WALLABIES’ TOUR

Hawera Star, Volume LIII, 26 August 1933, Page 8

WALLABIES’ TOUR

LESSONS TAUGHT SPRINGBOKS ’ . PLAYING TACTICS REVISED EXPERIENCE IN 3-4-1 SCRUM. _____ Soiith Africa, lias begun to see a new ' light in Rugby as a result of the Australian Rugby team’s ■ tour. Not even the New' Zealand team’s tour of live years ago caused , such an examination of the strength and the weakness ot Rugby in South Africa as _ has been occasioned by the \Y allabies’ visit. Administrators, players, and spectators in the Union are expressing dissatisfaction with the Springbok drift into a stereotyped dullness of stodgy play. It is quite plain that, whether or not the AY allabies win the Test rubber, there will be a careful stocktaking of Springbok methods when the tour is over. Allied with this disturbance of complacency in Springbok Rugby is a conviction that the 3-4-1 scrum; formation is the best when, .as there must be under the present laws of the game, there are three men in the front row". It is the Australians’ adoption of the 3-4-1 formation, and their improvement in the use of it, that has! enabled them to hold the South African! forwards and to graft on to it their skill and speed in other departments of play. The 3-4-1 scrum was ■ the basis of the Wallabies’ victory in the second Test—a victory which, as the “Cape Times’’ said, made South Africa Rugby look like, a “third-rate imitation of the real thing.” Even if the Springbok selectors, by picking younger forwards who yet are inured to a lot of hard soruhiniaging, arid by providing ' the play of their backs with more enterprise' . and thrust, manage to field a. team to win the Test rubber, the lessons of the second Test will remain.

Writing after the Wallabies had played three or four matches, “Boy” Morkel, famous forward of South Africa’s 1912 team in the British Isles and 1.921 team in Now Zealand and Australia, said: “Among all the Rugby ‘has-beens’ it has long been a burning question as to when South Africa is going to neturn to the traditional game of allowing the three-quarters to get possession of the ball in order to attack. If we did so our national game would once again assume the attraction that seems to have passed from it. But are the same tactics that have been in use during the past 10 years to be indulged again this season ? Are the forwards going to scrum for possession of the ball and then watch with disgust while the scrum-half or fly-half boots into touch ? ... . The good work of building up teams on the sound principles that have made Springbok Rugby a byword in the world should be commenced at once. I maaritalii.'that more games will be won by utilising combination between the players than by the individualism that exists m nearly every club to-1 day.”

In discussing the Wallabies, Morke! pointed .out the necessity for solid scrummaging by them. “It is all very well to say that their sp.eed will make up for their shortcomings in weight,”

he wrote, “but how can speed benefit you when you are shoved off the ball in every scrummage ? You cannot win matches if you are repeatedly beaten in the struggle for possession.” After watching the Wallabies in their first two matches in the Transvaal, JR. G. Smith, secretary of the Transvaal Rugby Union, appreciated very much their endeavour to play brighter Rugby, even if it were on the losing side. “If ever brighter Ytugby was longed for it is now, in the Transvaal, where several years of accumulated stodginess and sterile kicking have left our Rugby public only happier memories of other days.” But Smith saw that’tlie Australians needed to improve their scrummaging and adapt their play better to meet “the strangling but mercilessly-efficient methods which have grown barnaclelike on our own South African game.” He said that' an alteration must be madq, particularly in their* scrumformation, and he recommended their adopting the modern 3-4-1 formation, which would ensure the quickest setvice from the scrum. “If,” he said, ♦‘they persist in the 3-2-3 formation they" are inviting a lot of trouble, as the wasp-waist of the centre row must collapse on a concerted heave from their opponents.” Australia used the 3-4-1 formation last year, but, strangely enough, it had the 3-2-3 for its earlier matches in South Africa. However, after the three matches which' they played in the Transvaal in .the early part of their tour the Wallabies began experimenting with the 3-4-1, using it in their games at Kimberley. Discussing their use of it at Kimberley, A. 1". Marsberg, the famous Springbok fullback of many years ago, wrote: “They did not appreciate the importance of the rear-rank man, who is one of the big factors in the success of the 3-4-1 scrum. Their last man seemed to be packing almost anywhere in the back, whereas he should have a very definite position, depending on what is being attempted. When the pack is all set to win the scrum the rear-rank for■iward should pack in the centre, bind-

iirg the' locks and giving all his weight to a-straight shove to help his hooker. Ferdie Bergh gave a fine demonstration of this style of play in the second half of the game; during a period in which the Griquas continually heeled the ball. "When, . however, the Wallabies scrumhalf was smothered for the ball it would have paid their rear-rank man to have packed on the outside of the opposite loose-head, so that lie could cover his half-back as soon as the ball was heeled. The rear-rank man often acts .as an extra half in attack and defence. The Wallabies can only learn by experience, as the New Zealanders did when, they were here five years ago, and they will have learned something from the experiments made at Kimberley, even though they had to pay for their experience the same as in any other phase of life and sport. Doubtless, too, like the All Blacks, they will in' good time solve their serum troubles, and then we shall see a very different team.”