Mid-Canterbury capable of bold challenge

Press, 3 August 1983, Page 40

Mid-Canterbury capable of bold challenge

By

KEVIN McMENAMIN

Canterbury has every reason to be a little more nervous than is usual for a Ranfurly Shield holder of first division status facing a challenger from the second division when makes its third defence of the season against Mid-Canterbury today.

Beating Mid-Canterbury on Lancaster Park has seldom presented much of a problem for Canterbury; in fact, Canterbury B often does the job easily enough. It has in recent years, though, been a very different story on the Ashburton Show Grounds and the great uncertainty for Canterbury is whether Mid-Canterbury can produce its best form away from home.

If it can, then it could be a very difficult side for Canterbury to beat. Not only does it have a defensive style which is-hard to counter, but it is quite capable of making its own play through a pack which has excellent grasp of the intricacies of the rolling maul. It is not hard to predict Mid-Canterbury’s tactics. There will be plenty of high kicks from the first fiveeighths, Murray Roulston, for his forwards to zero in on, and if true to form, the side may concentrate for a start on just keeping Canterbury at bay and gamble on having the better of a hectic second spell. The side has put a lot of effort into its shield build-

up. A campaign was mapped out as early as January and the coach, Brian Sampson, has worked unswervingly to have his side at its peak today. A recent, and successful, North Island tour was all part of the process and while in Wanganui the side did have a session with the former All Black coach, J. J. Stewart. Mr Stewart was used mainly to give the players an idea of what shield rugby is all about — how simple mistakes can cost a game and how the players may have the rest of their lives to rue them. It was a ploy which the Canterbury coach, Alex Wyllie, used successfully when he asked Sir James Stewart to address his team before its Wellington triumph.

Mr Stewart also did some coaching and it will be of no comfort to Canterbury to know that he pronounced the scrum as “technically perfect.” There was nothing, he said, he could do to improve it. Given its build-up, the apparent determination in its ranks, every Mid-Canterbury man is going to have a part to play. But the one on whom most will depend is the chief lineout jumper, Jock Ross. The side must have lineout ball if it is to play the sort of game it wants and Ross, who can be a champion one day and something less the next, is the only player likely to provide it. After the fright it got

against Southland last week, Canterbury will be taking no risks and it, too, may want the ball high in the air for a start, especially with Mid-Canterbury having a young and inexperienced full-back.

But with no Dale Atkins to spearhead its charges, the Canterbury pack is going to be disadvantaged and there will need to be none of the forwards standing round waiting for the play to come to them as there was for a time last week.

It might be argued that Canterbury’s best chance of victory, and perhaps even an easy one, is to just keep running the ball through its backs, and the talent there will do the rest.

It’s an option, of course, but if the backs are pressured into mistakes it would be playing right into MidCanterbury’s hands. The forwards would relish the ball on the ground behind the advantage line. The game is sure to be an interesting battle of tactics, and while Canterbury should win if it makes the most of its talents, and Robbie Deans gets more than two or three kicks at goal, Mid-Canterbury is still the sort of side which could cause an upset.

There is a banner on the southern end of the Rakaia Bridge telling travellers that they are already moving into Ranfurly Shield country. Premature it might be, but such confidence cannot be ignored.