from www.theeastterrace.com 02/9/05

In a surprise move, Sir Clive Woodward unveiled Neil Back, Richard Hill, Ben Kay and Will Greenwood as his first official signings for the Southampton Academy football team.  At yesterday’s spontaneous press conference, Woodward said he was disappointed by the lukewarm reaction to his first meaningful act in football.  In particular, he said he was astonished by the criticism that his new players were too old for the game at academy level.

 ‘That’s such a conventional way of thinking,’ Woodward admonished reporters.  ‘At my first training session I immediately identified the major weakness in age-group soccer.  Basically, the players are too young.  It’s like boys against boys out there, and the likes of Backy and Kayey can bring valuable experience to our opening fixture against Portsmouth Under-18’s.’

Woodward added that this is exactly the kind of innovative thinking the Saints can expect from him as a World-Cup winning coach.  Nevertheless, his unique vision of the academy first team has Greenwood and co not only playing out of position, but in an unfamiliar sport.  Woodward’s enthusiasm remains undimmed.

‘They all had at least one kick-about during their school days, and anyway, positions are just a number on the back.  And soccer is just letters in the alphabet.  When all’s said and done, both games are played with a ball.’

Woodward’s shock move means no place in the Saints academy line-up for local prodigy Eric ‘Ginger’ Purves, scorer of 103 goals in last year’s Hampshire Schools league, and already linked with Manchester United.

‘Don’t get me wrong, Ginger’s a great player,’ Woodward admitted, ‘and the life and soul of the squad.  But he’s only sixteen.  If we’re going to win the Bacardi-Breezer-With-A-Straw-Please Junior Challenge Cup we need experience.  That’s why I’ve brought in the Hills and Backs of this world.  These guys have won World Cups.  We know they can handle the pressure.’

Woodward asked to be judged not on short-term results, but instead on the final of the coxless fours at the 2008 Beijing Olympics.

if you build it they will come

Programme Notes for Guam vs India 18/06/05

 

 To meteorologists, Guam’s region of the Pacific is known as Typhoon Alley.  Occasionally, a big wind comes and blows everything away.  At the end of 2002, Super Typhoon Pongsoona devastated Guam, but somehow the rugby posts on the miraculous Wettengel Rugby Field remained upright.  It was a sign.  Rugby was here, and it intended to stay. 

Guam’s Wettengel Rugby Field, with its impeccable grass, its stands and scoreboard and lights, has become an island landmark.  It provides a focus for all those drawn in by Guam’s remarkably inclusive approach to rugby.  This international-sized arena, fringed with palm trees as a natural barrier against the jungle, features in the sharpest memories of all those newcomers who first played rugby here, on this field.  It has captivated grizzled veterans, school-children, boys, girls, the truly athletic and those who thought they’d never see their toes again. 

So why is this achievement so special?  A mere nine years ago, the island of Guam had no rugby at all, no players, no pitch. 

The field itself is only the most obvious and visible symbol of rugby’s burgeoning presence on the island. Arguably more important is Guam’s dynamic development program.  Three years ago, on their own initiative, a passionate core of Guam’s rugby people decided to find and fund a Youth Development Officer.  They went to Australia, and in a startling demonstration of the ‘can-do’ attitude, brought one back.

This energetic approach to spreading the good news quickly paid dividends.  Within a year, touch rugby was a popular game in eight of Guam’s Middle Schools.  This year, in a triumph for persistence and vision, the Independent Interscholastic Athletic Association of Guam (IIAAG) has sanctioned contact rugby as an official competitive high school sport.  This accomplishment needs to be put in its true perspective – right here on Guam, right now, rugby has become an official school sport within the federal parameters of the United States educational system.  Years from today, when rugby reaches its full potential as a genuinely global sport, this pioneering achievement on a small Pacific island may seem a significant step forward in rugby’s wider international development.

Not that Guam’s school-children are much bothered with their part in history.  They just love the running and passing, the tackling and being tackled, the camaraderie and sporting fellowship that comes with the rugby package.  The official High School League is a competition of increasing quality, full of enthusiasm and outrageous skill.  And that’s not all.  The girls on Guam aren’t going to let the boys monopolise the fun.  There’s also a high-school league for girls’ teams playing ‘tag’ rugby.  On Guam, everyone gets to join the party.

