Spirit of '73

The Barbarians first victory over the All Blacks since 1973 yesterday is being hailed in the press as an example of how rugby can still be played with verve and excitement and a return to those halcyon days of Edwards, Bennett, Williams and Duckham.

On the former point I'd have to agree - the BaaBaas (and the All Blacks to be fair) showed that the current laws do not in fact require that the leather be booted off the ball at very opportunity.

On the latter point, however, I have to say that a bunch of Aussies and Saffas (with the occasional European guest) beating a second-string New Zealand XV has (at least for me) very little significance at all.

I've expressed a view on the Barbarians' place in the modern game previously and, although yesterday's match was fun to watch, I can't say I was hugely bothered about who would win given the lack of northern hemisphere involvement.

If these end of tour matches are to mean anything then agreement has to be reached to include the top players from the home nations. A victory for a British & Irish based BaaBaas team over the All Blacks would mean something to me that yesterday's win just didn't.

Just for the hell of it, and based on who is fit to play at the moment, here's a BaaBaas line up I'd relish watching:

15. Rob Kearney 14. Tommy Bowe 13. Brian O'Driscoll 12. Jamie Roberts 11. Maxime Medard 10. Danny Cipriani 9. Chris Cusiter 1. Gethin Jenkins 2. Dylan Hartley 3. Martin Castrogiovanni 4. Nathan Hines 5. Courtney Lawes 6. Stephen Ferris 7. Martyn Williams 8. Imanol Harinordoquy

Of course, it would never happen...

Coventry cling on

What a 1st season for the newly formed Championship - first London Welsh, then Birmingham Solihull and now 135 year old Coventry RFC going into administration.

And it could have been much worse for Coventry, the Inland Revenue having served a winding up order on the club through the High Court over a whopping outstanding debt of nearly £500k. Owner Andrew Green had ordered the club to close and cease trading but defiant club officials successfully challenged the decision on a legal technicality with the result that the club is now in administration and has a matter of weeks to attract new investment to save its bacon.

Not what the RFU and Premier Rugby envisaged, I'm sure, when the Championship was launched with great fanfare in August but possibly an apt demonstration of the folly of trying to launch a fully professional second tier league, especially in the depths of a recession.

NOOOOooooooo!!!!!!!!

England Rugby Supporters - what on earth are you playing at????

You went out in your thousands in 2007 and bought the horrendous ketchup swish kit and now, according to the RFU, sales of England's new purple kit have outstripped all previous records.

41% of replica shirts sold during the autumn internationals were purple and, on the day of the abysmal showing against Argentina, nearly 70% of all shirt sales at Twickenham involved the purple kit.

"It's an all-time record," burbles CEO Francis Baron, and why shouldn't he - the gullible masses have once again fallen for the most blatently obvious marketing bollocks.

PLEASE STOP BUYING THIS KIT - all it does is encourage greed and avarice and yet more horrendous abominations masquerading as England rugby kit. Even if the team is hopeless, the national team's shirt must mean something, surely?

And another thing...

Not only did New Zealand's pure white change kit put the English Purple and Welsh Yellow monstrosities to shame, I'm also mightily impressed that the All Blacks are still refusing to countenance splashing a sponsor's logo all over the front of their shirt.

Nice to see that some things are not for sale.

All in the mind

There's plenty of tearing of hair and gnashing of teeth going on, it seems, about the state of the game of rugby today.

It seems that far too much kicking, not enough tries, no entertainment and no excitement are just a few of the game's current ills, together with an "unsustainable" casualty rate.

Much attention has been focussed on the breakdown, with the latest refereeing 'interpretation' - which allows the tackler to play the ball with his hands from whatever position as long as he is back on his feet - favouring, it is claimed, defence at the expense of attack.

This, according to the perceived wisdom, causes more ball to be kicked, as teams are fearful of being caught in possession and either turning ball over or conceding kickable penalties.

