Maverick Russell capable of lifting all our spirits
Sexton’s certainty to guarantee win but sport needs players like Scottish No 10
AS Scotland sought to impose themselves on this season’s championship challenge from the first battle, and in turn deal the first fatal dent in that of the English, there were times when it seemed like their mercurial out-half Finn Russell was playing a game within a game. In a 10-minute period before half-time, with his side firmly in the ascendancy, Russell contributed a catalogue of mini-meltdowns which hinted that he alone might serve to undermine his side’s hard-won advantages.
An over-cooked kick to the corner when a try seemed in the offing, a conversion miss (albeit from an unforgiving angle), a misjudged clearance kick and a dropped pass culminated in a glaring trip which earned him a sin-binning as half-time approached.
It had been his audacious one-handed pass which had initially handed the initiative to England, and his illegal gambit, without any immediate danger as England lumbered from their 22, received the punishment of temporary dismissal.
One longed to be a dressing-room fly to hear coach and player exchange views.
At the same ground two years earlier, the player had forcefully resisted his coach, Gregor Townsend, once upon a time also an out-half with an anarchic streak, as the Scots stared down the barrel of humiliation against England and, almost single-handedly, his zealous flair launched an improbable comeback.
Reverse
Now, the coach would have been rightly minded to reverse the tables and harangue his errant enigma but, mindful of their so recent estrangement, they both resisted the urge for confrontation and chose consolidation instead.
History records the result but not without more hearts swallowed in disbelieving mouths, as Russell’s audacious but ill-timed late drop-goal effort reduced a feverish nation to palpitating panic.
Perhaps we were alone in cheering such chutzpah but, in an era when metronomic mediocrity is determined by an array of prescriptive coaching, Russell’s combination of gut instinct and skilful audacity lifts the spirits in an era of societal restriction.
There are those who decry his egotistical nature as repugnant in a game where the team should come first.
But it is precisely because he operates with an astonishing sense of clarity in terms of his sporting ego that he is able to challenge the limits of his ambitions, and sometimes those of his coaches, as well as compromising the motivations of those defending him.
Sadly, he remains an aberration in the modern game. Systemic structures have virtually extinguished his kind from the sport.
Players who can command the presence of a Lion are demanded, not those whose whimsy labels them a Barbarian.
Ireland will counter this week with the ageless Jonathan Sexton, the championship’s oldest player, defiantly raging against the light, but without
rarely raging against the demands of those who coach him.
Were one to choose between them, most would plump for the certainties of Sexton, as opposed to the capriciousness of Russell, but if it is for the pure thrill of sporting possibilities that serve to stir one’s soul, then the Scot is your man.
Townsend (left), who has transformed from an artisan into an artist since clutching a clipboard and donning those preposterous coaching head-sets, has long since struggled to rein in his swashbuckling successor.
But even his grinding conservatism had to conclude that operating without his talismanic totem offered no future,
even if guided by endless structures and statistical minutiae, and despite a brief exile, a necessary rapprochement was achieved.
Rugby remains colouring by numbers for so many people. Too often, the colours are omitted and replaced by bland, monotonous grey.
It was amusing to note that as Ireland continue to fiddle with their game, without obvious success bar a decent half against pliant opponents in Rome, their attack coach Mike Catt was pilloried in a variety of quarters for deigning to suggest that some of his players might, for once, assume some responsibility for their actions rather than slavishly adhering to the strictures of structure.
It is precisely this sense of individualism which is required to lift the team from a morass of muddling, as for example Russell’s daring often seeks to
do, and yet it was roundly condemned from the bleachers as if an utterly bizarre concept. History records that Ireland’s purpose may be fitting enough to dominate a continent – albeit even that hegemony has dissipated in the past three campaigns – but it is palpably unsuited to breaching the glass ceiling at World Cup level.
In a week when slavish structural concerns prompted them to commit three ageing players to central contracts, it seems Ireland are not accelerating into a new way of doing their business, on and off the field, any time soon.
France have shown the way in allowing youthful verve navigate the pathways between risk and reward.
Even Wales, much-maligned but already the season’s first title-winners, though they may have relied on an old guard of sorts, chose to shake up their pivotal half-backs at a decisive turning point in this spring’s championship.
Against England, they chose to withdraw their experienced nine and 10 with the game in the melting pot, introducing in their stead a pair who have less than 10 caps between them, including scrum-half Kieran Hardy, who had never even started a Champions Cup game.
And yet they helped turn the Triple Crown-winning tide. Would that it were possible to see Ireland demonstrate such faith in the art of the possible.
Yet reliance on faithful probability of the most durable half-backs in world rugby will see them get the job done.
Enough to eclipse Russell, as likely to drop the ball over the line as he is to implement a wondrous sleight of hand.
But for that alone, he remains utterly compulsive viewing. A maverick, true. But also a steadfast reminder of why so many fall in love with sport.