It would be nice to be able to say that the smoke is beginning to clear and the front-runners are beginning to emerge but it’s crystal clear that, in truth, they emerged months ago. The three southern-hemisphere giants have already taken their places in the quarters and the remaining pool contests somewhat resemble children squabbling over the last sausage. Not, on the face of it, that winning the squabble will do them much good.

The last semi-final place is still up for grabs, thank goodness, so that Tonga v England, Wales v Fiji, Scotland v Italy and, of course, Ireland v Argentina will provide all the interest but looking at these eight teams plus France it’s hard to spot a viable contender. On paper France looks the part but I suspect that there are still a few dice to be thrown in the last chance saloon.

Thus, once again we have had a week-end where the favourites cruised to victory and in the other matches the underdogs, without exception, sadly couldn’t quite make the step that we’d all hoped for. Tonga v South Africa was perhaps the most encouraging of these matches with the Tongans by dint of no more than average-to-good set pieces, a courageous and bloody-minded approach at the breakdown all flavoured by regular flashes of sublime handling and support gave a fairly pedestrian Springbok team a definite scare. Of additional interest was the transformation made by the Springbok bench in the second half when Matfield seemed to re-energise the dispirited pack and Steyn did the same for the backs. Too often we’ve seen acknowledged stars or specialist impact players coming off the bench when their teams are in trouble but proving unable to stem a downward spiral.

England’s defeat of Samoa came as the result of a considerably narrowed game plan, a change entirely appropriate for the loosy-goosy opposition as it happened. Whether the same approach will be sufficient to keep the rambunctious Tongans in check remains to be seen. Elsewhere Scotland did nothing and Ireland committed collective hari-kari.

Looking at the tournament so far one general question seems to be surfacing: Is the day of the prepared move off 1st phase finally at an end? Apart from Samoa’s 1st try against England I can’t seem to remember another in this tournament.

Which leads to the question: Have ‘prepared’ defences, i.e. defences given more than a few seconds to get organised and in place, finally figured out how to comprehensively repel all boarders? An answer in the affirmative would give weight to the proposition that most tries in the future will be initiated by simple failures of skill (pressure induced, presumably) and turn-overs - a proposition which if it proves to be true will see coaches leaving the set-pieces to their assistants and concentrating on coaching handling skills and the more complicated, and hence generally ignored, breakdowns, restarts and (at last!) support play.

In the interim let’s look at how our selection have fared:

Sébastien Chabal +1, +1, 0
Brian Habana +3, +1, 0
Frédéric Michalak 0, +3, +2
Gordon Darcy +1, 0, 0
Daniel Carter +1,+2, +1
James Hook -2, +1, +1
Victor Matfield +2, 0, +2
Juan Martín Hernández+1, +2, 0

By Paul Ackford, Sunday Telegraph 23/09/2007

It’s not often that we find rugby journalists making serious and (hopefully) influential statements about our game but Paul Ackford’s article in today’s Sunday Telegraph strikes me as a real breath of fresh air. What follows is a small excerpt from his cogent article which I recommend highly to all readers.

England’s response to their disastrous defeat against South Africa was to organise a clear-the-air meeting the following day at their team hotel. The conclusions:(…) “We’ve tightened up what we are doing. It’s a bit more regimented.”

In that observation lies the explanation of all England’s present difficulties. It is an indictment of the way the game is played in the Premiership and a revealing insight into the inferior skill sets of the country’s elite players. Put yourself in Brian Ashton’s shoes for a moment. How would you feel if the group you thought capable of the possibility of self-determination turned round and said we’d rather play rugby by numbers? Join the dots rugby. Rugby for imbeciles. No wonder England’s coach has been a bit tetchy of late. The coaching philosophy he has lived his life by and has unsuccessfully tried to communicate to the national side has been thrown back in his face.
(…)
It remains to be seen whether England can extricate themselves from this mess and begin their climb back up the rankings. My sense is that it will take a major clear-out of players and coaches before the revolution can begin. But when a squad’s instinctive response to a reversal is to reach for the blinkers that revolution can’t come soon enough.
(…)
www.telegraph.co.uk/ackford

Re-reading my deleted posts this one seems more than usually pertinent.

Excerpt from an article by Bret Harris in The Australian, July 30, 2007, including quotes from John Muggleton, the Wallabies’ defence coach.

It’s not often that we receive such a cogent and thought-provoking example of current rugby thinking. Perhaps with the World Cup looming we shouldn’t take Muggleton’s back-off’ tactic too seriously, though. The emphasis is mine, however.

…
“Defence has changed completely because the game has changed completely,” Muggleton said. ‘It is more about unstructured play now. Most tries are scored from unstructured play - turnovers, kick-returns. It has actually become a game where people really take the risk in attack, when they know the defence is not set.
…
“The emphasis now is how to go from attack to defence and doing that quickly. If you do lose the ball, what do you do, if they have the numbers?”
…
“You’ve got to get them to waste space,” Muggleton said. “You’ve got to make them pass the ball. You’ve got to make them play away from the scoring zone, while you get organised. So what we do is actually back off and hope they’ll pass the ball towards the sideline, use up passes and use up men so we end up with even numbers and we’ll close it down.

“In the past, we’ve tried to run up and shut it down straight away and that’s where you are disjointed in defence and they can find holes, draw a man and pass. They use up very few numbers, but they have an overlap so they score in the corner.

“Now we back off and let them play. We try and let them use up their advantage, shut them down eventually and try on the next phase to regain control.”