I do have some sympathy with this viewpoint, but it strikes me that the solution that many in the game are calling for, namely yet more interferenece in the laws, should really be a last resort.

No, as far as I can see the responsibility for change must lie with the players and the coaches. Call me naive, but I would have thought that, by spending more time as a team on attacking space rather than seeking contact, on offloading to supporting players rather than dying in possession and on making the ball available in the tackle rather than holding on, the chances of conceding possession or a penalty would be vastly reduced. The consequence should be that teams confident in their contact skills would be more inclined to attack. Furthermore, by coaching players not to seek contact as a first resort the number of breakdowns will be reduced and, by logical extension, so will the number of injuries.

It's a simplistic view, granted, but if teams put less emphasis on time spent in the gym and on defensive drills and more emphasis on time spent on attacking and contact skills, not only would it produce more imaginative and exciting rugby, it also has to be more effective than the aimless hoof downfield which hands the ball back to the opposition.

Fanciful? It doesn't have to be. You only have to look at the Lions in South Africa this summer and both New Zealand and Australia this past weekend for evidence that a more enlightened approach can work.

The Total Flanker Guide to: Refereeing

Ahah, this old chestnut - cynical, gnarled old forward pontificates on the appalling standard of refereeing these days and tells referees where they are going wrong and how to do their jobs...

Far from it.

Although I have done a little bit of refereeing in my time (student matches in the 80s being my limit) the prospect of taking up a whistle again has absolutely zero appeal.

No, the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth is that I have huge admiration for anyone mad and/or masochistic enough to want to be a rugby referee in this day and age, largely for the following reasons:

• Shifting goalposts: is it just me or do the IRB appear to be making up the laws as they go along? It seems that every time there's a poor game of rugby we're confronted with calls for law changes, resulting in experimental laws, new directives and varying edicts on the scrum, the lineout, the breakdown, the colour of players' bootlaces etc. And if international refs are struggling to cope what chance has the poor sod refereeing the 5th XV at Old Gitonians?


• R.E.S.P.E.C.T: what the hell happened to the day of calling the referee "sir" and accepting decisions with good grace (albeit through gritted teeth)? The level of backchat, dissent and overall whingeing these days, even at grassroots level, has reached epidemic proportions. I've no idea how or why referees put up with it.


• The Awkward Pint: 'twas ever thus, but I've never been able to work out why referees hang about rugby clubhouses after the game on Saturday in the forlorn hope that someone will not only buy them a pint but will want to stick around for more than 30 seconds to discuss the finer points of some of the afternoon's decisions. The home captain feels obliged to make an effort, but it can't be enjoyable for the ref knowing that his companion in conversation would rather be anywhere else, can it?

So, a bunch of reasons why I could not be a referee - but since when has a distinct lack of direct and relevant experience ever prevented me from proffering advice?

Here, therefore, are my top tips for rugby refereeing survival in grassroots rugby:

1. Consistency - realistically it barely matters what laws you apply, as long as the laws you do apply are applied fairly and consistently. Rugby players have simple needs - as long as they don't feel cheated they're fine;


2. Confidence - Be assertive. If in doubt, guess - but make sure you guess with conviction;


3. Take no crap - you've given up your afternoon to supervise 30 fat blokes rolling about in the mud fighting. You don't need to take any aggro. Keep marching the gobshites back 10 metres, all the way to the tryline if necessary;


4. Empathy - the vast majority of the players are trying their best. Laws are often broken not through cheating, but because the players are too knackered, old, fat or just not very good. If you can understand what they're trying to achieve and referee accordingly there's a chance that both you and the players might actually enjoy the game.

And who knows, someone might actually want to buy you a pint in the clubhouse.

Hope that helps :)

Flatman for England!

It's official - this blog likes David Flatman.

Not only is he, in this blog's humble opinion, the best loosehead prop currently available to England, he is also the complete anecdote to the usual anodyne, cliché-ridden, ghost-written player columns regularly to be found in the national newspapers.

