Jeff Probyn column: Crucial to reintroduce level between club and country
All the teams gave it their best shot but they seemed to lack the intensity and skills of their Southern Hemisphere rivals, which begs some awkward questions, not least; are we preparing our players correctly for World Cups?
With the Southern Hemisphere winning all but one of the last seven World Cups and now a certainty to win this one, there must be a difference in how they approach the game, either in the standard of the competition or player preparation.
It is unlikely to be a matter of coaching differences as Ireland, Scotland and Wales have Southern Hemisphere coaches who have worked at home and abroad.
While word is that New Zealand have reduced the amount of gym work undertaken by the players in an effort to improve their flexibility, all players are now professional and follow very similar training regimes. The only real differences can be in the standard and length of competitions the players take part in.
In the North, our game is mainly played around a club-based structure with those countries without a large player base (Wales, Ireland and Scotland) opting for a similar structure as the South with regionally based teams but without enough teams to offer real competition.
Super Rugby, the equivalent of our club game in the Southern Hemisphere, will, from 2016 see 18 regional teams from South Africa (6), Australia (5), New Zealand (5), Argentina (1) and Japan (1) compete in conferences. The final series is played between the winners of each conference, plus a team from the SA group and three teams from the Australasian group.
Although there may be a variation in the number of games played, I don’t believe that the difference is significant enough to impact on player fatigue, which only leaves the standard of competition as the major difference.
The two elite competitions, the Six Nations and the Rugby Championship, are played in a vacuum that pits the players against those that are selected in the same way. In other words, either from the clubs in the North or regions/provinces in the South.
The three tier selection process in the Southern Hemisphere reduces the chances of selecting players not ‘up to standard’ and gives selectors the chance to see players playing outside of their comfort zone of club rugby. Meanwhile, here in the North we have a system, particularly in England and France, that selects straight from the clubs, clubs that buy in talent from the South to strengthen their teams at the expense of developing homegrown talent.
Playing with foreign players can help develop young players, as long as there is a balance, as the older players’ experience takes pressure off younger players and allows them to make mistakes as they learn the game. As a result, if you select players based purely on their performance at club level, you have little or no idea of how they perform outside their club environment until you have put them on the field.
One thing that last week’s results did was to put England’s and Stuart Lancaster’s performance into context with the other Northern Hemisphere coaches and teams, as they all failed to beat Rugby Championship opponents.
Warren Gatland‘s Wales lost for the 11th time in a row against Australia, and, again, when it mattered. This failure must be addressed by all the Six Nations unions if there is to be a rise in playing standards in this part of the world.
In England and France there must be a move away from allowing clubs to dominate the playing agenda and re-establish a level of game that sits between club and country, where only players qualified to play for each country compete.
If such a system were to be put in place the row over whether or not to pick a player like Steffon Armitage could have been avoided and would never happen again, as it wouldn’t matter which club a player played for.
Under such a system, international selection would be based solely on how a player performed in the regional competition. Any player choosing to play abroad would be expected to have written into his contact a release clause for the regional competition with those games taking place instead of the current two European Cups. It would be a cross-border competition that would help develop the game across the continent.
If Tier Two nations such as Georgia, Romania, USA, Canada and Russia were allowed to compete and put their national teams in what would be a two-league competition, with promotion and relegation, it could help them improve playing standards, as they would have regular fixtures against quality opposition.
Argentina’s results have shown this can make a substantial difference in a relatively short period of time – and the same could happen for Japan after next season’s Super Rugby inclusion.
As teams improve they could become part of a two-league international competition, replacing the Six Nations with a promotion and relegation twin league forcing the established nations to keep improving or face relegation.
Of course, the clubs would not see this as a positive move, particularly as they have just increased their collective influence with the European Cup and also their belief that there should not be any level of rugby between themselves and the international game. But it’s becoming increasingly like similar to soccer – and that’s no recommendation, is it?
