All Blacks’ offside play upset Lions—Dawes

Press, 4 October 1977, Page 56

All Blacks’ offside play upset Lions—Dawes

By

RON PALENSKI,

NZPA staff correspondent

London The British Lions coach, Mr John Dawes, yesterday returned to the attack against the All Blacks, accusing the forwards of persistent illegal play and saying that the backs were nowhere near as good as they were cracked up to be.

He defended his own backs in the series, attribute ing their poor form to a lack of confidence brought on by the All Blacks’ offside play, and heavy grounds. Mr Dawes, and two Lions, Terry Cobner. and John Bevan, were speaking to about 300 Welsh coaches at a seminar on the Lions’ tour •organised by the Welsh Rugby Union in the grimysteel town of Port Talbot: west of Cardiff.

Mr Dawes admitted that the Lions played outside the laws in the line-outs too, but only because the All Blacks were doing it. He said the New Zealand jumpers were standing well out from the line of touch, and then jumping across, pushing their opponents off the ball. “That’s why we had a hard time in the line-outs in the first test,” Mr Dawes said. "The All Blacks weren’t penalised for it, so

we decided that ‘when in Rome’ w T as the best policy. “I wish we’d decided that earlier than when we did.” Mr Dawes also said the All Blacks often played to the limit of — and sometimes encroached upon — the offside laws, especially at mauls. He said the All Blacks would be on the wrong side of the maul and put their hands up as if that meant the offside was accidental and should not be pe-

nalised. "All that means is that you’re offside with your hands up,” he said. But that offside play, intentional or not, made the Lions’ half-back hesitate and think again about what he was going to do, and that affected the rest of the backs.

The Ail Blacks Mr Dawes said, knew they were not going to win set play ball so as a result, they concentrated on their defence more than they normally would have. ‘Their defence was superb.”

Mr Dawes said the All Black backs were certainly efficient, “but whether they had any magical qualities was a matter of opinion. It would have been a different ball game if we had had hard grounds like in 1971. We could count on the fingers of one hand the number of side-stepping threequarters we saw in New Zealand.”

Cobner, the Lions’ pack leader after the first test, said he found only once an example of the famed New Zealand rucking. “That was in Otago and they nearly rucked us back to the U.K. New Zealand rucking is a fallacy. They’ve forgotten how to ruck.”

The principal French national coach, Mr Tot Desclaux, was an interested — and bemused — spectator. “If the All Black forwards were outplayed,” he said afterwards, “and the backs were no good, how did they win the series?”

He said he was sceptical and would see for himself next month.