Entertaining the crowds is not the only thing
Paul Rees says that, while attracting a new audience is important, the game must not ignore its core support
Scott Robertson made his name with the Crusaders as a coach who expected his players to be bold and never come off the field wondering.
He was straight on the attack after his first match in charge of New Zealand against England last weekend, saying rugby needed speeding up.
He did not directly accuse England of trying to slow down the first Test, but there was no ambivalence in his words. “Our game wants to be sped up, doesn’t it,” he said. “That is why we are in the entertainment game. We want to keep moving and need to have a look at timing, ball in play and getting to the next lineout or whatever it is.”
He conceded that a balance had to be struck with safety given that the majority of head injuries occur in or after a tackle, but in a month when law changes are being trialled in the Under-20 World Cup with an implicit emphasis on pushing the set-pieces to the margins, what is seen to matter is use of possession rather than the contest for it.
It is not how New Zealand have always seen the game. When the late Mervyn Davies reflected on the tours to the country by Wales in 1969 and the Lions in 1971, he felt that the game there was slow to change. He thought Wales could teach the All Blacks something about open rugby, which they might have had they seen anything of the ball in the two-Test series.
The Lions forwards matched New Zealand’s in the tight and the loose, exposing the greater attacking intent and ability of the tourists. Davies, the No.8 in both Test series, referred in his autobiography to the blindness to change that infected the whole of New Zealand rugby and made their tactics predictable, if formidably difficult to counter.
Carwyn James coached the Lions in 1971, and later enjoyed success over New Zealand with Llanelli and the Barbarians on the All Blacks’ 1972-73 European tour. “From the age of six,” he said, “the All Blacks played the same pattern, rigid and predictable. They love the perspiration, but are not all that impressed by the inspiration. They never really understood Barry John. He was a being from another planet.”
It is very different now. Some of the rugby on that tour, not least the provincial game against Canterbury when the home side were, in Davies’s words, bent on thuggery and mayhem, kicking, trampling and punching, did not have entertainment in mind. It was the end of the trip for two props, Ray McLoughlin and Sandy Carmichael, but antics like that have been banished from the game with cameras all over a pitch and a tooled up disciplinary system.
“Rugby Union is in danger of losing its bearings as it looks to recover from the pandemic”
New Zealand very quickly adapted and became the champions of open rugby, while still retaining an edge at forward. Speed is the essence of their game, which is why Robertson wants a clampdown on time-wasting tactics, but why should the rules of a sport be tweaked to suit one version of it? The word entertainment in rugby has become like progressive in politics: to question it is to be labelled a fossil, although it can be argued that progress can sometimes be found in the past. It does not necessarily follow that the more a ball is in play, the more entertaining a game will be.
The New Zealand and England defences largely cancelled each other out in the second half last weekend. There was no lack of ambition, just no way through. The All Blacks’ response was to put boot to ball and play for territory, not particularly entertaining but the way to win the game.
Winning is what it remains all about, and there are more ways than one to achieve it. England have this year played with more licence than they did in Steve Borthwick’s first year in charge when, taking over in the middle of the season nine months before the start of the World Cup, there was no time to lay a foundation.
It was back to basics. England did not meet New Zealand in the tournament, but had they done so their approach would have been markedly different from this series. There was no way they would have come out on top in a running game against the All Blacks, which is where the drive for entertainment develops a puncture.
Imagine a football team trying to go toe-to-toe with Barcelona at the height of their tiki-taka period, or a Premier League side now taking on Manchester City at their own game. You play to your strengths and it was not that long ago when jerseys were not needed to distinguish teams.
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The sides in the Five Nations were all distinct tactically, from the marauding of Scotland and the two-tone approach of Wales to the frenzy of Ireland and ugly beauty of France. As for England’s, a selection panel that was not headed by Corporal Jones would have helped, but they were generally organised if not stuffed full of daring.
South Africa were built around an invariably big pack, not much has changed there, New Zealand looked to develop phase play and Australia learned to live off their wits, but with the All Blacks and Wallabies signed up to the entertainment package, the Springboks and their assembly of forwards on the bench have become outliers in international rugby.
There was outrage in South Africa when the law trials were announced with many seeing it as an attempt to ensure the Springboks did not win a third consecutive World Cup by a further attack on the scrum and permitting crooked lineouts if the opposition did not contest for possession.
There was a moment in the U20 World Cup when France made a mockery of the rule that permits a mark to be made by a player in their 22 from a restart. The intention is for teams to take shorter restarts and try to win the ball rather than go long and hope to profit from the resulting box-kick.
France turned the mark into a maul, after the opposition eventually twigged what they were up to having expected a kick downfield, and the scrum-half duly sent the ball skyward, finding touch rather than a catcher.
It is what comes from meddling, but so desperate is the game to attract and hold a new audience that the pillars that have held it together for so long have come under assault. A game that used to be for all shapes and sizes is in danger of becoming homogenous and appealing to those with a short attention span, moments rather than matches.
New Zealand and Australia are courting entertainment for commercial reasons with the game not at the height of its appeal in either country. The combined gates of their respective international against England and Wales last weekend amounted to fewer spectators than England, Wales and Scotland generated for all their home Six Nations encounters this year.
If you can see where they are coming from, it does not follow that the game should use the rules to get teams to play in a certain way. Is the aim to become like rugby league, albeit with four more players on the field? but that is a sport which does not have clear-outs after a tackle.
The more the ball is in play, the greater the number of tackles and breakdowns, the part of the game where most concussions occur. And, anyway, how do you define entertainment? American football is not struggling for an audience, but it can hardly be said to be free-flowing.
Sport should be about difference and contrast, no right or wrong way of playing but whatever it takes to win and playing to your strengths, not the opposition’s.
Rugby Union is in danger of losing its bearings and drifting as it looks to recover from the ravages of the pandemic. Attracting a new audience is one thing, but another is losing core support, those who are steeped in the game and all its traditions.
Was there a need for the current law trials? What was the aim? Even more attempts to find gaps in a defensive line that fans across the field? The best ball to attack from comes from lineouts and scrums where backs have to stand 10 and five metres back respectively.
They should be proper contests for possession, as more breakdowns would become if players were deterred from going off their feet. But ball in play time would be reduced and that has become the holy grail.
Sometimes less is more. The game needs to take a breath. New Zealand should be free to play their own game, South Africa theirs and so on. Vive la difference.