This admirable situation, like the Wettengel Rugby Field, was created from nothing.  The sheer quantity of good faith and hard work that has gone into making such a situation possible makes it that much more likely to endure.  Look at the pitch.  A once rocky, hilly patch of jungle will today host its first IRB World Cup qualifying match.  The Wettengel Field is a thing of beauty in June under brochure-blue skies.  It also has solid foundations.  As well as being pretty, the home-built irrigation systems can drain monsoons and deal with the toughest of Pacific storms. 

No wonder, then, that Guam is already an international rugby venue.  The island’s annual True Grit 10’s has welcomed visiting teams from Australia, Japan, Hong Kong, Saipan, Korea, and France.  All have been enriched by the experience, whatever bumps and bruises they’ve taken away as part of the learning process more commonly known as rugby.  This weekend the Field becomes an international venue in the true sense, staging Guam’s first ever 15-a-side Test match, against India.  Such a proud outcome is a lasting tribute to all the otherwise sane men and women of Guam who have worked so hard to share the joy of rugby.

Today’s Test match and ARFU mid-year Council Meeting are undoubtedly significant milestones in the history of Guam rugby.  Nevertheless, the greater ambition has been to get rugby going here for everyone.  This weekend’s celebration is therefore not an end in itself.  The boys and girls of Guam are learning a love of rugby in the schools.  As they increasingly indulge that passion by rushing down to Wettengel at the weekends, Guam can be optimistic that this is only the first of many similar memorable events.

Guam is also looking forward to benefiting from its transfer to the Asia Rugby Football Union.  As well as making logistical sense, it means that Guam’s national squad can aim to compete with teams in the region of a similar standard.  On the pitch, Guam has developed a reputation as a close-knit group of hard-hitting and tenacious players.  They look fit and well organised, partly because of conditioning schedules that include long runs through the lush interior of the island.  It must be tempting for promising youngsters to join in just for the adventure of the training. 

Off the pitch, visiting Asian Unions can be confident of a warm rugby welcome.  This kind of cultural interchange, generously funded by the IRB, is one of the many benefits of a qualification series for RWC 2007.  Neutral observers all over the world are looking forward to the fresh rugby rivalries and friendships that will last from now for a hundred years.  For Guam, the nostalgia starts now, or if you prefer, these are the golden years when India and Guam first clashed on the once homely Wettengel Field. 

Back in the here and now, Guam has a flourishing rugby community developed exclusively during the professional era.  The island can therefore provide a valuable example of how best to develop the game globally in the twenty-first century.  Rugby on Guam succeeds in blending traditional virtues like commitment, hard work, players and members volunteering skills and time (in return for a huge amount of fun), with a clear-eyed vision of how best to exploit partnerships with business and government.

The money for the impressive Wettengel Rugby Field, for example, comes largely from a $75,000 sponsorship deal with Budweiser.  The club has involved Shell in junior rugby.  Continental Airlines flies in the referees for the True Grit 10’s.  The corporate sector is involved and enthusiastic about Guam’s plans for further development, including a second pitch and leading today’s high school players into tomorrow’s local championship of at least six senior teams.  This island league will then feed players into a national squad to compete throughout the region. 

The rugby people of Guam have achieved miracles, and not small ones, either. Given sufficient resources, Guam’s development program offers a model that can be perfected and rolled out across schools in Asia and the US mainland.  Meanwhile, with IRB support, the Guam Rugby Union will continue to combine official funding, local enthusiasm and corporate involvement to ensure the growth and good health of the game for many years to come.

only in France

Times Column 02/04/05

The Heineken Cup is back, though if you live in mainland Britain none of the glamour or vigour is happening near you.  French clubs earned home advantage in three of the four quarter-finals, but because the French remain generous in providing most of the tournament’s exoticism, one of those matches is actually taking place in Spain. 

Olympique Biarritz host Munster tomorrow afternoon in the Basque city of San Sebastian, adding an even newer sound to the tournament’s many bells and whistles.  Despite ten years of familiarity since Toulouse first dominated the competition, French clubs retain their talent for the unexpected. 

Thankfully so.  Rugby has always needed the French.  They have a habit of seeing things differently, and offer the best living proof, in this era of attempted expansion, that the game can meaningfully transcend its Empire origins.  So how, even after professionalism, have French clubs succeeded in maintaining their distinctness?

