RUGBY LESSONS

Evening Post, Volume CXXI, Issue 31, 6 February 1936, Page 6

RUGBY LESSONS

INQUEST" ON ALL BLACKS

A TRUER PERSPECTIVE

Among the newspapers to hold an "inquest" after the departure of the New Zealand footballers is the "Manchester Guardian," writes "The Post's" London correspondent. "Among the many things for which we should be grateful to the New Zealand team," says the Rugby writer, "is that at last it has enabled, or in some cases forced, many of those who persistently regard modern Rugby as 'not what it was, Sir,' to see it in truer perspective. We have been asked, 'Where are the personalities of modern Rugby?' 'Where are the Wakefields, the Voyces, the Owens, the Davieses, and Kevshaws?' Are the younger generation to be reminded indefinitely of this supposed superiority of their fathers and their forefathers? The recent victories of Wales and England at the expense of the All Blacks seem, at long last, to have brushed away at least a portion of the dust which has coated these critics' spectacles. "NOT WHAT IT WAS." "If we are to believe what we have been told, modern forward play is not what it was.. Admittedly there is not enough hard, solid shoving and quick heeling from the tight and loose, and there is a good deal more roving than in the 'good old days,' though the English forwards at Twickenham produced a brand of play which had more than a perfunctory similarity to' what is known as 'good, honest stuff.' The comparative scarcity of winging forwards in the years before the war, and, to a lesser extent, immediately after the war has tended to exaggerate the capabilities of such players and to minimise and often to ignore the skill of modern players in the back row of the scrum. Winging was never so intensive* as at the present day; couple that with the inability of modern scrums to shove and heel as our fathers did and then pause a moment and consider the following list of backs, all of whom are playing regularly in football today: Fyfe, Obolensky, Cranmer, Wooller, Dick, Gadney. Logan. C. W. Jones, and Shaw. WING-FORWARDS ABOUND. "Consider the half-backs in particular, who have to perform their tasks behind slow-heeling forwards, and with the' modern wing-forward hampering their every movement. Before the All Blacks had arrived there were rumours that they were not going to use wingforwards as known in this country, and yet by the end ,'of the tour they were winging as intensively as any side against whom they played. Their defeat at the hands of Swansea was in no small measure due to the destructive tactics of E. Long, the home captain, who was helped enormously by the fact that Tindill, the inside fiveeighth, stood too near to the scrum and thus presented an easy target. Sel-, dom if ever did he part with the ball on the move, seldom if ever did Caughey receive the ball on the move, and as a result the crash tackling of, C. Davey was made all the simpler i and all the more effective. The same i thing to a lesser extent happened at F Twickenham, where Tindill once again J stood too near his forwards. Griffiths, ' for all his limitations as an attack- < ing player, at least stood a fair dis- t tance from his partner, usually Sad- * ler, who sent out a long and accurate r pass. Had there been no wing-for- * wards these two matches might have c ended differently."