Don’t get carried away with Ireland series win
In last week’s letters page a Mr Ireland (!) accused me of being curmudgeonly about Ireland beating the All Blacks, but the reality is that I simply see things differently to him. Huge congratulations to the Irish on a well-deserved series win, but I have a couple of caveats.
Timing a nation’s run to the RWC is a key part of a coach’s job, and I wonder whether Ireland might have peaked too early, as they have done in the past? Also, New Zealand under Ian Foster are simply not currently the force they usually are. That doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t applaud Ireland’s great wins, but we equally shouldn’t go overboard about them. I wouldn’t rule out New Zealand bouncing back in the RWC – in fact, I expect it to happen, possibly under a new head coach.
Eddie Jones was also supposedly under a modicum of pressure going into the tour of Australia, but I have no hesitation in going overboard about England’s wins! They went with a weakened side, made up of players who were tired after a gruelling season in the Premiership, but they came back to win the final two games of the series. There was plenty of criticism of England’s performances, but I just don’t buy that. England played English-style rugby which is set-piece and forwards dominated, and I love it.
My favourite style of play is when one side’s pack beats up the opposition, and my belief is that over the years England have done best when that happens. Jones has made some selection decisions that seem weird to outsiders, but it seems to me that he has his eye firmly on the big prize, and everything is leading up to that.
Wales’s tour to South Africa is harder to weigh up. The world champions weren’t the same team that they were back in 2019, but they improved as the series went on, and the Welsh were outscored in the final Test, three tries to one, and never really looked to be in danger of losing. Wales were fifth in this year’s Six Nations, managing just one win, at home against the Scots, but also losing at home to the Italians, and it’s hard to believe that they’ve leapt forward since then. The message I take from this series is that the South Africans need to be a whole lot better before the RWC starts, and I have no doubt that they will be.
The Scots had the easier tour on paper, coming up against Argentina. In the end they lost the series and that’s probably the measure of where they are. Like many of my fellow countrymen I’ve never really been persuaded that Gregor Townsend – one of my favourite players in his heyday – is the right man for the job, and this dismal set of performances did nothing to dissuade me from that view. The Scots have enough quality players, but somehow they’re not delivering.
The main lesson I took from all of the tours, however, is that World Rugby has a mountain to climb before next September if it is to retain the confidence of fans. Of course, it all revolves around the tackle area where pretty well everyone is mystified by what’s going on. Yes, there’s an existential threat to the game from brain injuries, but another one could come from fans’ disenchantment with the lack of consistency in officiating.
When we see head contact we need to know what is going to happen – will it be red, yellow, a penalty, or simply a rugby incident? Matches are decided by these decisions, and when fans stop believing that their team is getting a fair crack of the whip then there’s a risk they’ll lose interest.
Come September 2023, rugby is going to dominate the back pages for a few weeks, and it needs to be for the right reasons, not because of fans feeling that ‘we wuz robbed’. If the story that World Rugby is planning central contracts for some top refs are true, then that’s great news – inconsistency is a problem of their making, and they need to take responsibility for sorting it out.
Finally, with the thermometer hitting 40C last week, hopefully that will see an end to the ridiculous suggestion that Rugby Union in England should be a summer game. It’s a daft idea, but every so often someone dredges it up. Playing in a range of weather conditions, on pitches that are sometimes firm and sometimes muddy, is what our rugby is all about, and that mustn’t change.