James Lawton: The decoy run is now a staple of Super 12 and the message to England is surely the basic one: if you can't beat them you are obliged to join them

Internal links

Rugby's answer to Tiger Woods

After one of the most satisfying rugby matches ever played at Twickenham, it would surely be no surprise to learn that some belligerent, leather-helmeted ghosts have been heard clumping around Harvard Green this last week.

The source of their irritation? The England coach, Clive Woodward, bitterly complaining about New Zealand's shameless employment of the "decoy run". Nor, it's reasonable to guess, would Coach Woodruff of Pennsylvania have been too thrilled.

The lament would have been for the emasculation of the games we play.

Harvard, as students of the evolution of what is known as football in all its forms on all sides of the Atlantic and beyond will know readily enough, came up with the "Flying Wedge" 110 years ago. Two years later Coach Woodruff, whose concern for the well-being of his troops seems to have been pretty much on a par with that of the First World War generals, produced the tactical variant known as Flying Interference. Besides these scorched earth policies, last Saturday's decoy run is, frankly, no more than a hint of aggressive, and superbly entertaining, innovation, something which with all necessary respect to Woodward's elongated dream of winning the World Cup, to be welcomed rather than outlawed.

An historian of the gridiron, writing in the middle of last century, reported, soberly: "Today we start the game with a kick off but in those days [of Flying Wedges and Interferences] it was a fake kick, the centre merely touching the ball to his toe and then tossing it back to a team-mate who ran with it while the rest of the team gave him what interference they could.

"In the flying wedge, however, nine of the players of the team withdrew about 20 yards from midfield and, at a signal, these nine, in two lanes, started simultaneously and at full speed, converging on a point indicated by the ball. By the time they arrived they had worked up a stupendous mass momentum, and the interference they gave for the runner was something wonderful to behold – and terrible to stop."

Unfortunately, quite a number of players were killed in the service of this thrilling spectacle. So many over the years, in fact, that the game would have been shut down or, driven underground, but for the intervention of President Theodore Roosevelt. The historian goes on: "Coach Woodruff drafted the principle of the Flying Wedge for his famous Flying Interference. This consisted of starting the "end' and the "tackle" ahead of the snapping of the ball. They swung back together between their line and the backfield, and then kept on to reinforce the work of their companion tackle and end on the other side of the ball. Just before they hit the defensive line the ball went into play, and the results were almost as disastrous to the defence as was the flying wedge. These two plays were quite as spectacular and thrilling as any that the modern game has produced."

Sadly for some, though, as all wars do, this one had to end – though 20-odd years later it was still possible for Marshall Foch, fresh from the killing fields of Picardy, to exult after seeing an Army-Navy game in Philadelphia: "Mon Dieu, this game has everything – it is just like war."

Rugby union, as played at headquarters last weekend, also offers some compelling spectacle, but the point should not be missed that most of it was supplied by the superb running of the All Black three-quarter line. Woodward has warned the New Zealand referee for today's game with the world champions, Australia, about the differing approach of the northern and southern hemispheres to the practice of the decoy runner. In the south it has been happily integrated for some time. In the north it is taboo. We know that in an agonising decade or so English rugby union has moved from rank amateurism to a seriously professional approach, but sometimes the resulting stress does show.

What England, who are still to begin to look like World Cup winners, should perhaps reflect upon is that every recent innovation that makes the game a viable contender on the big stage of public entertainment has originated in the south. There, superlative spectacle has gone hand in hand with world-beating standards, and the decoy run is now a staple of the Super-12 competition.

The message is surely the basic one that says if you can't beat them you are obliged to join them.

The former England forward and coach Roger Uttley is certainly of that mind. "Clive is obviously looking for an edge going into the Australia game, but I really think it is time for England to settle on their priorities and get on with the game. We've come a very long way in a short time, and we've certainly got a lot better in our back play. But we also have to accept that we have certain strengths and we shouldn't be ashamed of playing to them.

"We have great forwards, and that power is also going to be a key part of our game. I still look back in horror at the 1991 World Cup final, when we suddenly changed and tried to compete with the Australian game in the final. That was a terrible mistake. I think Clive is nearly there now, having survived his statement that he should be judged on his results in the last World Cup. The judgement now has to be on what improvement we show over the next two games. We just to have match everything the southern hemisphere come up with – legally."

Coach Woodruff would no doubt have agreed with most of that except perhaps the need for legality. It is, after all, a matter of record that several law students fell fatal victims of the Flying Wedge.