Boring, boring England

The managers of the Guinness Premiership are betraying how boring they are, and also to a large extent their underlying ignorance.

They are, almost to a man, complaining that the ELVs are penalising attacking play, but actually what is penalising attacking play is the IRB's ruling on interpreting the law about off the feet at the ruck. This is NOT part of the ELVs but presumably the coaches are too stupid to realise the difference, or think we are.

As for whether the referees are doing a good job or not - it strikes me that the players going forward are much more likely to go off their feet than those in defence, at least after the first one or two, because the others run back, balance and go forward into the ruck, arriving later than the attacking players who have probably charged to get there, not paused for balance and consequently do go over the top. I'm not saying the referees are perfect, but I rather suspect they're doing a reasonably fair job of what they see.

But the Northern Hemisphere ELVs are different too. In particular, they've kept penalties for everything. What does this mean? Well, they've kept the penalties, so there are still a lot of kicks at goal for points, and a lot of lineouts. Of course the change in numbers at the line out law (which is an ELV) is meaning that putting in, particularly to attacking lineouts is not working as well as it used to, but that's not stopping the old reflex of go for the corner and when it does, it just means they kick for points... and the game is not flowing and running and attractive, it's slow, and structured and then disrupted and everyone moans.

There seems to be this belief that "Oh, that's worth a penalty" makes the SH ELVs unfair. What bollocks. If the laws of the game are changed to the ELVs (and if they are I hope it's the SH version) say that this is worth a free kick, and persistent offences can upgrade that to a penalty, then that's what they're worth. It's still fair to both sides as long as the laws are applied consistently, it's just different to how it's been done for the last few years.

Despite what the wingeing conservatives would have you believe, rugby has changed - and it usually changes to empower tries. In my lifetime we've had a few changes for safety (like stopping collapsing rucks, and the changes to the scrum to make that hopefully safer), and we've changed the points for a try from 4 to 5 to try and encourage more tries. We've changed the typical league points system several times too... it used to be 2 for a win, 1 for a draw, 0 for a loss, like football. But we changed to bonus points for 4, 6, and I think it was 8 tries, and then down to only for 4 or more tries, and for a small loss...

If we go back to the 30's and through until after the war I think, rugby was decided on the number of goals, be that penalty goals, drop goals or what we'd now call a conversion. The reason they're called tries? Because it gave you the right to try for a goal.

Contrary to the gripes of the boring commentators and boring coaches, rugby can't exist in a vacuum. It does rely on the support of the fans. The SH rules are producing a far more entertaining game on average. I'm not saying the old rules couldn't, but they often didn't - the SH ELVs still produce dull games too, but typically they're more exciting. They're faster, but they still have all the old elements, just in different proportions. How does this reduce the skill level of the game? The fact that they're faster means the players have to make decisions faster and under more pressure. This is supposed to make them more stupid somehow?

Admit it: you're boring old farts that don't like change because you're grey conservatives. Not all change is good, but if you're going to criticise the changes try to have something sensible to say about them that stands up to even simple analysis.

Australia 24 - 28 New Zealand

So, New Zealand reinforce their world #1 status without being RWC winners again, keep the Beldisloe Cup and the Tri-Nations crown, and although I'm biased I think you'd have to say they deserved all three parts of that.

There are really two things to write about in this match. Sadly one of them is Jonathan Kaplan. With two of the best fetchers in the world on display, probably the two best in the world, he refereed the match in a way that basically prevented them both from doing their jobs. I'm sure there was a lot of lying on the ball and not rolling away - although some of the times he pinged people he quite clearly got it wrong, but there were a number of times where he just told the fetchers, both of them, to stop for no readily apparent reason: at least from the camera's eye. He also seemed to believe that any time a scrum wasn't going to be won by the attacking side it must be a penalisable event, at least for the first half. Having de-powered the scrum he seemed more content to let things go in the second half on that front.

The other thing that was noticeable here was the composure of the ABs. Australia played well at times, and at about 50 minutes were 17-7 up having scored a somewhat lucky try with the last touch of the first half and a well constructed try 6 minutes or so into the second half. Despite this, you would still have to say that the ABs were defending incredibly - stopping attacks running into 12, 15, 20 phases near the try line by being well disciplined and not making any mistakes before the Australians did. Then suddenly, with the advent of 3 substitutions the ABs went up two gears and the Australians slacked off on their 10 point lead. Suddenly the ABs scored 3 tries in about 15 minutes and the game looked pretty well wrapped up.

