Kiwis make our game look utterly pedestrian
GUEST COLUMNIST
The Sale coach and former hooker Steve Diamond, honorary life member of the Front Row Union, thinks modern-day scrums are boring. He's not wrong. But why single out the set-piece for condemnation? Judging by last weekend's Premiership relaunch, the English game as a whole is about as compelling as a Theresa May conference speech shorn of the coughing fits, the stage invasions and the collapsible backdrops.
The best talent in New Zealand, playing in what may have been the best domestic tournament ever staged, succeeded in sharpening our senses. By comparison, the English version is rugby on decaf: a lower-grade brand with all the stimulants removed.
A sweeping generalisation wholly devoid of fairness? The rugby writer's equivalent of an Ofqual algorithm? Maybe, especially as Wasps were so eye-catching in beating a much-fancied Northampton side at Franklin's Gardens.
But we also had to suffer Quins-Sale and Bristol-Saracens, contests that couldn't have had less speed and movement about them if they'd been played on surfaces of wet cement, topped off with a protective layer of Pritt Stick.
Yes, there was plenty of dodgy weather around. But it rains in All Black land too. A lot.
And anyway, the August downpour did nothing to limit the ambition of Wasps, who produced a style of rugby – hard at the breakdown, aggressive in the tackle, rich in attacking imagination – that might almost have passed muster in Christchurch or Wellington.
Across the ultra-competitive Super Rugby Aotearoa competition, there was not a single match as one-sided as Worcester-Gloucester or Bath-London Irish. Even TJ Perenara, the inexhaustible Hurricanes scrum-half and energiser-in-chief, sounded weary when he confessed: “I don't think this is sustainable. It's like Test match footy every time and while I enjoy the competition, I'd like to see more teams added or a different schedule. Playing New Zealand sides back to back with only two byes…I think there will be some adjustments going forward.” Yet despite being so bitterly contested, Super Rugby Aotearoa produced almost six tries a match. On its return, the Premiership was a try and a half off the pace, despite Bath and Gloucester having the run of the field at the Rec and Sixways respectively.
This columnist does not, and never will, believe that the value of a game can be measured in tries: indeed, there is something queasy about watching supposedly expert practitioners of fullcontact rugby waving each other through for five-pointers with barely a care in the world. Tries should be as hard to come by as goals in football.
Otherwise, we have basketball.
Remember the England-France game at Twickenham on Six Nations “Super Saturday” in 2015, which finished 55-35, and seven tries to five, in the home side's favour? It was harder NOT to score, yet all manner of guff was said and written in the aftermath, much of it by people who should have known better than to reach for the nearest adjective – spectacular, stellar, electrifying, exhilarating – and conclude that England had, in the space of a single afternoon, extended the boundaries of attacking rugby just in time for their own World Cup. To those with eyes to see, it looked like a red herring the size of Moby Dick. And so it proved.
Yet the New Zealanders have a habit of delivering big numbers on the touchdown front even when opponents – other Kiwis in the case of Super Rugby Aotearoa – are deadly serious about stopping them. And don't England know it. The two countries have played 42 full internationals over the last 115 years. How many times have England won the try count? That would be five.
“Super Rugby Aotearoa produced almost six tries a match. On its return, the Premiership was a try and a half off the pace”
On two of those occasions – Prince Obolensky's match in 1936 and the world-turned-upside-down victory in Auckland in 1973 – England won the game into the bargain. In addition, they scored three tries to the All Blacks' two in the 26-all draw at Twickenham in 1997; put two past them without reply in Christchurch in 1985, only to finish second to Kieran Crowley's boot; and claimed two of the three tries in losing by a point a couple of years ago.
They have also managed to split the difference a handful of times, but therein lays a tale.
When Stuart Lancaster's team, with Manu Tuilagi in full metal jacket, spanked Steve Hansen's tourists 38-21 in 2012, few could remember a more convincing Red Rose victory over the silver-ferned brigade. Yet despite their many inadequacies and humiliations that day, the New Zealanders still matched their superiors try for hardwon try.
It was a similar story in the 2019 World Cup semi-final in Yokohama, when Eddie Jones' men played the All Blacks clean off the island of Honshu yet touched down only once. Which was precisely as often as their opponents.
New Zealand sides score more tries than everyone else, partly because they tend to be more highly skilled in more positions but mostly because they make it their business to ask fresh questions of themselves in the cause of continual reinvention. You don't become a master by ceasing to be a student.