One reason is that they’ve always been ahead of the game.  France was banned in 1931 from the then 5 Nations because the clubs were paying players, a full sixty-five years before rugby went professional.  That’s forward-thinking on an epic scale.  They’re already prepared for global warming, and on the hard sunlit pitches of South-West France the players run faster which means less useful work for props and better-looking teams all round.  This in turn puts them in advance of their European rivals when it comes to marketing their stars.  Nude photos of a fit and tanned Fred Michalak do a roaring trade on gay internet sites.  The French were also unsung pioneers of nutritional supplements, recognising exceptionally early the need for a decent Bordeaux with any protein-based main meal.

The result? A vigorous championnat that accommodates an inexhaustible supply of magical backs, but also ferocious front-rows and the coaching input of Dean Richards. 

So there it is, vive la difference, except these days a more significant difference is probably the absence of a salary cap.  This means that Toulouse can put together the heady cultural mix of Isitolo Maka and Trevor Brennan in the back row, Clement Poitrenaud and Gareth Thomas competing for the red and black No.15 shirt.  The big French clubs don’t do either/or.  This is the ‘and’ generation, which is why the likes of Stephen Jones, Dan Luger and Nathan Hines are lured across the Channel.  The French clubs don’t need them, but seeing as they could possibly come in useful, they might as well bring them in.

The richest clubs like Stade Francais and Toulouse are only interested in the best players, which means they mostly buy French.  In this way, the scale of the transfer traffic doesn’t always get through to us.  It explains how Biarritz end up with Betsen, Harinordoquy, Yachvilli, Brusque and Damien Traille.  Stade Francais are more cosmopolitan, introducing Peter de Villiers and Brian Leibenberg to their inner Frenchman, as well as recruiting the best of the Argentines and Italians (Agustin Pichot and the Bergamasco brothers).  The French super-clubs, unrestrained by a salary cap, are already testing out the limits of a Real-Madrid style team of Galacticos. 

It would be nice to think that this concept is equally likely to fail in rugby.  Every year, almost single-handedly, Munster demonstrate that a passionate sense of belonging is always worth points on the board.  Stade Francais bought their way to one European Cup final, where they were overcome by the intact soul of a salary-capped Leicester.  Only Toulouse seem to have found the secret of protecting their native identity while gradually changing personnel, and this is why they’re perennially the most likely of the French challengers. 

Another big difference, this year, is that none of the French players covet a spot with the Lions.  The Lions?  I was so doing so well – not a single mention until now, but the Lions selection is compelling exactly because it’s a type of home-nations galacticomania, only without the money.  For the first stirrings of the real thing, in the professional age, look at the prototype teams running out this weekend in France.  And Spain.  The French clubs are exotic because they’re French, but also because they’re the future.

Times Column 19/03/05

The main event this weekend in Hong Kong is the IRB World Cup Sevens.  Less well-known is the fact that over the last few years Hong Kong’s international week of rugby has been developing a fringe, like the Edinburgh arts festival.  While the main tournament can be spectacular, it can also drag as surely as choreographed fireworks and pipers in the castle.  For the full, glorious range of rugby achievement, look to the wonders of the fringe.

Wednesday and Thursday at the Hong Kong Indoor Sports Hall saw a three-match series of International Wheelchair rugby, in which the New Zealand Wheel Blacks took on England.  Over the same period at the Hong Kong Football Club, 24 teams from fourteen countries competed in a 10’s tournament featuring former stars such as Neil Jenkins and Toutai Kefu.  Across the harbour, Kowloon RFC’s Securicor Kowloon Rugby Fest celebrated its fourth year as a 10’s tournament for touring sides eager to maintain the traditional imbalance between socialising and playing.  True to the ancient spirit of the game, anyone can simply turn up with their boots and join the pick-up team. 

For those unfamiliar with the abridged version of rugby called 10’s, there are ten players on each side, five backs and five forwards, who play for ten minutes each way.  More accommodating than 7’s, the short and fat can play a full part, as can any other adjective keen to pull on a jersey, be it lanky, heavy, light-weight, thin, dim or downright cowardly.  10’s retains the inclusive virtues of fifteen-a-side rugby, and also the tactical variety.  To get technical for a moment, it’s possible and sometimes desirable to stick it up your jumper in 10’s, while the open spaces are always there for the jinkers and outright speedsters. 

The first ever 10’s tournament was held in 1967 in Kuala Lumpur, where the Combined Old Boys Rugby Association (COBRA) were looking for a way to encourage young Malaysians to continue playing rugby after leaving school.  Since then, 10’s has spread throughout Asia, piecing together a thriving circuit that now includes tournaments in Manila, Bangkok, Guam, Bali, and Jakarta.  A new tournament, hoping to share in the Asian-led fun, took place for the first time this year at Bondi in Australia.  If these destinations sound like a paradise dot-to-dot, then that’s an added extra once the sun goes down on the fierce contests that 10’s seems to generate.

