Time for rugby's best to stop short-changing us

At the end of a week of hope, a week when one man reminded us once again that the pursuit of individual belief can bear fruit whatever the apparent odds, it is rugby football’s opportunity now to rise Obama-like from the malady in which it has stagnated for too long.

The start this weekend of the autumn internationals in the northern hemisphere signals a chance for this game to throw aside the cloak of self-interest and blinkered ambitions in which it has wrapped itself for too long.

Every major, rugby playing nation of the world from South Africa, New Zealand and Australia, to Wales, France, Ireland, England, Argentina and Scotland will be involved in Test matches between now and the end of the month. It is essential that the sport’s international audience is infused with the kind of optimism and hope for the future that Obama spread from the shores of America around much of the world this week.

The greatest rugby players on the planet are in Europe, Britain and Ireland this month. These four weeks should be a glorious demonstration of their glittering skills, their ability to lift individuals out of their seats in admiration and excitement. Yet just over one year ago, we witnessed a World Cup final, the natural peak of the sport’s ambition and promotion that was literally kicked to death by its participants.

Not a try was in sight that night, a gross betrayal surely of this outstanding game’s great history and tradition. For the try, the act of running with the ball, beating an opponent with skill of foot, body or mind has become compromised in the game of the 21st century.

Rugby has replaced individual skill with intimidating physicality, producing a series of collisions of behemoth proportions. Frankly, it is no sort of a deal; we have been short-changed.

A mantra has grown up that nothing less than forward dominance can produce winning rugby. Thus, resources and efforts have been hurled into an obsessive one way path to building individual blocks of humanity that look like hulks. They are so super-fit, so charged up they remind one of the Duracell bunny, forever on the go. Not especially to anywhere creative but on the go, nevertheless.

Yet a look at some of the names of the young men who will ply their trade on the fields of the northern hemisphere this month is to make the heart flutter, the mouth salivate. New Zealand can offer Dan Carter and Richie McCaw, two of the finest players the game has known. South Africa, if it only knew it, possesses the fastest and most exciting runner in the game today, Bryan Habana, the man who was so criminally ignored in that World Cup final he touched the ball just once in 80 minutes.

In Britain, Ireland and France, outstanding names roll off the tongue; O’Driscoll, Fitzgerald, Cipriani, Care, Sackey, Shane Williams, Heymans, Jauzion, Medard and Elissalde. Yet their fate thus far has been subsumed to the whole; scant regard has been paid to the philosophy that these are men able to make the decisive contribution in games, to be the real influence.

In 1971, when the British & Irish Lions set off on their tour of New Zealand, their innovative coach Carwyn James made a frank confession. He told his players that he feared the powerful All Blacks would dominate up front, that they would control most possession. Yet one of his trademark thin smiles then appeared on James’s lips. ‘Boys’, he told his men, ‘if you can win 40% or even just 30% of the ball, we have the backs to win the series’.

It proved thus. The Lions, with an all-star cast behind the scrum in the likes of Gareth Edwards, Barry John, Gerald Davies, Mike Gibson and David Duckham, played so stunning a brand of fluid, brilliant, inventive rugby that the forward-orientated New Zealanders were confounded. Brains had toppled the behemoths.

There is no intrinsic reason why something of the sort is not possible today. South Africa has the players to produce a high speed game of fluidity and purpose; the Australians are always enthusiastic devotees of such a creed and New Zealand continues to offer a benchmark for excellence in most areas of the game. France has threequarters of searing speed and clever players coming out of its ears; Ireland has the chance to throw off past shackles under a new coach and Wales are always at their best with such a philosophy paramount. Now England, heavily influenced there is no doubt by their innovative new Australian attack coach Brian Smith, have chosen young men of pace, dash and no little skill.

All that is required is for the pendulum of preparation to swing at last from the locked position of defence where it has remained stuck ever since the advent of professionalism, towards attack. If it moves, doubtless rusty and creaking at first, we can be sure it will re-energise this game just as Barack Obama is threatening to do with an entire nation.

Rugby football’s roots are deep in the embrace of individual skill, talent and innovation; in the arms of young men of intelligence able to make decisions for themselves, based on the scenario unfolding before them. This sport was never meant as a physical version of chess, where moves can be pre-planned and envisaged far ahead.

If the overly influential coaches allow this new generation of young men some air to breathe, some margins to make their own decisions, then the sport can regain so much of its glorious tradition. November 2008 and these rugby Test matches represent as great an opportunity as the newly elected Obama promises the free world in another field.