What can I say. Not only was I wrong, I wasn’t even close. France were by far the better team and it just remains to wish them well.
It ain’t over but it’s nearly over.
Bring on Argentina!

It has always seemed to me that rugby writers have some sort of responsability to make a prediction - or at least express a hope - for the outcome of specific matches and as a native of Belfast living in France I suppose that it’s my turn to stick my head above the parapet with regard to tonight’s match. I must warn you, however, that my ability to make correct rugby predictions is about the same as my abilitiy to predict the weather - not too good, to say the least.

Anyway here goes: Ireland to win by less than 10 points. There it’s said!

And why am I taking this controversial position? Well I’ve see the matches to date and have been thoroughly disappointed by the performance of both teams so far - France’s big win over Namibia included! Neither team, it seems to me, has played to it’s potential so far and this being the case the question is: Which team will make the step-up? France, floating on the deceptive bubble of the Namibian win or Ireland, thoroughly disgusted with themselves, and rightly so, for their performances against Namibia and Georgia.

A superior 1st-ten-minutes game plan will help, of course, but at this level I believe that winning matches is all to do with mindset. It’s all to do with desire. There really isn’t much to choose between the teams in terms of fitness, skill and ability. There are slight differences, of course, in abilities in the various departments - the French front row looks marginally stronger and the Irish back row seems better grooved - but overall I don’t see that there’s much to choose between them. Thus, it comes down to which team really wants/needs the victory more and I think that it’s Ireland.

Care to disagree?

The forwards are clearly on top and producing lots of ball but the team isn’t making progress - the backs just don’t seem to be able to penetrate - What’s going wrong?

Could it be that the out-half has caught the dreaded stepitis?

Stepitis: Temporary (mental?) affliction affecting half-backs and especially out-halves at all levels.
Symptoms: Delay in execution after receiving the ball usually indicated by the sufferer taking a few unnecessary steps before passing or kicking. Confirmation of the onset of this condition can be achieved by counting the steps the half takes before moving the ball. More than two steps after every reception provides strong grounds for belief that a severe case exists.

Etiology: Like the ‘yips’ in golf this condition may be caused by ‘trying too hard’; differs from the ‘yips’crucially in that the sufferer is rarely aware of the affliction.

The most common cause seems to be that the sufferer is concentrating on some secondary aspect of his or her game and has lost sight of the crucial need to make his or her decision before receiving the ball - and preferrably well before - so that the best option can be chosen. May be a symptom of pressure-induced anxiety which commonly exacerbates the condition. In theses cases the pressure may be self-induced.

In scrum-halves stepitis is most likely the result of poor technique - they simply haven’t been taught to pass off the ground so they stand up with the ball and then have to make a step before they can pass!

The problem with stepitis is that it diminishes the ability of the entire backline to execute by robbing the second receiver (and hence all subsequent receivers) of both space and time. Centres have to have both space and time to make their strikes but every step the out-half takes effectively reduces the space between the centre and his marker by two crucial yards! What’s worse is that consistently receiving ball and defending tackler simultaneously has been shown to severely reduce the enthusiasm of most centres.

Treatment: The malady often responds immediately to a few well-chosen words from the coach or a senior player. However, in the case of particularly arrogant or self-absorbed players it may become a chronic condition and effectively defy treatment. This is usually accompanied by a ‘loss of form’ and sudden demotion.

Curing the problem in scrum-halves is simply a matter of practice. The (probably apocryphal) remedy is to get a wheel-barrow load of bricks and pass them properly, i.e. without a step, back and forward across your back yard until the symptoms disappear!

(When commentators talk about a player who ‘knows how to get the backline moving’ it usually means he or she doesn’t have Stepitis!)
икони

As previous readers of this blog may have noticed I have been finding it difficult to make everything work correctly - to the point that I have deleted all the previous posts and started again.
I will re-post the most useful of the deleted posts over the next few days.
Thank you for your patience.

So, England have finally told us the truth - taking injuries into account, it has to be said - the minnows, Georgia, Figi, Japan, the US, Samoa, Canada and Tonga, have all provided great hope in their various styles and directions for the safe future of world rugby but the great question remains: who will challenge the All Blacks?

Ireland, Wales, Italy and Scotland have virtually cemented their positions as also-rans so it’s down to Argentina among the so-called second tier. And of the first tier South Africa didn’t show me that they have the overwhelming power nor the overall class to be completely credible yet. Australia looked powerful and incisive for a half and then allowed Wales back into the match and France, while waltzing to a cricket score in a match that was already won with the red card in the first quarter, well, it’s still hard to tell. Do they have the guts?

Sublime rugby was at a definite premium this past weekend although some of France’s tries, much of Georgia’s forward play - in a team apparently with 15 forwards! - and Australia’s flashes of intensity in midfield came close. Turnovers, turnovers and more turnovers, both worked and unintentional seemed to be the order of the day - it’s no wonder that coaches now look to turnovers to provide the scoring opportunities - and there were the usual shockers under the high ball.

Was it always like this? Maybe so. Maybe what we’re doing is putting these matches under the microscope looking for the tiny advantages that make the difference. Well, next week will answer a couple of the remaining questions. How good is France and how bad is Ireland? Is England going home early? Do Argentina have the weapons to destroy Namibia - a la Francaise? Time will tell.

In the interim let’s look at how our selection have fared:

Sébastien Chabal +1, +1
Brian Habana +3, +1
Frédéric Michalak 0, +3
Gordon Darcy +1, 0
Daniel Carter +1,+2
James Hook -2, +1
Victor Matfield+2, 0
Juan Martín Hernández +1, +2