Iron curtain needed to win Cup
The All Blacks are still using the same defensive formation that I put in in England. 2003 World Cup-winning defensive coach Phil Larder
While being wary of unearned comparisons to the England team of 2003, there was a moment that pricked the ears and wound back the years. Brad Barritt, the team’s defensive leader, shared with the media the ‘‘goal’’ England had set themselves: to be the best defensive team at the World Cup.
Indeed, specifically what he said was: ‘‘We want to be the best defensive team. We want to be the most physical team, the team with a defence that forces opponents to make the errors that present us with attacking opportunities.’’
The statement was reminiscent of the goal that Sir Clive Woodward’s team had once been set. Three years before the World Cup, Phil Larder, the England defence coach at the time, had addressed the squad and said pretty much the same: we are on course to be the best defensive team in the world, let’s get there by 2003.
Larder’s defence did arrive in 2003 in the exact shape that he had demanded. England had the world’s best defence going into that World Cup. Likewise, New Zealand had the best defence going into the 2011 edition. The ultimate proof that defence wins rugby’s pinnacle event was the 1999 World Cup, when Australia conceded a single try – to the United States – in the whole tournament.
Indeed, the defensive statistics in 2003 held so true that the team with the secondbest defence going into that World Cup were Australia, the losing finalists. Third and fourth were New Zealand and France, the defeated semifinalists. Historically, defence wins.
If you simply follow the defensive numbers, the final on October 31 will be a New Zealand-England affair. The All Blacks concede the fewest tries per game, followed by South Africa, who they are likely to meet in the semi-finals. So if England defend as their record shows, they will progress up the other half of the draw.
How impregnable is the England defence? A confident answer came from John McKee, the Fiji head coach, yesterday. ‘‘Yes, we’ve watched England play a lot of games, we think there might be some chinks there that we might be able to exploit,’’ he said.
What chinks, where? ‘‘I’ll tell you on Friday night, depending on whether it worked or not.’’ Can England build the world’s best defence on the back of a good pre-season camp? No, it just doesn’t work like that, at least not according to Larder, who has laid down the story of that 2003 England rearguard in a fine new book called The Iron Curtain.
‘‘Building a defence is a really long process,’’ he says. ‘‘You can’t just say you want the best defensive team – it won’t just happen. It’s got to have been built up over a number of years.’’
Here, again, experience counts. The All Blacks have grown together over a decade. England, comparatively, are still introducing themselves to each other. It just so happens that the All Blacks adopted a defensive system that Larder feels he devised. The ‘‘up-and-out’’ defence was the one that Larder coached to the Lions on the 2001 tour of Australia.
The head coach on that trip was Graham Henry, who later took the up-and-out back home, first to Auckland, then to the All Blacks.
‘‘The All Blacks are still using the same defensive formation that I put in in England,’’ Larder says.
What makes a defence stand out? Obviously one-on-one tackling technique, but Larder emphasises trust and the common goal. Line speed for defenders is an important ingredient; that is where the concept of the ‘‘blitz’’, to close down attacking space, originated. More important, though, is an iron curtain that works as one.
‘‘Each individual has got to buy into it,’’ Larder says. ‘‘If a couple don’t, then that structure becomes weak. It is a team thing, a squad thing.’’
When England played New Zealand at Twickenham last November, in one minuscule lapse, George Kruis shot out of the defensive line to take man and ball, but the ball had gone before he got there, the curtains opened and Richie McCaw scored.
Up-and-out has been favoured by England since Larder’s day: ‘‘up’’ towards your opposite man’s inside shoulder, thus directing the movement of the ball ‘‘out’’. It allows defenders to drift and defend the inside shoulder of their defensive neighbour.
In Larder’s England days, the players who found it hardest to learn the system were from Wasps, where they appreciated line speed but defended ‘‘up and in’’, the defensive system incorporated by Shaun Edwards, which he then took to Wales.
‘‘There is more risk to that, but it doesn’t matter which defensive system you use,’’ Larder said. ‘‘It is the way it is executed. Most teams now use up-and-out, but will move from one system to another if they feel the opposition has got numbers on them.’’
Which defences does he rate? The All Blacks, obviously. And he says that the Ireland defence is better than many appreciate.
The indications for this tournament are that attack might trump defence, but that is easy to say from a long way off. No one is winning without the kind of iron curtain England want to be.