RUGBY FOOTBALL

Otago Daily Times, Issue 19687, 14 January 1926, Page 4

RUGBY FOOTBALL

ALL BLACKS AS SIREN'S.

FOLLOWERS OF NEW ZEALAND METHODS. TENDENCY IN IRELAND. (Faoil OOK OwK COEBESrOKDEJJT.) LONDON, November 6. F-ance, having succumbed to the lure oA Lhe All Blacks’ strategy, it now seems that there is a tendency in Ireland to model play on that of the New Zealanders. The Aii Blacks have been designated the Sirens of the Rugby World and this week Mr C. A. Kershaw (the English International halfback), in an article inHhe Sunday Express, devotes himself to connteracting the tendency to follow in the track of dominion players. He remarks that the French are tremendous admirers of the All Blacks, and in addition are not too pleased about the cold-ehonlder-iug they got from the Home Rugby authorities when their federation asked to be admitted to the Rugby Conference held in J London last December. France is doubtless ; also thinking of her New Zealand tour next j year. : “Willi Ireland,, however, it is different. . Her players have developed a game that the ; greatest international sides have always found > it difficult to counter. Do not let us forget that the Irish fifteen gave the All Blacss about the hardest match of their tour, tno forwards tasLng' tli6 l\6w Zealand deicnc© to the utmost, and the whole side rising to heights, especially in the drst half, when the All Blacks failed to score. However, Bective Bangers and other first-class cluls have apparently made up their minds that the se'*en forwarcs and eight back* system, as originated by forbears ox G-si laker and developed hy Jack Richardson and Co., is worth imitating, and they are getting on with lt- A DOUBTFUL POLICY. ‘ "In my opinion the nclicv is a very doubt- • ful one. Since the 1913-20 season to the present time. Ireland has not been exactly distinguished for her back play, tl’d or. is apt to forget, when considering the adoption . of the ‘two five-eighths game’ and all that i goes with it, that it is not the system so much as the player that brings cuocaas. / “Another Dicky Lloyd has yet to b© pro- I due jd by Ireland. The criticism levelled at him was generally that he was too selfish, but, though this may be true, h» was nevertheless tne Lraic® of the Irish, attack for many seasons. He nearly won the match aaainst England in 1920, two tries coming from his ingenuity, though he was considered to he at the time well past his best. So much for my first point. SEVEN SCRUM FORMATION. "There is another. In attack everything depends on possession, and the first thing for our Rugbv nroselytisers in Ireland to remember is that if a seven pack is to get the ball every member of it must be a specialist, and even then 'it is hard to see how two front-rank men. matter how skilled in the art of hooking, can get the ball from three. “I think that the history of the New Zealand tour taught one, lesson very clearly —Fiat in most of their games the New Zealanders were beaten for possession. Every time they had a solid pack of ’shovers’ against them, as in the Newport and Gloucester games, and many others, they were badly beaten for the ball, and I am told by an old Australian International who played against them both in Australia and New Zealand that an Australian eight invariably gets more of the ball than a New i Zealand seven. I know this is a sore point with our New Zealand friends, but explain it away as they will, the fact remains. Point number two for the proselytlsers. FRONTAL ATTACK. “I how come to point number three. Those who argue in favour of the New Zealand system of two five-eighths will tell you that the essence of its strategy is to pierce the defence by frontal attack as opposed to the English conception cf a lateral attack on either wing. Mark Nlcholls was always fond of drawing this distinction, much to the detriment of English back play. He used to say our backs were too orthodox and stereotyped, and that you could tell what they are going to do as soon as the ball came out of the scrum. ’ I think Nicholls was quite wrong about this. It may have been true 20 years ago, when the original All Blacks revolutionised English ideas of back play, but the' idea of the swerve, and the out-through and the frontal attack so well inculcated and exploited by Stoop and his school has been one of the essentials of English back play for nearly a generation now. It may be that for the moment we have no Stoops, Davies, and Poulton ' Palmers to show us how it is done, but, after all, were tho las’; Ail Blacks such marvellous exponents of Rugby behind the scrum as some of their •more ardent admirers would have us believe? ' NOTHING WRONG WITH ENGLISH PLAY. “They had no great outstanding centre* like Deans and Wallace of the 1905 side, on such a pair of halves as Roberta and Hunter, of the same immortal combination, and, when one comes to think of it there was reaJly very little between our men and the New Zealanders at Twickenham last January. When it comes, too, to a question of frontal atttiOk, I can remember no finer example of this than the dazzling inward swerve of ‘Dicky’ Wickes in the second half of Chat game, when he and Eittermaster had the All Blank defence in a tangle. ‘‘No, there is nothing wrong with our system of back play, Mr Fletcher and Nicholls to fhe contrary notwithstanding. Let us develop it among its own natural lines, and not try to standardise it on the Nevt Zea’and model. After all, England taught Itueby football to the world, including tho New Zealanders. All credit to them for dev?mping it along their own lines, and playing it like the artists they are. But we have had, and will continue to have, artists too, each stamped with his own hallmarks of individuality and personality. It world he a sad day for the game if players wera all turned out to one set pattern. FIVE-EIGHTHS ’ PLAY.

will. I think, have considerable backing when I say that stand-off halves and centre three-quarters are taught, in this country, to make openings for the men behind them, just as are New Zealand first five-eighths (stand-off halves), and second five-eighths (centre three-quarters), so where is the differenc > in their functions as players? “I confess that I can see no particular advantages in the New Zealand formation, either in the scrum, or behind it, over out owr , and one must be careful, when weighing up the reasons for and against the ado it ion of the eight-backs system, not to be unduly influenced by the fact of having seen esp?rts of the calibre tf the All Blacks of 192-1 exploiting it. “There was one thing about the All Blacks’ play which I consider was not sufficiently realised and planned against last season. 1 refer to the exact function of the wing forward. It was just the fact that w» christened this übiquitous stormy petrel of Rughv a forward, and treated him as such, instead of realising that he was essentially a back, acting as a scrum half for putting in the. ball, and ft ‘pinker an of unconsidered trifles,’ that caused all the trouble. Tin-! BANGER POINT. Porter, himself, who came over here as cap lain of the All Blacks, told me that in New Zealand the two opposing wing forwards neutralised each, other, but he said than over here the wing forward used to ‘den 1 with’ the opposing scram half, bo that his own scrum half was left unmarked, and was therefore the dancer point. If any one had taken the I rouble to study the strategy of i pair like Parker and Mill working together in some of the later games of the ton", they would have seen how cleverly it worked, and how often Mill, left entirely unmarked by his opposing number because of the attentions paid to the latter by Parker, world make opening after opening for his insides. “Of course, a ‘frontal attack 1 developed. That was the All Blacks little game. But world there have been any great mystery abn it it if some of our scrum halves had ken: their eye on Parker, and hsl left their wing forward to deal with Mill ? Tins plan was actually successful in the first half of the Hants v. All Black-, match, but- Tailed when David Orr-Ew.ng, our wing forward, had to leave the field with a broker, collarbone. ,

“por these reasons I am of naninr. that those Irish and French enthusiasts who want slavishly to adopt Few Zealand tactics and strategy are not. wholly wise. There were greiA men before Armageddon—and some of them were not New Zealander?!” ALL BLACKS’ PROFITS. The sound financial position in which Irish Rugby finds itself just at present was disclosed at the annual meeting in Dublin. The balance of last season amounted to £2214. ~ The gross profits of flic Home interr.atiorala were; New Zealand £1763, Scotland £21."9, and Wales £1833. The sum of £IOOO was paid to the Rugbv Union in respect of the New Zealand match.