When you think about a rugby team, and many other teams to be honest, you think about the mix of roles to be filled. Some are obvious - you need a tight-five, a back row, half backs, back three and centres.
If you want to think of it that way, they're the posts you've got to fill.
But watching Gloucester crash out of the Heineken Cup yesterday and last week against Cardiff it's obvious that there's a different way you can consider it.
You have a number of roles that you need to have available to the team. Some of these match closely to the positions - it's very hard to play good rugby without a good tight five, and propping, hooking and locking a scrum, and without someone to get the ball off the ground out to the next player quickly, which is classically the scrum-half's job.
But you have some roles that are more flexible. You need a number of crash-n-bash or hard yard carriers of the ball. In the All Blacks of last year, Kaino, Thompson, Soaialo, Sommerville, Hore, Meealamu, Nonu, Thorn, Muliaina, and somewhat surprisingly Sivivatu fulfilled this role at various times. McCaw attempted it, but it's not his thing to be honest. You need the fetcher role, where McCaw rules supreme, but Soaialo, Thompson, and very surprisingly Smith showed up regularly in this role. You have a tactical kicker role - Sivivatu, Muliaina (of course, job description), Carter (of course - goes with the job description), Cowan (also of course and goes with the job description), Smith all filled this role admirably and expectedly, but Williams and Soaialo kicked often enough and well enough that it wasn't a shock by the end of the year, but it's very unusual for people in those positions.
Most sides have a second ball-starter - the person that shifts the ball from the ground out to the first receiver position. That's typically done by the scrum half 90%+ of the time of course, but sometimes the scrum half is injured, has been tackled and is in the ruck or otherwise unavailable. Wales have Shane Williams who played scrum half to a high level and still trains for the role. French sides usually use the fly-half and scrum-half interchangeably in such situations. The All-Blacks seem to use everyone EXCEPT Carter in such a role, although Carter has filled in on occasion.
Some jobs go on merit - it's usually a 10 that kicks goals, but it can be a 12, 15 or other positions - memorably Eales who played lock was Australia's best goal kicker for a number of years for example. Some jobs now go with the role - why do hookers always throw in to line outs? When I started watching rugby the French were in the process of changing from scrum-halves throwing in to hookers throwing in. I agree it makes sense to have someone in a single-digit number at the thrower, but if your best thrower is a number 6, why not have him do the job and the hooker as a lifter (or more rarely a jumper?).
There are, of course, defensive roles too, but this post is getting long enough.
But, on to Gloucester. Gloucester's problem was a lack of bodies able to do the smash-n-bash yards successfully, combined with enough defenders to stop the other side doing it well. When it comes to playing in the cold and wet, you need probably more of those than normal, in both offensive and defensive roles. You know the other side are going to pick and drive, pass one-out to a big runner who will crash into your line, hopefully over the gain line, and set the ball up to recycle it. The conditions (driving rain, deep mud and all) don't really make for regular use of flowing moves along the back line (although to be fair Biarritz tried them and scored on the back of one, as did Gloucester). But Biarritz wone because they could try the high risk moves when the situation meritted it, but could get the ball and smash it forward a metre or two at a time for phase after phase after muddy phase. They weren't likely to score from this (and they didn't) but they were perfectly positioned to stop Gloucester scoring, because of course Biarritz kept the ball, and to make it less likely that Gloucester would score when they got the ball back - and Gloucester didn't score in the second half - because they were tired, slow, and rarely given the ball in a good position to counter-attack. Biarritz could, and did, grind the ball forwards and choose whether to keep grinding or whether they'd got the ball far enough they could pin Gloucester back and let their wingers chase the ball forcing a hurried kick that ended up with Biarritz most times gaining yards, throwing in to the line-out and starting again...
It wasn't a great match to be honest, but the conditions dictated it was never going to be. But Biarritz could play rugby suitable to the occasion, and that let them, when the circumstances permitted, to also break out and score. Gloucester, who play such a nice game when the conditions are good, couldn't adapt to the mud, and you would say were really fairly lucky to be able to score the 10 points they did. It's telling they came in the early and middle part of the first half whilst the players were still energetic, warm and willing enough to throw the ball about successfully - an extra 10 minutes of grind from Biarritz (who scored 17 of their points in the first 15 minutes, and the other 7 from a charge-down) meant they never looked like threatening for the rest of the match.
There are problems at Gloucester - until Spring is sprung (and Tom Lehrer fans are poisonoing pigeons) and the ground gets harder again, they're vulnerable. They won't always be playing in cold, wet bogs of course, and they won't always lose, but they'll always be at risk.
Interesting side note here - If you look at most of the current good international sides: Australia, New Zealand, Wales and lets throw France into the mix too they all have a number of players who play well in multiple roles. They all play well in their expected role-positions, but it's a rare player in their squads who ONLY plays the roles expected of their position (Woodcock would be an obvious example, but he plays superbly in his role). The other sides don't have that unexpected range of skills. South Africa tend not to do this, but have good-to-great players in all roles and work well as a team, the 2003 England didn't do it either, but the bulk of the sides that can do it well keep their team work of course, but can suddenly, unexpectedly do things well from the "wrong" places. You're not going to drop your back three each time Williams gets the ball in a kicking position, unlike when Carter gets the ball, but perhaps you should. Of course if you do, and Williams also gets tackled and offloads, (which he can also do quite nicely) then you've got an AB winger with space to run too...
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