What next...i think i like this journalist.

[The Lone Hydrangea]

Chris Rattue: This was one of the great test victories
5:00AM Monday July 02, 2007
By Chris Rattue


Sometimes finding the big picture is too hard. So, a few snapshots from the Melbourne test match instead.

* Test matches like this are fabulous. It's what international sport should be about. Gripping to the end. A glorious battle which gets the juices flowing. That's why the Springboks' decision to rest 20 players is a travesty. We're getting robbed. There has been the odd comment already that Saturday night's test wasn't a classic - but I disagree wholeheartedly. What do people want? Frilly test football? Test matches are about duking it out in the trenches and working every situation to your best advantage. I love those scrum resets and tactics. I even enjoy, in a perverse way, getting mad at George Gregan because he won't put the ball in. Gregan milked the scrum situations brilliantly.

* Well done Australia. You were magnificent - a written-off side (guilty here) who were under the pump but bravely held their nerve, and emerged victorious through a mixture of technique and tenacity. This was one of the great test victories. It has put the emphasis squarely back where it should be - on the Tri-Nations and Bledisloe Cup rather than the World Cup for now.


The All Blacks' R and R programme got a serious kicking in Melbourne. Yahooo. Manna from heaven.

I'm a committed opponent of Graham Henry's rest and reconditioning plan, New Zealand rugby at its most cringe-inducing conceitedness. Hey look at us - we're so important and winning the WC is so vital to our sorry little state we're prepared to stuff up an entire multimillion-dollar competition without regard for anybody else.

So stick the R and R ...

If we can't win the World Cup without destroying the rest of the game, well so be it. We'll have to live without it. The sun will still shine, the grass will still grow. Can you imagine English football pulling players out of half of the premiership. It wouldn't be allowed, and nor should it.

The rugby World Cup is a test of the ability to claim the highest honour because of and in spite of advantages and hurdles. It's not supposed to turn everything else into a wasteland.


Right, got that off the chest. So what of the programme itself then?

It was only ever a theory, and not a sure-fire one. The All Blacks appear short on the battle hardness which enables players to produce their best when under pressure.

Does it work? Maybe yes for some players and no for others. Tony Woodcock is playing sublime football. Yet both Dan Carter and Keven Mealamu appear to have had their instincts dulled. Mealamu is doing a decent job, but he's lost that zest which made him a unique front rower.

Apart from Mils Muliaina, the backs - never in need of R and R anyway - looked badly out of sorts in Melbourne. Sportsmen who get to this level thrive on the battle. They don't like sitting on the sidelines for long periods. I suspect at least a few aren't all that fussed on being reduced to marionettes in the hands of power-crazed coaches either.

And if the R and R programme was so necessary, how come Australia - whose players took a full part in the Super 14 - appear to be getting stronger. Their resilience was superb in Melbourne. The R and R plan was a grandiose scheme and I'll gladly take any opportunity to put the boot into it.

* Rico Gear. Cut out those post-try hand signals son - although if you're still working out which is the right and left thumb, get help. (Tip - the one making the L-shape is the left) Silly hand signals look even sillier when you drop bombs and miss vital tackles.

* Ali Williams. He may be a loony, but he's also a test dynamo and we miss him. Badly.

* Deep breath ... you've got to hand it to the Australian tight forwards. Their seriously outmatched scrum was a glorious memorial to the ultimate cling-on prop Bill Young, who hoodwinked his way through an entire test career. Matt Dunning is going to be a sorry bag of bones by the end of the season though. He will need extended R and R, as in rest and reconstruction.

* Marius Jonker. The ref. Where was he looking when Australia's retreating runners parked themselves offside in the first half. Lazy refereeing meets lazy running.

* Stirling Mortlock equals Mils Muliaina. The All Blacks must play Muliaina - who was terrific at fullback in Melbourne - at centre whenever they face Mortlock. The big Aussie was brilliant, but he should face tougher opposition than makeshift centre Luke McAlister's nightclub-act defence. It's also unfair on McAlister playing him out of position at this level, just as it was promoting Isaia Toeava too quickly.

* Are the Australians peaking too early? Or have they peaked at all?

* Is Stephen Larkham held together by tape, or is a wad of tape being held together by Stephen Larkham?

* Is John O'Neill a New Zealand rugby jinx?

* Will the real Dan Carter ever come back?


Wonders never cease. A Kiwi who actually can give credit where credit is due.

[Happy]

hehe very funny reading!!

[The EnForcer]

It's kind of written like some of our rants on TWF....good to see a bit of different reporting.

[travelling_gerry]

Much better to read then the diatribe of "Grumbling Growden"

[Em-Forcer]

(By Chris Rattue)
* Is Stephen Larkham held together by tape, or is a wad of tape being held together by Stephen Larkham?

(By Chris Rattue) If we can't win the World Cup without destroying the rest of the game, well so be it. We'll have to live without it. The sun will still shine, the grass will still grow.
The rugby World Cup is a test of the ability to claim the highest honour because of and in spite of advantages and hurdles. It's not supposed to turn everything else into a wasteland.

I couldn't agree more!!! (as long as that doesn't contradict my view on a bit of gamesmanship within the world cup itself, vis a vis saving your strongest team for the must-win matches... )

[JediKnight]

Great article!! Finally a journalist who knows how to write.

[shasta]

I agree 100% on his assessment of the match as a spectacle and what made it one. It was gripping, trench warfare type stuff. The game does not need to be tinkered with too much. It's pretty bloody good as it is.

I had to work on Saturday nite but we had 2 tellies rigged for the match. I'm the only rugby supporter on my shift and most had lost interest by half time. But by the time AAC had scored they began to get interested again and by the end they were all glued to the screen shouting encouragement for the boys.

