Why they're called All Blacks - in action

You, of course, already know that All Blacks is a typo don't you? The original quote, about the first New Zealand Rugby tour of England in 1906 contained the comment that with their level of skill they're All Backs. The fact they were already playing in black led to the extra L and the All Blacks were born.

But today, in the ANZ semi-final we had a lovely illustration of that original soubriquet in a match that was tense and frequently frustrating because of the tension causing odd silly mistakes although, in fairness, there was a really high level, committed defence which stifled a lot of the attacking moves, including Danny Lee knocking himself out whilst nudging Corey Flynn just enough that he dotted the ball on the touch-in-goal instead of down for a try (Lee tackled Flynn's shoulder with his head... scrum half's head v international hooker's shoulder... ouch) and in reply Colin Slade wrapping around the ball as Hawke's Bay tried to score, preventing a try being scored by lying underneath the rampaging lock with his head under the ball. Not quite as painful as Lee's effort, but still...

Anyway, the "All Backs" comment. Canterbury won the ball at turn over and passed the ball across the "back" line in normal red-and-black fashion. The person playing third receiver/centre ran flat-out on a line out towards touch, the person outside him (who I guess was really playing in the attacking full-back slot) ran across behind in a beautifully executed scissors move, burst through the hole that the scissors had created in the drift defence and ran over for a try. It really was a text book execution of the skill at top speed, and deserves to be in the coaching manual. What makes it really special though: the "centre" was wearing 3, the "full back" was wearing 4 - the tight-head prop and a lock were the players executing the perfect scissors at top speed and unlocking the defence with it.

One of the other things that contributed to the relatively poor game - and this is no reflection on the quality of the replacements who in most cases did a good job, and in at least one case did a better job - was the number of injuries. You really could call this attritional rugby. Canterbury lost a wing in the first few minutes, a scrum half in the first half and their centre in the second half to injury - in the first case at least a fairly severe looking one. Hawke's Bay lost their scrum half as described above, and a couple of other players too.

And sadly for Andy Ellis's international aspirations, he was the player who went off and his replacement did a lot better. Whilst Jimmy Cowan has gone from strength to strength this year, on the pitch at least, Andy Ellis has gone backwards - he tackled very poorly, his distribution was not the best, although his running game and support led to a try for him but that is an icing on the cake and his basic scrum half skills aren't solid and the All Blacks tend to go for that first.

I'm not sure who will get the places behind Cowan, particularly with Weepu playing at 10 for Wellington, but Ellis will be at home in November I'm pretty sure.

ELVs, relegation, mauls and Jimmy Cowan

It's a bit of a mixed bag this time I'm afraid.

Firstly the ELVs and relegation. I've already blogged about my dislike for some of the current rules interpretation in combination with the ELVs and I find myself continuing to feel that dislike. Last weekend I watched the BBC's coverage of the EDF cup and it was nice to see some rational comments about the interactions, and the fact that these interactions are what is crippling the attacking game.

But there was also a comment that relegation makes the game more meaningful - although it wasn't phrased that way. Our survey says "Uh-uh." The rugby held as the pinnacle of club competition, certainly in the Northern Hemisphere, is the Heineken Cup, which started this week end. What characterises the H-cup? Despite what the pundits will tell you it's not automatically the best teams in Europe - look at last season when Northampton were in the H-cup despite playing first division rugby at home. Look, with apologies, at the Italian sides, who are targeted as 10 points (2 bonus point victories) on legs by any serious team. What characterises it, (well did before the fucking English referees whistled it into a farce) was good, attacking rugby. Fluid, entertaining play. Why? One is incredibly tempted to point the finger at one thing: no relegation. You can only, really, get through to the later rounds of the H-cup if you win 5 out of 6 games. Occasionally teams with 4 bonus point wins get through as runners-up. The result? Teams take risks to win and rugby looks better.

