wings is far more proactive.

Even though Scotland are using a ‘one-out’ defence with their number ten drifting out on to the Welsh number 12, Wales now have not one but two extra attackers in the line – their red-headed number 15 Paul Thorburn on a decoy run between the two Wales centres and their blind-side wing – number 11, Adrian Hadley – making the critical intervention on the end of the third pass.

Although Wales number 13 Mark Ring gets a second touch in the movement, the defence is far superior to 1971 in numbers and organisation when Wales right wing Ieuan Evans receives the ball. Scotland full-back Gavin Hastings is blocking the path to the corner, but Evans also has to beat the covering blind-side wing (number 14), the Scotland number eight and number nine and finally a tight forward, number one, David Sole, for good measure.

As Bill McLaren said memorably in his TV commentary, “Merlin the magician could not have done it any better”.

Moving on to 2017 and the professional era, let’s see what happened when the British and Irish Lions essayed an overlap play against the All Blacks in the second test of the June series between the two teams.

(Try at 1:17 to 1:52 on the reel)

Both sides are missing a player at this left-side lineout, with Mako Vunipola and Sonny Bill Williams off the field on cards.

The detail in the lineout set-up gives an immediate indication of how much things have moved on since 1971.

The lineout now fills the entire width of the 15-metre zone, with two defenders, number two Codie Taylor and number nine Aaron Smith, ready to become part of the second tier defence when necessary.

The Lions too are playing with a full hand, with the blind-side wing (number 11 Elliott Daly) a key part of the attack and first receiver Johnny Sexton looking to get a second touch on the ball.

Even when the overlap for the Lions right wing Anthony Watson is (somewhat fortuitously) created, there are five All Blacks defenders close to the ball in cover – Taylor and Smith have shifted over from the site of the original lineout along with number seven Sam Cane, and full-back Beauden Barrett and blind-side wing Israel Dagg are already there.

When Watson goes to ground in the tackle of Barrett and Dagg the situation is in fact better for the defence than it is for the attack, and the All Blacks are suddenly presented with probably their best opportunity to disrupt the movement. The Lions’ scrum-half Connor Murray is forced to take out Dagg at the tackle and there are three Kiwis on their feet (Barrett, Cane and Taylor) facing one solitary Lion (Sean O’Brien).

With no scrum-half available to clear the ball quickly, this is a prime opportunity to blast the cleaner off the ball with a determined counter-ruck and win turnover. The All Blacks would have been disappointed to miss out on it – what a far cry from 1971 and even 1988.

The denouement to the sequence demonstrates how quickly the modern professional ‘reloads’ back into the game in a way that would have been inconceivable back in the 1970s and 1980s.

Israel Dagg not only assisted in the tackle on Watson initially after running the breadth of the field to get to the far edge, he stood up to contest the tackle ball with Connor Murray and create the counter-ruck opportunity.

When the ball is transferred back out to near sideline, it is none other than Dagg who has run all the way back across field to be the tackler on Taulupe Faletau. If he had been able to complete it, it would have been a truly outstanding example of the work-rate demanded by professional rugby at the elite level of the game.

Summary
The changes from the amateur game to the professional version we now enjoy are stupendous, and it is not an exaggeration to say that the games have little in common, given the advances in organisation, fitness and conditioning that have been made over the last 50 years.

But the improvements somehow cannot completely erase a nostalgic yearning for the game we used to know and love, which has now been usurped by a recast model saturated with the requirements of broadcasters and marketing men.

Would Gareth Edwards and Ken Catchpole thrive in the modern game? Of course they would.

But would they enjoy it as much as the era in which they practised their incomparable art at the base of scrum and ruck? That is much less certain.

It was the pioneering spirit of the 1970s – its many coaching and playing imperfections and innovations, its off-field political naiveties and its on-field brutalities and beauties in equal measure – which made it such a compelling era in which to both play and support rugby.

The game was closer to the germ of its beginnings than it is now, closer to the raw rock from which the sculptor starts. Above all, it did not apologise for itself or its origins.

Is there a way back to that sense of the beginning now that the apologists and sanitisers hold sway? Or has rugby travelled too far towards the distant horizon to ever rediscover its roots? Were they still with us, both Bill McLaren and Ken Catchpole would have had something to say about that.