Including "WTF's going on UMP the fuggin siren's gone! Are ya fuggin' deaf or what?"

[rick boyd]

Chris Rattue: This was one of the great test victories
5:00AM Monday July 02, 2007
By Chris Rattue

I'm a committed opponent of Graham Henry's rest and reconditioning plan, New Zealand rugby at its most cringe-inducing conceitedness. Hey look at us - we're so important and winning the WC is so vital to our sorry little state we're prepared to stuff up an entire multimillion-dollar competition without regard for anybody else.

So stick the R and R ...

If we can't win the World Cup without destroying the rest of the game, well so be it. We'll have to live without it. The sun will still shine, the grass will still grow. Can you imagine English football pulling players out of half of the premiership. It wouldn't be allowed, and nor should it.

This is the kind of thing journos like to say in the popular press, kind of like a rock star declaring himself in favour of world peace and propserity, knowing they have no responsibility to make it happen or deal with the consequences.

It sounds good but its hopelessly naive.

I agree that the world cup is an ugly, bloated monster that is distorting and devaluing the great traditions of test rugby, and that must be urgently addressed by the IRB. It was supposed to be a great carnival of rugby, not the be-all and end-all of rugby.

I also think the rugby season is also too long. It starts in February with the Super 14, continues through the test match series from June to August, followed by provincial rugby (including the ARC in Australia this year for the first time) and culminates in overseas tours in November/December.

No player can peak for all that time, or even play for all that time, and it is resulting in player burnout, increasing injuries, fragile players, too much rugby, monotonous annual series and devalued tests with B teams, rotational teams and teams that are tired and uninterested.

This also needs to be addressed urgently by the IRB.

In the meantime, the paying public insists that the world cup is the most important thing and national coaches are instructed to devote all their energies to it. It would naive to think that this can also mean full value in the rest of the rugby season. Expect more B teams, more rest and reconditioning periods and more devalued tests.

Ignoring the world cup is not an option until the IRB takes serious steps over season length and test match standards, and the paying public starts to realise the world cup is not the only important thing in rugby. Winning it requires only two serious knockout games, after all. Winning the Tri-Nations is much harder and a much better indicator of ability than the world cup.

[Burgs]

I would have less issue with "B Teams" if the matches weren't still classified as Test Matches.

Regarding the importance of the RWC, if World Rugby continues/d down the path of the only important Rugby being the Tri Nations and Six Nations every year then what we will have in 2057 is exactly the same thing, nine Nations playing the "important" Tests each year and the rest left to fend for themselves.
The role of the WC (although the media don't portray this) is as much about the "minnows" having a four yearly focus to benchmark their development and to have access to their best players from around the globe for that period as it is about who wins the Final.
Also, the actual World Cup isn't just the matches being played in France, Wales and Scotland this Spring, it is a complete package of knockout matches that have been going on around the Rugby globe since September 2004.
To quote from an IRB article:

A record 86 nations from five continents took part in the qualifying process for Rugby World Cup 2007 with 191 matches held over 932 days to determine which 12 teams would join the eight automatic qualifiers in France.

The first took place at the Molt Illustre Conseille General in Andorra la Vella, the capital city of the Principality located between France and Spain in the Pyrennes region, on 4 September 2004 with Andorra running out 76-3 winners over Norway.

The final qualifier was some two years, six months and 21 days later at the Estadio Parque Central del Club Nacional in Montevideo, where the hosts suffered heartbreak as Portugal ran out 24-23 winners on aggregate despite Uruguay’s 18-12 win on 24 March.

In the same period as making the elite version of the code professional the IRB has managed to keep most of the second and third tier nations as competitive as they had been in the amateur years and in some cases have actually seen a vast improvement in skill and player depth.
I would confidently claim that the 2007 Argentinians and Samoans could (and possibly would) beat the 1991 Wallabies and 1995 Springboks and this has only occurred by individuals playing in European Club Rugby and gathering once every four years for any meaningful Test Matches.
If we wish to develop any sort of meaningful depth in World Rugby to attempt to rival Soccer/Football then the RWC is currently the only way that the IRB has to get the Top Nations to play the Minnows.

[AndyS]

I absolutely agree - what we see of the world cup from the top looking down must be a very different thing from the view looking up, where the support is available to have, say, Sri Lanka play Kazakhstan home and away as part of the qualifying process. That sort of support must be something else for the (presumably) amateur players in those countries.

[Burgs]

I've collated the summary of each Regions Qualifying process here: http://thewholeforce.com/showthread.php?t=8685

[hopep]

and a fine posting it is Burgs.

More power to the minnows, look forward to the occasional upset win.

[shasta]

If we wish to develop any sort of meaningful depth in World Rugby to attempt to rival Soccer/Football then the RWC is currently the only way that the IRB has to get the Top Nations to play the Minnows.

Well not quite the only way to develop that depth. I hope the IRB has the will and the funding to continue with the Pacific Nations Cup and to promote similar arrangements in other parts of the globe.

As we've seen, the biggest hurdle developing nations have to get over is the absence their pro-contracted countrymen from most fixtures except the RWC.

This year's PNC has allowed semi-pros and a few S14 contracted players to develop as teams leading into RWC 2007. As Burgs alluded to, I'm hoping we see the best performances yet from them this time, with these players better able to blend with their Euro-based pros.

I see more value there than in the ritual floggings handed out to most them every 4 years so far.

Second XV "test" teams: I reckon there's probably only one solution. It's not a new one - establish a "World Test Season". The scheduling of a reasonable "off-season" might be easier with such a set-up.