Now for the crunch
Now to the serious business.
A month into this momentous Rugby World Cup we now know the line-up for the next weekend’s Quarter-Finals: just for the record, England v Australia in Oita and New Zealand v Ireland in Tokyo on Saturday; Wales v France in Oita and Japan v South Africa in Tokyo on Sunday.
Despite the distractions – and against the backdrop of the devastation caused by super-typhoon Hagibis which has relegated many of them to the insignificance they deserve – there are two ways one can view the events on the field of play that have whittled the participants down this far: the rules are the rules, in life stuff happens, occasionally the rub of the green goes against you and inevitably, when something has to give, sometimes hard luck stories abound – or, alternatively, frankly, what we have arrived at is a cracking ‘last eight’.
For what it’s worth, I tend towards the latter. And I’d be taking exactly the same stance if the Quarters’ line-up were any different.
It’s an obvious point to make but, to reach the knockout stage of any tournament with this structure, twelve teams have got to go home.
In every group in which I’ve been spending my time – no doubt an experience echoed in bars, clubs, households and even town squares boasting giant screens all around the world – I’ve been struck by the number of rugby fans, amateur sleuths, ‘anorak’ statistician-types and conspiracy theorists who enjoy enlightening the rest of us with their detailed knowledge of the competition scoring rules and the various permutations that will apply to the game unfolding before us.
Maybe I’m a bit ‘old school’ as you Brits say, but sometimes those involved in a sport – players, coaches and fans alike – can over-complicate what confronts them.
It’s best to remind ourselves that, above all other considerations, this is a simple game best played one match at a time.
To run out on the pitch full of data as to how many tries you need to score, how many points ahead of the opposition you need to be, even how many bonus points you need to deny them a place in the next round, is guaranteed to mess with your head and court disaster.
Especially if you’re a front row forward, a specialist breed which – wherever in the world rugby is played – traditionally gets an affectionate, teasing ‘bad press’ in terms of personal IQ and skills (e.g. running with and passing the ball) other than those peculiar to their trade.
Watching the game between Scotland and Japan with some pals in my hotel bar yesterday I did laugh when former Bath and England prop and now pundit David Flatman, asked by his fellow commentator to explain why the Scots tight-head was repeatedly getting into trouble with Kiwi referee Ben O’Keeffe for not listening to him during the scrum’s “Crouch … Bind … Set” sequence, responded “To be honest, Nick, when you’re contemplating half a ton of pressure about to come straight through your neck, you haven’t got time to think about anything else …”
No. Going out to play rugby, your first and only priority is to win.
I don’t buy any of those stock pre- or post-match interviews in which coaches or players stress the importance of “imposing our game plan” or “not worrying about the opposition, but executing the things we can control”.
For me that’s entirely the wrong approach.
Footy is all about playing what is unfolding in front of you.
I don’t know, things could be different now, but in my time with the All Blacks we could begin with a Plan A and – if it wasn’t working, even in the first five minutes – we were tasked with the responsibility to change it to something else and had the players to do it.
As it happened I was on a trip to the UK when the Italians out-foxed and confused England by exploiting the offside rules at the breakdown [England v Italy 1st February 2017 – Ed] to the point where captain Dylan Hartley and James Haskell approached referee Romain Poite and asked what they could and couldn’t do and received the famous curt reply “I’m the referee, not your coach”.
My old mate “Geech” – Sir Ian McGeechan – was on the money in the TV studio that day when commenting on the spectacle “Do you honestly think that the All Blacks would have ever been in that position? They’d have had a team huddle and sorted the problem in five minutes …”
Yesterday’s classic match between Japan and Scotland illustrated my points admirably.
Scotland came to the contest laden with the baggage of the stress of knowing their chances of progressing were slim, anxiety over whether the game would be played at all, all the hoo-hah over protesting at the RWC rules, the comments of coach Gregor Townshend and the threats being made by their hysterical SRU chairman of suing the WRC organisers. I’m surprised they managed to play even as poorly as they did in the first half.
In contrast, the Brave Blossoms – six months in camp under the tutelage of canny, uncompromising, hard-nosed former All Black Jamie Joseph – had come to the game with just victory in mind.
I take my hat off to the Scots in the end because they spared no effort in making a game of it in the second stanza – and came tantalisingly close.
However, for me the right team won through.
If you don’t believe me, go to the Rugby World Cup 2019 website where you’ll find the result in black and white on the home page.
