Fluctuating Fortunes In English Rugby

Press, Volume CV, Issue 31016, 23 March 1966, Page 17

Fluctuating Fortunes In English Rugby

[From MICHAEL MELFORD]

■RUGBY football in the British Isles fluctuates in its standards and leading exponents from year to year perhaps more than any other game. The stalwart of one year is often discarded the next, although to the average watcher’s eye he is still much the same player.

This is probably mostly true in England where the choice is sometimes embarrassingly wide, far wider than in the other three countries which have fewer players and fewer first-class clubs.

Thus you only have to be away for a few months to be surprised by the sight of relatively unknown names in international teams. An intelligent guess at a Lions’ team at the beginning of the season, six months before it is chosen, might not achieve much more than 50 per cent accuracy.

On the international performances of the last few seasons I would not have

said that standards in the Home Countries were particularly high at the moment or that there are currently many great players. A. E. Pask, who was a strong candidate for captain, and perhaps the Welsh lock, B. Price, would be almost the only ones on whom the average observer would be prepared to commit himself.

Moreover the home countries are made to look cumbersome and unimaginative when they meet the French at their best and the French best is being attained with increasing frequency nowadays. The French who came to New Zealand in 1961 were apparently far below

form but when shrewdly managed and given firm, dry grounds, they bring to the modern game a zest and spectacle out of the reach of the average Briton whose suppleness and legerdemain are, of course, impaired by office life and muddy grounds. These stern lessons are usually given in Paris where the ground is more lightly grassed and usually drier. The French are seldom at their best at Murrayfield or Twickenham in January and February and, as a result, some of their more imaginative methods are not seen in full working order by the schoolmasters and coaches who guide the thinking of the players of the future. There are many eminent judges, notably H. B. Toft, the old England hooker, who never cease to press for more attention to be paid to the French approach and to call for greater concentration on the line-out and mobility in the loose and less on scrummaging ability.

Those who do see the periodic outplaying of the Home Countries by the French are inevitably made to doubt the prevailing British standards. They can also point, in support of this, to the regularity with which the All Blacks and Springboks come over on major tours and ride triumphantly through their international programmes. Yet tins may be deceptive. Mostly the Home countries play against well knit touring teams when they themselves have probably never played together as a team before. Only Scotland, which usually plays France in early January, is not embarking on its first international cf the season when it meets a touring team. This probably gives a slightly false picture of relative merits, just as the South African short tour last April did at the other extreme. This took place after a long layoff in the South African summer. Whereas Ireland and Scotland had each played four matches by then, the Springboks came short of practice and. for all the pleasure they gave by their unwonted gaiety, did not win a match.

However, where this Lions team may differ from its predecessors and prove all pre-tour conjecture about standards to be irrelevant is in its unity and cohesion.

Previous teams may have possessed more brilliant players but this one contains a full hand of Welshmen — 11—and under an experienced Welsh coach, J. D. Robins, they may achieve quite easily a co-ordination which other touring sides have struggled for weeks to acquire. And they will not want for hardness. One highly significant statistic is the fact that 13 of the present Welsh team went on the short tour of South Africa in 1964. It was an unsuccessful tour on the field, partly because of a

tactical approach unsuited to South African conditions, but some useful experience must have been gathered. There are signs furthermore that the traditional antipathy to coaching at . club level may be dying in many places, especially in Wales where there has been a great increase in club coaching recently. It could be, therefore, that, under Robins, the Lions will have a coherent, well conceived plan in every match and will prosper more than a cold assessment of home records and reputations might suggest.