How the Bok’s Mad Doctorthe caught England between a RUCK and a hard place
O’SHEA ON VENTER’S CRAZY IDEA WHICH ALMOST TOPPLED EDDIE
THE Italian plan that drove Eddie Jones nuts was hatched by a man Conor O’Shea calls the Mad Doctor.
Brendan Venter, a World Cup winner who combines coaching rugby with running a medical practice in Cape Town, approached Azzurri boss O’Shea days before the Twickenham showdown.
Italy were reeling from heavy home defeats by Wales and Ireland, and against the Grand Slam champions were given a snowball’s chance in hell.
“I’ve got this idea,” Venter said. “Please, please don’t think I’m mad. Hear me out.”
He began to explain his idea of ruckless rugby and how he thought it could not only frustrate England, but give the 50-1 no-hopers a winning chance.
When he had finished, O’Shea thought of something Clive Woodward said when he signed him to play for London Irish in 1995.
“Clive said to me, ‘Conor, the problem with you guys in Ireland is you never think differently’,” O’Shea recalled.
With that he put Venter’s plan to the rest of the coaching staff, one of whom threw an arm around him and whispered: “This could be like Mauro!”
The reference was to Twickenham 2009 when Italy’s gamble of playing flanker Mauro Bergamasco at scrum-half backfired spectacularly.
“Let’s roll the dice,” said O’Shea. “And see what happens.”
What happened was that Italy exposed England’s lack of mental flexibility to such an extent that the visitors led at half-time and were still within two points with 10 minutes to play before they succumbed 36-15. O’Shea revealed: “We said to the players, ‘Listen, if this doesn’t work we’ll take the blame, not you, so do it for 80 minutes. I want us to be a really irritating team to play against so, no matter what, stick to the plan’.”
England were irritated alright. Jones accused Italy of tactics contrary to the spirit of the game and threatened to retire if they were repeated in future.
It was a sour response to genuine innovation and Venter (right, below) took issue with those who viewed it as a tactic designed purely for damage limitation.
“The object was to beat England. Not keep the score down,” he tweeted. “We needed turnovers and got them. If Italy were better conditioned they could have beaten England. Just ran out of gas. We consider it an insult if someone thinks we turn up to keep the score down.” Venter is linked with a coaching job in the South Africa set-up, but he is not done with Italy yet. “What we did at Twickenham was to challenge people’s minds,” said O’Shea (left, above), as the RFU confirmed no England fan had followed Jones’ advice and asked for a refund. “Innovation is what we need. “If you stand in front of a group of players and say you’re going to do the same thing and get a different result, they will laugh at you. “We wanted to give them hope that they weren’t just going to fill a pitch and be here like the old gladiators with the crowd wanting 100 points. Life is about hope. If you have hope, you have got something to aim for.”