Blocking tactics… best defence may be attack on the field – not off it

If Eddie Jones had known Italy were going to deploy their controversial blocking tactics at Twickenham on Sunday afternoon he might have spent less time last week hobnobbing with Antonio Conte and more on schooling his players to tie opponents into rucks, and to pick up and run hard and direct to render the loitering Italians as useless as a passenger on a railway platform waving at a departed train. But, of course, Jones, pictured, didn’t know and that was the delicious challenge faced by his team. Whether the enraged Australian was right to want the Italian ploy outlawed is the question at hand, and not an easy one to answer.

Everyone in rugby union has seen this ruse of interrupting the movement of the ball away from a tackle by positioning defensive players behind the attackers. England’s defence coach Paul Gustard had mused publicly on the subject just a few weeks ago, and teams or individuals do it only sporadically because the ways of overcoming it are well known, even if it appeared to take too long for them to dawn on Dylan Hartley and Co.

World Rugby’s response to Jones’s gripe that “it wasn’t rugby” must be to balance the sight of players without the ball standing around and flapping their arms, rather than contributing anything more positive, against the negative effects of instituting a line of offside at the tackle. Hard cases make bad laws, and the governing body should be wary of a rush to react. As one former World Cup final referee told me yesterday, there has long been talk of establishing such an offside line but one reason it has always been rejected is that policing and enforcing it would be very difficult. The tackle is supposed to be dynamic: you either contest the ball one on one, or by rucking or mauling, or you leave the ball to be played. An offside line might put the defending team at too much of a disadvantage. Italy allowed England to play, up to a point. What may be worth considering is an extension of the diameter of the “tackle zone” to two or three metres, to give the player in possession room to move.

Now, if you are already thinking tackle-zone diameters sound too much like hard work, consider some of the alternatives. There is perennial angst in football over matching the letter of its offside law with the intended effect. Rugby league has its play-the-ball method of dealing with the tackle. American Football is pared down into rigidlydemarcated plays, with a team of referees in charge of different facets and rugby’s prohibited forward passes permitted. Would a search for more structure lead rugby union down one or more of the same roads?

Maybe Jones’s problems were closer to home. As we reporters placed our recorders in front of him after the match, we hadn’t retaken our seats before he launched into his “youshould-askforyour-money back” rant. Yet twice in the opening quarter, when England had played on instinct and attacked quickly, they left the Italian “blockers” trailing and might have scored tries with better handling. The argument could have been silenced there and then.

Instead we heard via the referee’s microphone how confusion clouded England’s thoughts. When James Haskell tried to check how far he was allowed to step over a tackle to grab an opponent and form a ruck, Romain Poite, the Frenchman handling his 52nd Test, replied: “I am a referee, I’m not a coach”. Pithy and correct or a breakdown in communication? Either way, maybe the practice of coaches meeting with referees in midweek belongs in the dustbin.

As for Jones, he always encourages open debate and only a fool would want that to be ruled offside. But with this issue England’s attack on the field, not off it, may be their best defence.