Peter Bills: Review of the rugby year

Talking Rugby

(GETTY IMAGES)

In New Zealand this year, they had an earthquake. Or rather, two. One was caused by nature, the other by the All Blacks.

The latter occurred on Saturday July 10 in the match between New Zealand and South Africa which opened the 2010 Tri-Nations competition, at the newly upgraded Eden Park stadium in Auckland. It was by a distance the most compelling, complete rugby performance of the year and it raised the bar to intimidating heights for most other rugby playing nations of the world.

Seizing upon the opportunities afforded by the new law interpretations to open up the game and find greater width all the while keeping ball in hand, New Zealand began the tournament with a comprehensive 32-12 victory over the Springboks.

It was a superb performance; dynamic, driven, powerful, highly penetrative and excellent in precision and accuracy. Suddenly, invention and innovation allied to individual decision making were back in vogue. The All Blacks repeated the feat one week later in Wellington, also against the South Africans, winning 31-17 and scoring an astonishing eight tries over the two games. But Auckland was the performance of the year.

It proved a nightmare Tri-Nations for the South Africans with five defeats in six matches. Yet, notwithstanding widespread dis-satisfaction with their coaching staff and suspicions that their best players had been allowed to play far too much this year, the Springboks reminded us in November that the day of the dinosaur may not yet be entirely over.

Badly needing victory after an upset defeat in Scotland, the South Africans reverted to type against England. Their big, powerful forwards bullied and belted the English up front to dictate the course of the Test match. South Africa won 21-11, yet the score line did an injustice to their supremacy.

So emphatic a victory has, surely, only intensified their coach’s insistence on playing a narrow, conservative game at the World Cup, based on forward power and the relentless goal kicking of Morne Steyn at outside half.

Will it be enough to win a World Cup? We shall know late next October, probably on the day when New Zealand and South Africa are scheduled to meet in the World Cup semi-final.

It was a rugby year when the gap between north and southern hemispheres discernibly grew. Australia, albeit still without the rock solid platform up front only a strong, technically correct front row can bring, followed the All Blacks down the path of pace, innovation and attack, keeping ball in hand. For much of the year, it made them the most exciting team in the world to watch.

Some of their Tri-Nations performances were outstanding, especially the 41-39 win (five tries to three) over the Springboks in Bloemfontein. It was perhaps the most thrilling game of the year. And their 16-59 victory over the French in Paris in November was a stuffing in the foie gras class.

The Wallabies bring clever running angles, the element of surprise and the unexpected plus inherent ball skills and searing pace to their game. The new law interpretations have benefitted them more than anyone, yet the obvious weaknesses up front remain a worry for their coach, Robbie Deans.

In both New Zealand and Australia in the calendar year of 2010, you sensed that rugby union was moving on. Maybe not financially; I’ll come to that. But in a playing sense, those two countries were going forward in most senses. Alas, it was a very different story in the northern hemisphere.

France won a Grand Slam by playing like an England team of old. In the Grand Slam decider in Paris, if you had swopped their blue shirts for the white of the English, you would have assumed that the likes of Thierry Dusautoir, Lionel Nallet, Morgan Parra, Francois Trinh-Duc and Yannick Jauzion were English players, such was their adherence to a rigid forward orientated game allied to goal kicking.

England, by complete and glorious contrast given the ordinary season they had just endured, played with a flow, rhythm and abandon that was French rugby at its finest. France prevailed, just, yet in terms of hope for the future and embracing truly the possibilities of the ‘new’ game, England left with far greater hope than their hosts.

That hope seemed enhanced when England played so well in November to beat Australia. But alas, the Springboks’ power pack brought them down to earth soon after.

Ireland’s season was destined to be a letdown after the extraordinary peaks of 2009. There was a heavy defeat in Paris and a surprise loss at home on the final day of the season to Scotland. And after all that and their exertions in the Heineken Cup, the last thing Declan Kidney’s men needed was a tour to New Zealand. The 66-28 defeat in faraway New Plymouth thus came not as a great surprise.