Or consider Wasps last year in the Guinness Premiership. They had a terrible start, but then came back. They won the whole thing. But, for about 5 months of the competition if they lost any game there were out of contention, couldn't get through. I don't like Wasps in general, a certain Mr. Dalaglio always irritates me, but they had no choice but to play attacking rugby, to play to win. Come the end of the season, no change in their headset, they go out to win and stuff the opponents.

OK, relegation battles can make the last weekend's matches more meaningful with, potentially, all 6 matches on the final weekend of the GP having an impact on who goes into the final and/or who goes down. It doesn't always work out that way of course - twice in 11 years if memory serves. Can the English, should the English, look to the Magner's League, ANZ, Currie Cup etc. models? There isn't relegation (actually I think for the latter 2 there is, but not meaningful levels of it) and the teams play interesting rugby because they see benefits to winning and they're prepared to risk a loss here and there in order to get a bonus point win, or risk giving up a bonus point to get a losing bonus point instead. Rugby doesn't have to be made easier to watch - and the ELVs don't make it easier, they make it faster and more entertaining everywhere except in England - but rules that encourage entertaining play are a good thing if you're thinking that the game is meant to appeal to its fans and occasionally more fans.

You hear, as well, the commentators bemoaning the death of the maul. What utter CRAP. Granted mauls have more or less vanished in the GP, but then so has rational thought and the ability to counter-attack and more. Mauls weren't a regular part of the Super-14, but in both the ANZ Cup and the Currie Cup we're seeing rolling mauls. Why? Well someone realised that the new laws don't routinely stop the ball carrier, who is at the back. There's a different skill set than just "ugh, grunt, shove" which tends to lead to the whole maul collapsing if one player goes down, but teams have learnt how to do that. One of the great truisms of rugby is that you score points by making space on the field. That's why scrums to the attacking side on the 5m line are so potentially dangerous: you've got 18 players in about 3-4m width of the pitch, and so 6 v 6 in the remaining 40 m width or so. Rolling mauls, with their players taking out yours... ok, you lose an attacking player, but they lose a defending player into an offside position as your maul moves the ball forward and you make space for your attack... is this a bad thing? Surely not. It just takes some adjusting the skills to make use of it. Oh, and the willingness to try.

And before my final thought, I wonder how many times the English referees blew the whistle this weekend compared to everyone else? We hear these complaints that with the ELVs we're seeing the development of a North-South divide. However, it's worth noting that the difference in the interpretation of Law 15, which is insanely harsh in England compared to the rest of the world and NOT an ELV despite what the managers say is creating a divide between England and the rest of the Northern Hemisphere too.

And finally on to Jimmy Cowan. He played today for Southland against Bay of Plenty in the quarter finals of the ANZ Cup. He had a massive game, and whilst he might not have won man of the match, he was certainly a serious contender for it, and won it in my books. Returning All Blacks, into club rugby, are supposed to have a big influence. Jimmy Cowan did that today, in spades. It looks like this season, despite his off-pitch problems, has seen him really grow into an international quality scrum half. This is always a good thing to see: it's tempting to wonder how long before the people a bit further up North on the South Island try to tempt him away into the Red and Black machine - he's certainly doing a better job than their incumbent on the biggest stage. Good luck to the Cowan family though... it's nice to see the problems haven't messed with the rugby.

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).

SA 53 - 8 Australia

Another case of what a difference a week makes - and again at Australia's expense.

Australia did, I think, play a bit worse than last week. Not really badly, although there were poor patches, but never really well either. Quite a lot of that must go down the Boks who played their socks off. You could be critical and point out that there were several really good try scoring opportunities that Boks butchered at various points in the game - they could have been into the 70's if everything had gone to hand. That said, every player is entitled to the odd mistake and that was really what they were, rather than anyone having a bad game. Butch James might be the exception - he had a rather poor kicking game but played well in the other aspects of the game.

