Shields must prove he’s better than Prem rivals
All the talk of Brad Shields being chosen for the England party that will tour South Africa in the summer reminded me of the famous 1995 headline in the Racing Post, ‘Sad, Mad, Bad’. That was about a decision to send a horse to the French Derby rather than Epsom, but it covers this situation perfectly.
Shields is qualified to play for England as he has English parents, although until now all of his rugby has been played in New Zealand. He will join Wasps for next season, and that looks like a cracking bit of business for the club.
However, his case is just another example of rugby’s ludicrous qualification rules. What’s wrong with applying the old ‘Duck Test’, if it looks, swims, and quacks like a duck, then it probably is a duck! Shields was born in New Zealand, plays for one of their franchises, sounds like a New Zealander, and in my book that’s exactly what he is.
If you were a young, or even an established English back rower in the Premiership, what would it feel like to see someone parachuted into the national side, irrespective of how good their Super Rugby performances might have been? My hunch is that it would be a kick in the teeth and that’s a pretty sad state of affairs.
Shields’ experience of the English game is limited to coming up against those players who turned out for the Lions, and pitching him straight into the England side just sounds barking mad to me. There are more than a few people asking questions about Eddie Jones after the Six Nations debacle, and if he was to decide to pick Shields, that would simply be fuelling the flames of discontent, and reek of desperation.
I feel that there’s a bit of point scoring going on here – technically, under the cur- rent daft rules, England can snatch Shields away from under NZ noses, and it looks as though they are doing it just because they can. However you dress it up, and irrespective of the fact that it’s being done by the book, it’s a really bad thing to do.
It just stinks to put him in an England shirt before he’s played in a Wasps one.
Consider this too: if Shields got crocked in England training (and that wouldn’t be a first) or playing in a Test, Wasps could find themselves having signed a player who the national side had broken before their fans had even seen him play. Let’s hope that all this furore is no more than a smokescreen, and that Eddie Jones will make the sensible decision to send Shields a ‘Welcome to your new home’ card, and tell him to prove himself in the Premiership.
We now know which clubs, provinces and regions will contest the Champions and Challenge Cup finals, but we’ve known for a while that they’ll take place in Bilbao. This fulfils one of the commitments made by European Professional Club Rugby when they took over the competitions in 2015, by taking the final to places other than traditional rugby hotbeds – laudable I’m sure, but this looks like another step towards making fans even less relevant.
The San Mamés Stadium holds just over 53,000, making it one of the smaller stadia used for the European finals, which is probably just as well as it’s not the easiest place to get to. It’s also a football stadium which just seems wrong for what is a huge rugby showcase.
Some fans are sailing to Santander and making their way from there, and although there are some (expensive) direct flights to Bilbao, there aren’t enough to accommodate all of the fans who’ll want to go. As for hotels, there are numerous tales of huge mark-ups on the usual prices, so it’s not going to be a cheap weekend away.
The French bit of the Basque territory used to be a rugby heartland, but that’s not the case nowadays: Bayonne, and Biarritz are both languishing in the French D2. The Spanish Basque territory is football dominated, with Atletico Bilbao attracting a fanatical following.
The more you look at the decision to play the finals in Bilbao, the weirder it seems – EPCR might see themselves as having a missionary role, but the people who should matter are the fans of Leinster, Racing 92, Cardiff and Gloucester.