The November results were ordinary but a greater concern lurked in most minds. Why was it that players under a New Zealand coach (in the case of Leinster) could show themselves perfectly capable of embracing the opportunities of the ‘new’ game in the Heineken Cup, yet get few opportunities to do so for the national team?

The Irish management seemed uneasy about committing fully to the new style, preferring caution and conservatism. Neither offers quite the rich possibilities of the new interpretations of the laws. Thus, Ireland looked stuck in the middle; not sure about daring to go forward and falling back on old, trusted but tired methods. A fresh approach is surely needed for 2011.

Scotland, buoyed by their victory in Ireland in March, won the June Test series 2-0 in Argentina and allowed false hope to overtake realities ahead of the November Tests. Predictably, their 49-3 slaughter by New Zealand at Murrayfield last month returned the Scots to the real world, even though they did rebound marvellously with victory over South Africa on a dreadful day in Edinburgh.

But no-one north of the border should fool themselves. Scotland, like Wales, are no great shakes. Wales took the surprising decision to ‘reward’ coach Warren Gatland for two years of comparative failure in the 6 Nations with a new long term contract.

A series of abject autumn results followed; three defeats and a draw against Fiji, just wasn’t good enough. The Welsh have talked a good game for a long time now without delivering. They need to start, and quickly, with World Cup year nigh. Fact is, their levels of focus and intent are not high enough and their ball skills inferior to southern hemisphere rivals.

Samoa looked one of the few representatives of the so-called ‘next tier’ of countries still able to provide a decent test for the leading nations. They gave both Ireland and England a good run for their money and look best suited to have some effect at the World Cup.

Sadly, it is hard to make such a case for almost any other nation – proof surely, that under professionalism, the gap between the traditional powers and the aspirants is widening, not diminishing.

This is likely to be confirmed at the World Cup in September when pocket calculators will probably be much in use to record a string of cricket scores in several of the pool matches. This disparity does the game no good in general, and is of great concern.

But another worry that was apparent worldwide in 2010 was the sport’s continuing struggle to make ends meet. Countries like New Zealand and Australia struggled to sell out their Test grounds; empty seats were seen in Ireland at the new Lansdowne Road ground, too, thanks to the rapacious demands made over ticket prices by the out-of-touch IRFU.

Australia has blown $23 million of its reserves trying to balance the books in the last six years alone. New Zealand have admitted they will make a loss of more than NZ$30 million over the World Cup and many experts predict that figure will rise to NZ$50 million.

A handful of clubs continue to offer vast riches to a select group of leading players. The New Zealander Carl Hayman was persuaded to turn his back on an opportunity to return home and help win a World Cup with the All Blacks in exchange for an annual salary of 625,000 euros (£530,000) at French club Toulon.

Wealthy Paris-based club Racing Metro are said to have comfortably topped that, paying iconic forward Sebastien Chabal close to 1 million euros a year (£845,000) and young South African Frans Steyn around 750,000 euros (£635,000).

As the continuing spats between clubs and country continued to simmer, one wondered how much longer it would be before more players turned their backs on their countries in favour of huge salary cheques. And yet, despite the riches at a few individual clubs especially in France, the overall financial health of the game was not discernibly better.

Another major concern that intensified in 2010 was the ludicrous amount of top level rugby being played. With the great television paymaster demanding ever more games to screen, the schedule became as bloated as a turkey at Christmas.

South Africa played 13 Tests in the year, Wales 12.

Clearly, no-one in rugby has ever heard of the time-honoured phrase ‘Sometimes, less is more’.

It will mean players’ careers will be shortened and hence, the likelihood that they will chase the golden dollar sooner rather than later. The IRB, the game’s governing body, seem impotent when confronted by this challenge. But somehow, somewhere, someone is going to have to do something to break the ruinous cycle.

2010, the excellence of the New Zealanders and entertainment factor of the Australians apart, was a sort of holding year. But 2011 has to be full-on. It is World Cup year.