No platitudes, no banalities and no spin, Flatman's articles in The Independent are witty, insightful and bordering on Clarkson-esque.

Here are a couple of recent examples:

Having a baby beats facing the All Blacks

Scrumthings not right

Flatman for England!

November: the Verdict

I'm not sure what to make of England's November.

In an ideal world Martin Johnson would have wanted to build on the undoubted momentum created during the 6 Nations. With so many frontline players crocked, however, it was somewhat inevitable that any such momentum would stall. I know other countries have had injuries but if you consider that, from last season's England squad Andrew Sheridan, Lee Mears, Phil Vickery, Simon Shaw (until the NZ match), Joe Worsley (ditto), Nick Easter, Tom Rees, Harry Ellis, Toby Flood, Riki Flutey, Mike Tindall and Delon Armitage might all have expected to feature in the match day 22, it was always unlikey that England would make huge progress this Autumn.

That said, this campaign has been disappointing for a number of reasons:

1. SELECTION - the fact that so many so-called established players were missing should have been a ready-made excuse for England to focus one eye on the World Cup and check out some up and coming talent. All Courtney Lawes did, however, was to get splinters in his arse whilst the "livid" Ben Foden and the perennially ignored Matthew Tait also saw little or no action. And where Johnson did choose to experiment, he got it badly wrong. It was obvious against Australia that Ugo Monye was no fullback (and personally I'm not that convinced about him as a winger) and that Matt Bahahan simply didn't have the skillset to play international rugby, for instance.


2. COACHING - much has been said about the coaching set up, especially in relation to forwards coach John Wells. To be fair, England's set piece work has been up to scratch but our lack of nous at the breakdown is glaringly obvious and our inability to drive a maul - once our signature move - is just scary.


3. TACTICS - it hasn't been at all obvious what the team has been trying to achieve. Playing a 2nd ⅝ in Shane Geraghty should have released England's strike runners but all we appeared to do was line up way behind the gain line and move the ball laterally. And then, against New Zealand, we pick an inside centre who can't pass? Clearly something is amiss. If Martin Johnson is team manager, who has the lead responsibility for coaching the team as a whole and setting the tactics? Wells? Brian Smith?


4. CAPTAINCY - throughout the last 12 months I've staunchly defended Steve Borthwick and have thought that the criticism he has received from lazy journos has been excessive and largely unfair. Too often, I feel, he's carried the burden of the donkey work while played alongside more lightweight contributors such as Nick Kennedy and Louis Deacon. Packing down next to Simon Shaw, however, appears to have the effect of releasing him to be the influential player we often see in the Premiership - witness his performances against France, Scotland and New Zealand this year. That said, I'm beginning to come to the conclusion that, despite him being an all round honest, loyal and decent bloke (and a bloody good lock), the captaincy is beginning to weigh around his neck like a millstone and his reign is becoming too associated with failure. If I'm honest there isn't an obvious alternative candidate for the captaincy but perhaps now is nevertheless the time for a fresh approach and to let Borthwick just prove himself as a player.

All in all, although hampered by a ridiculous injury list, England's tendency to seek a short term fix is what has let the Johnson regime down this autumn. Had the short term solutions resulted in 2 or 3 victories, then they might have been justified, but where the quick fix has been an obvious failure then we have every right to wonder why the opportunity wasn't taken to assess the calibre of some of the talent coming through. Although it was nice to see Jonny back, the fact is that he created very little and the fly-half in form, Shane Geraghty, was marginalised at 12. Surely it would have worth a try (no pun intended) giving him a run at 10 and picking players like Tait and Foden and Wasps' Joe Simpson to have a go. And when you unearth a tyro like Courtney Lawes, what better way to find out if he's got what it takes than to let him loose on the Aussies and the Kiwis?

There are only 2 years until the World Cup. Next November will be too late to find out if these guys have what it takes. A chance has, I feel, been missed.