International players need adequate time off to hit heights on world stage
Commentary Allan Massie
Ronan O’gara was this week inducted into World Rugby’s Hall of Fame, the 12th Irishman to receive this honour. Like most honour lists, selection is a bit capricious. Ireland’s full-back and Lions captain, Tom Kiernan, is there, but not Ken Scotland, though Kiernan himself, interviewed on the day he won his 50th Irish cap (a record then), said that Ken Scotland was the greatest full-back he had played against: “it was an honour to be on the same field”.
Jim Telfer isn’t there either, nor are Douglas Elliot, Arthur Smith and John Rutherford. Some Scots will be surprised to find Jim Greenwood there, even though he captained Scotland for three or four seasons when we emerged from the black pit of the early Fifties, and was outstanding on the 1955 Lions tour of South Africa, when he played in all four tests, scoring two tries. But I guess Jim is there because of his subsequent career partly as a coach and author, which earned him fame almost everywhere that rugby is played, except perhaps at home in Scotland.
More to the immediate point, O’gara, just returned from a coaching trip to New Zealand, opined that Ireland could win next year’s World Cup. “Could” of course is one thing, “might” or “may”, something else. He did, wisely, go on to say that Ireland or any country would lose a series against New Zealand. Nevertheless the All Blacks might be beaten in a one-off Cup match, and Ireland had as good a chance of doing that as anyone.
This is probably true. Australia and South Africa both have good World Cup records (as Ireland don’t), but one suspects that their repeated, often humiliating, defeats in The Rugby Championship have taken their toll, neither really believing they can beat the All Blacks. England and France both have the wherewithal to win the World Cup, but both suffer from the structure of their home game. In France it’s not only the rivalry between the owners of the Top 14 clubs and the FFR that handicaps them. There’s also the fact that so many of their best clubs have an excessive number of star foreign players. As with English football, it often seems that the home-grown players are content to abdicate responsibility to the high-earning imports.
England have the resources to win anything any time, and often the players capable of doing so. Yet, in view of these resources, their World Cup record is rather dismal. Now, looking a year ahead, there are two big question-marks dangling over England. The first concerns their coach, Eddie Jones, successful at first, less so subsequently, and for English supporters the worry is that this has been the pattern of Jones’ career. The second is whether the club-owners will co-operate with the RFU, and act in the