Wales was their Waterloo!

Cue (NZERS), Issue 29, 15 August 1945, Page 13

Wales was their Waterloo!

y HERE is a substantial body of * support for the contention advanced in some quarters that New Zealand Rugby football between the two wars reached its lowest ebb in the 9 five years immediately preceding the second outbreak. Whether or not that is so, it opens up an interesting point: will the resumption of full-dress football a season or two hence find the standard better or worse than it was before the war? A The question is not as empty or as futile as it may appear on the surface. No one can recall the boom period of Rugby that followed in the wake of the last war without looking to the years ahead with a good deal of relish. There were a lot of rough edges about New Zealand pre-war Rugby that obviously needed ironing out and more than one department of the game that fairly screamed for improvement. Will those defects still be there after the war, or will the new crop of players provide the mould in which the coming order of things, can be shaped? It is no use dodging the facts. New Zealand Rugby in the late thirties was definitely weak, or at best mediocre, in several respects. As far as team formations were concerned, this' weakness was probably most noticeable in the five-eighth line, while there were also other positions in the field, including the scrum, where no players of really international class shone out. There is always a tendency in New Zealand to rate Rugby .standards by that of the 1924 All Black team, which remarkable combination was in the

happy position of being able to fill every position on the field to perfection. The 1924 team represented the peak of New Zealand Rugby achievement following the last war, and the undoubted quality of its structure lends weight to the belief that this war may introduce a similar revival in the country’s football fortunes. Nobody awakened to the fact that things had been slipping until the much-discussed 1935 All Blacks visited Great Britain, although it was for the Springbok team which subsequently romped through the Dominion to make it plain beyond all shadow of doubt that it was time for New Zealand Rugby to put its house in order. Trine, the All Blacks had been beaten by Australia in a Test match in 1934, but that reverse was not seriously accepted s as a warning signal, and it was not until the tour of the 1935 team in the Old Country that heads began to be scratched. One has to be fair to J. E. Manchester’s team and stress that from the outset it had to face many difficulties. Not th! least elf these was the adoption, at the insistence of the English Union, of the three-man front row, after New Zealand had always followed the 2-3-2 and wing-forward scrum formation. During the tour the All Blacks resorted mostly to the 3-4-1 style, which very often did not work out against big packs using the 3-2-3 formation, and their hooking and general scrummaging suffered as a result. In the main, the hard row which the team had to hoe may be put down to this factor, although

naturally there were other influences as wellnotably, the uncertainty of their mid-field play (to which the relative lack Of outstanding inside backs contributed) and, of course, the appreciable improvement which the standard of British football had undergone since the Home authorities began building up on the foundations laid by the 1930 team in New Zealand. In 1924, with McGregor and Nicholls at five-eighths and Cooke, Steel, and iSvenson in the three-quarter line, the All Blacks had shown British Rugby followers the value of a swift, penetrative back line; in 1935 the British showed that not only had they learned the lesson, but that New Zealand had forgotten it, or at all events failed to develop the idea.

.The tourists played twenty-eight strenuous matches in the British Isles and won twenty-four of them. Three were lost and one, against Ulster, drawn. It is considered that the team was lucky not to have been beaten in other matches, notably at the hands of Oxford, who were defeated by ten points to nine after the full-back, G. D. Gilbert, had brought off a spectacular and much—needed conversion in the dying stages of the match. But equally may it be said that they were perhaps a little unlucky to lose the match with Wales, who gained a lastminute opportunist try to snatch victory from the New Zealanders by thirteen points to twelve.

The first of the All Blacks’ three defeats came quite early in the tour in the fifth match against Swansea, who won by eleven points to three. Badly let down by the inability of the forwards to adapt themselves to the 3-4-1 scrum or to turn the formation itself to the needs elf the game, which was played on a wet ground, the New Zealand backs never got a chance to get going, and the team as a whole was outplayed by the Welsh club side. As with the 1905 team, the 1935 All Blacks found Wales their Waterloo. The tourists staved off defeat week after week through the rest of the tour until, nearing the- end of their itinerary, they were beaten by both Wales and England. They had collected the scalps of Scotland (eighteen points to eight) and Ireland (seventeen points

to nine) in the first two internationals, but despite this English critics had forecast that they would find Wales a much harder nut to crack, as indeed events proved. Although the All Blacks won twice as many scrums as the Welshmen the backs could make little headway against the sturdy tackling of the Welsh centres, and the home backs, led by Cliff Jones, C. Davey and W. Woolier, made the most of every scoring opportunity. By the timei the day dawned b )r final international, that against England, the 'New Zealanders were feel ing the effects of injuries and staleness.

That is not an attempt to belittle the victory which the Englishmen gained in so clear-cut fashion (the final score was thirteen points to nil in their favour), for they would probably have won on the day in any event. Everything went right for the home team, who were complete masters on both attack and defence, and the speed of Prince Obolensky, on the wing, •cclupled with the all-round brilliance of B. C. Gadney and P. Cranmer, set the seal on any chances the All Blacks might have had. For most of the second spell the visitors were penned up in their own half, and in the final stages their chief concern appeared not to be to snatch victory but to place a few points on the board. As an instance of this the full-back, Gilbert, had a shot at goal from a penalty when a punt and follow-up by the forwards might have been expected.

In addition to the defeats at the hands of Swansea, Wales and England, the New Zealanders had one or two narrow escapes, including their threeall draw with Ulster and their wins over Edinburgh and Glasgow, Combined Services and Oxford University, the respective scores being nine-eight, six-five and ten-nine. Also, they were kept fully occupied in beating Northumberland and Durham by ten points to six and South of (Scotland by eleven points to eight. Their biggest score of the tour was the thirty-dive points they ran up against Devon and Cornwall

in the opening match, and in the full itinerary they scored 431 points against the 180 of the opposing teams. The team was unlucky in the matter of injuries. Early in the tour colds and mild influenza put seven players out of action, while J. R. Page was injured in his second match and only made three appearances during th' 1 tour. T. H. C. Caughey and C. J. Oliver sustained leg injuries at critical stages and the team’s crack hooker. W. E. Hadley, had the misfortune to fracture his jaw in the first match, although he was able to' resume playing in time for the internationals. D. S. Dalton, who played in only eight matches,, W. R. Collins (seven matches), J. E. Hore, R. R. King, G. F. Hart, A. Mahoney and J. L. Griffiths were other players whose services were not always available through their being on the injured list.

Even allowing for the difference that the presence, of Page may have made and for the fact that -Ca-uighcy was at times a brilliant substitute, the tour showed conclusively that New Zealand could not 'fill the inside back positions with the dash and sound defensive qualities needed. Nor had the defect been remedied! by the time the South Africans arrived in 1937 — what dire consequences the record of that tour shows only too clearly. Maybe the ”three-men-up” scrumming formation can be turned to advantage in the long run, for New Zealand should never run short of the big, fast, toiling forwards needed to cope with an opposing pack which is on the job. But first let us have two or three .first-class inside backs to give the attack the sting it requires to match and even master the opposition. Not until then will New Zealand be able to meet the Rugby elect of South Africa and Britain with an even chance of success.