Although it was a rather predictable final, World Cup 2007 has been a fascinating spectacle from beginning to end. With grounds throughout France being on average over 90% full, unfancied teams playing well above expectations, huge commitment shown by the players, and some incredible upsets along the way, there have been so many talking points.
I was so pleased to see Argentina finish the tournament playing near to their best and at last displaying their wonderful attacking potential. On Friday night, they blew apart a pumped up home side – their six win in seven matches against the French. It is surely a matter of when, not if, they will be granted a place in either the Six Nations or Tri-Nations competitions.
The final itself probably can’t be described as a classic match, but it was much better than the two semi-finals the previous weekend. Every scrum, every breakdown, and every tackle was so competitive and the intensity matched the momentous occasion. South Africa knew that they had the power, skill and maturity to enable them to play a fairly restrictive game-plan and win the match. If Mark Cueto had dived a fraction lower when trying to score in the corner in the second half, then things would have been much more problematic for the Springboks, but they always looked in control of their destiny. Credit, though, must also go to England for pushing them so hard and showing so much resilience over the past three weeks.
‘Rugby at the crossroads’ has been a much-utilized phrase since the game turned professional, but in playing terms I do believe that this World Cup has shown that changes must be made if the adventurous, attacking element of the game is to be maintained.
Anton Oliver, an intelligent and experienced All Black, seems ideally placed to pass judgment on rugby union today. His comments on the problems of trying to play attacking rugby – made a couple of weeks before the shock quarter-final defeat against France – are tellingly prescient, given the rugby we’ve seen during the latter stages of the World Cup. The 32-year-old believes that defence is so important nowadays that international rugby has become mechanized, predictable and dominated by kicking.
"If you look at it like an engineer would look at it, you would see that back in 1995, the mean body weight of an All Black was about 95-100 kilos and now it is about 110-112. So, therefore, the ground should have grown at the same rate, but the ground has stayed the same and everyone is getting bigger, faster and stronger. We are able to work for longer and cover more spaces.”
While I would argue that there will always be space somewhere on a rugby field – and the All Blacks, Fiji and Tonga have shown that to be true during the last few weeks - Oliver’s worries can’t be overlooked. It has never been more the case that having a strong defence and eliminating errors is the best strategy for winning Test matches. Perhaps it is time now to change some of the laws to encourage teams to try things to open up the game.
One law in the game that frustrates me is that of a penalty being awarded for failing to release the ball. At the weekend, during the Melrose-Hawick match, I saw a brilliant break from the highly promising Hawick stand-off, Rory Hutton. He attacked from deep inside his own twenty-two and must have beaten three or four would-be tacklers before being tackled near the halfway line. As he had run clear of his support, he was then penalised – correctly by referee Malcolm Changleng – for holding on to the ball. Melrose kicked the ball to the corner and scored from the resulting lineout. It’s an anomaly in our game that players should be punished so severely for trying to play attacking rugby.
Of all the skills that have been improved over the last ten years, being low at the breakdown and getting your hands on the ball – either to slow it down or force a turnover – has been one area where players have become very effective. It’s evident that coaches in the professional era have focused on this in training, and it has been a major strength in the play of England, South Africa and Argentina - three sides that made it to the last four of the World Cup. Should we not be celebrating or trying to improve the attacking abilities of our players?
I know many lovers of the union game would call it an act of heresy, but looking at rugby league might be helpful at how we can improve our game. Attacking play is encouraged in league because anybody attempting a line-break is safe in the knowledge that they won’t be penalised for holding on to the ball if they are too far ahead of their support. (Likewise, league currently has the advantage over union in that you can’t go through umpteen phases of pick-and-go’s, as the ball is handed over to the opposition after six phases of possession).
The IRB have experimented with law changes before and are in the midst of deciding what needs to be altered to continue you to keep the elite end of rugby as much about running and passing than tackling and kicking. It will be interesting to see what they come up with.
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