The Australians came back and scored an individual try and the last couple of minutes were interesting as Australia tried to attack and the ABs defended, but it was that old story of defending until a mistake came and they could clear the ball and move on.

There was another interesting thing. Maa Nonu went off injured at 50 minutes and Stephen Donald came in. It meant that the ABs were missing a mid-field banger, but they had three play-makers. This appeared to free Carter up more than a little, and if I were Henry I'd be wondering if I could use that as my 10, 12, 13 axis on a regular basis... I'm not sure, and I'm not an international coach, but they did look good for it. I know the traditional structure is a play-making centre and a banger (in Northern Hemisphere terms that is) but they looked really good with three playmakers out there.

On "The Rugby Club" someone identified Jimmy Cowan as the weak link in the ABs team because he's not a world class player. It's true he's not a world class player, but you would have to say that in his 50 minutes he only made one real mistake and a couple of sub-standard passes. All the rest of the time he looked happy and capable in his role. When he went off and Weepu came on Weepu looked great because the damage had been done by Cowan to the people trying to shut him down and Weepu, understandably, had more energy to exploit the gaps that were left because of that.

I'm sure Graham Henry would be happier with a RWC in the cabinet as well, but I'd have to say he will be fairly happy with where he is now. Robbie Deans won't be distraught - first season in charge and changing quite a lot of the systems and his side were in the hunt until the 60th minute of the last game. They've both got positives to take forward into next year. The other big positive for an international coach? You'd have to say it's another Kiwi, one working in Wales this time. There's a few in "wait and see" mode, and a few that are doing OK, but the top three coaches in the world at the moment all happen to be Kiwis IMO.

Samoa 14 - 101 New Zealand. Consistency...

Normally, I realise, I like close games. But blow-outs can be fun, as long as one of my teams isn't on the receiving end.

This was one that, probably even if I was from Samoa, I could have enjoyed. Why? Well it's good to see a team running through their paces and moves and working efficiently - which the ABs definitely did. But Samoa, despite the score line, showed up and played with pride and passion if not always a great deal of skill, the hits were real (occasionally massive) so it's better, you would have to think than a training run-out.

The other thing that was nice to see was the crowd, who towards the end rose en masse to applaud the Samoan's second try. It was, it has to be said, a really well worked try and deserving of applause, but if Australia had scored it, there would have been silence. To watch Samoa, they were there to applaud good rugby, and both sides produced it.

Watching the show also made me think a bit about what you look for in an international player. I mean, obviously, ideally, you want the best in the world at each position - McCaw, Carter, Hayman etc. have done that for the ABs over the last few years. But, although a team can be the best in the world, they probably don't have the best players in the world at each position. And, it has to be said, even the best sometimes have bad days. If I was grading players, from A+++ for the world beaters, you'd have to say that the bar for consideration for a test team (at least for a "big" nation (high on the IRB ladder rather than in population count) ought to be A as minimum (although you will take the best in the country of course, regardless of that if you don't have A-grade players).

But would you rather someone who is, on a typical day an A+ player, but on a bad day only a B player? Carter and McCaw on a bad day - probably still A+ players. But Sione Lauaki and Maa Nonu are today's targets - in part because they both had good and bad moments in the game. Obviously if they have too many B days they get dropped. But how many bad days or times do you give them to gain experience and see if they can improve? Some players just step in and look right at home of course but Nonu, for example isn't one of those. Even after an extended run at 12 for the ABs he still has shockers. He had moments of that today. Should he be dropped and a new number 12 tried in the slot? There probably are candidates - Toeava springs to mind although he's a different type of player than Nonu and perhaps the ABs need the banger that Nonu is in their midfield - Umaga used to be that player, although he did have the ball catching, retention and passing skills too, which is where Nonu struggles on his bad days. Of course I don't have to have an answer to the question, they don't pay me the big bucks, but there's just enough there I'm starting to wonder why they're sticking with him, and how close to being dropped he is (or, in Lauaki's case how many "just one more" chances he'll get to prove he can raise it).