This game might paper over the cracks that PdV is causing in SARU, or rather between SARU, the players and the fans. A resounding victory tends to do that after all. It was, however worth noting that the PdV game plan went out the window. Whether that's what he decided, or what the players decided or what isn't clear, but this Bok side played like the sides of old. They kicked the ball in defence. They quite often (at times probably too often) kicked the ball in attack for territory. They hit the breakdown in numbers and cleared the Wallabies out. Bekker and the whole front row carried the ball close, hard and on a few occasions wider and faster, but never really wide: there was always someone (or several) with pace further out. The back row were all over the place doing all the things they're meant to do. (Matfield tackled well, but didn't appreciably carry the ball often, but with the rest of the forwards doing that he wasn't missed in that role.) Although the points were largely scored out wide, the gaps were made because of the tight, close play sucking in the defenders rather than any real attempt to play the ball wide at all costs.

This is setting up an interesting conflict in a fortnight. Australia have really only played well twice in this Tri-Nations, but both times it's been at home. The All Blacks have played well both at home and away, but can they play well in Australia in two weeks time, can Australia play well at home again? It's a winner-takes-all encounter in which, in the unlikely event of a draw, the ABs have the edge.

On a different note: I've seen a fair bit of the ANZ cup coverage. There have been a lot of commentators saying OMG NZ Rugby is in a terrible state with retirements and people moving away to play overseas. Whilst it is true that there are a lot of potential ABs elsewhere in the world (at one count there was a possible entire first choice team not available for selection recently, certainly an immensely strong AB Possibles to play against the incumbents) the ANZ Cup is, as usual, demonstrating that NZ Rugby has a really pretty healthy system underneath its top layers (that's the ABs and Super-14s I guess) to bring new players through. Whilst some of those may never make it all the way, there is some depth appearing again, even in "problem" positions like Lock.

Who will PdV blame this time?

Australia won 27-15. South Africa really only played for about 20 minutes, and that was actually only to an average standard, it's just they were so poor for the rest of the game that it looked good.

Australia didn't really play that well, but they didn't have to. I'm not sure how many times the Boks knocked on (it was quite a few), how many times their line out misfired (several) and how many turnovers Smith, Palu, Elsom and, for a few minutes, Waugh created (quite a lot) but they just dominated possession and territory because of that. In fact, I suspect when they look back on it, they will consider it a failure because they were dominant enough they should have scored at least four tries but they didn't manage to.

I suspect PdV will wield the selectorial axe and blame his players. Obviously a team that is largely comprised of players who won the RWC 9 months ago is now staffed with incompetents... I didn't know you could go from hero to zero quite like that - at least not in a strategic, game after game after game way. Form is temporary and class is permanent and all that? PdV may be a political favourite of SARU's board, but how long can they stand by him if he continues to lose like this? He might want his team to play expansive, attractive rugby - but his players don't buy into what he's trying to sell them. There was an absolutely spectacular example of this about half way through the second half where the Boks got a turn over and the player that grabbed the ball took off down the field. He was supported by the scrum half, so just before he was tackled he passed to his support player. That player, and probably the 4 or 5 in the ruck which produces the turn over have an excuse for not supporting the counter attack. But why were there about 5 Australians there before the second Bok arrived? I'm sure it won't surprise you to hear that the attack petered out when Australia won the ball and cleared their lines. Under Jake White if the same thing had happened the players would have charged in to form a ruck and get the ball back. It's probable that two Aussies would still have been there first, it's possible that would have been enough for them to win it back, but it would have looked like the Boks cared and were trying.

And that, I think, is the problem. The players and the coach don't trust each other. In particular, it looks as if the players don't believe that PdV can do the job, and this lack of belief manifests itself as confusion on the field of play, hence all the turn overs and generally poor play - as individuals they mostly execute their skills reasonably well most of the time, but it is in the interaction and the teamwork, particularly in the support play where it all goes to pieces because, I think, they're not quite sure what they're meant to do in the current scheme to support the play.