There’s no similar popular circuit for 7’s rugby, not even a social fringe event in Hong Kong.  The IRB might like to ponder this, especially since they’ve chosen 7’s as rugby’s vehicle into the Olympics.  Hoping to impress the IOC with the global nature of the game, the IRB like to point out that in 7’s Kenya have twice beaten Australia.  This is great.  Any country beating Australia at any sport should be encouraged.  However, despite their 7’s heroics Kenya are no closer to mounting a challenge at the real-life, fifteen-man RWC France 2007. 

In fact, 7’s is a severely limited means of developing rugby, because however good it may sometimes be to watch, it’s almost impossible for an ordinary mortal to play.  The youth and pace required are insurmountable obstacles to all but the young and quick, and rugby was never intended to be so restrictive.  If Kenya could develop expertise in 10’s, they’d have a much firmer foundation from which to step up to the full game, which could then genuinely aspire to a global reach.

In a straight contest between the two shortened versions of rugby, 10’s is the clear winner.  Infinitely more fun to play, 10’s is also better to watch because it has the variety that 7’s lacks.  In Europe, 10’s rugby lags behind its increasing popularity in Asia.  Not to worry, though.  When the inaugural Hong Kong Sevens asked the RFU for help, back in 1975, the Asian upstarts were refused, just as twelve years later the RFU questioned the merits of a Rugby World Cup.  10’s is moving fast on a wave of popular enjoyment.  The absence of official support is simply rugby’s traditional way of confirming that it’s surely the next big thing.

the walrus

Times Column 5/02/05

In South Africa, prop forward is the position to play.  The prop is ox-strong and stubborn.  He represents qualities that South Africans traditionally value, and when the Springboks have a charismatic front-row they invariably prosper.  More than that: in the unforgiving arena of Test rugby, an archetypal Bok prop like Os Du Randt can make a virtue out of traditional perceptions of national character.

In the days when props were fat and wingers were thin, it was easier to imagine that each position attracted a different type of personality.  The Welsh treasured their nimble and visionary fly-halves, implacable Merlins in the best traditions of mystic Welsh folklore.  The Scots prized their ferocious mongrel breakaways, one among many traits they exported to New Zealand.  The All Blacks have perked up no end behind the roaming and destructive Richie McCaw, and the Scots cherish the same refusal to accept any cause as lost. 

For England, the key player is the lock-forward, the team’s immovable heart of oak, evident in a distinguished line of strong-armed stoics from Johnson through Dooley and Beaumont back to Wavell Wakefield.  The solid second-row is where England will always turn when things start to go wrong. 

These faintly spurious assumptions about national character used to provide much of the spice to the 6 Nations.  The French, for example, have always understood that the flair part of French flair is born in the centre. 

In a recently-published book on the Boniface brothers, who made up a sparkling French midfield partnership in the 1960’s, Denis Lalanne assumes that God is a centre three-quarter. The devil, on the other hand, is half Rugby League and half Australian.  Lalanne thanks God for the space-making genius of the Boniface boys (in over 300 pages), and all other French centres made in His image.  Evidence of divinity translates into an immoderate taste for attack, and an instinctive knowledge of what to tell the forwards: ‘Push!  We’ll do the rest.’

This year, France can play New Zealander Tony Marsh and South African bruiser Brian Liebenburg in the midfield.  Though both fine players, neither is the kind of Gallic craftsman of an opening craved by the French rugby soul.  For some, it’s only a number on the back of a jersey, but true believers know better.  I shall therefore predict the outcome of the 6 Nations by the current plight of each talismanic jersey.

The French are doomed.  The good news for Wales, however, is Stephen Jones at number 10.  If not quite a Merlin, he’s close enough that Wales may even win some matches.  The Scottish had high hopes for the emergence of an old-fashioned open-side terrier in Donnie MacFayden.  Now that MacFayden is out injured, the Scots look as unlikely candidates for glory as at any time since they last had a genuine home-grown breakaway.  Far too long ago.  England have quality locks in abundance, some of whom can’t even make the bench – it might turn out to be a better few weeks than anyone dares expect.

The Italians, with a shorter history in the tournament, are yet to establish which position best matches the unique spirit of their game, and so feeds the national morale.  This may explain why they sometimes lose focus on the pitch.  Strangely enough, Irish rugby too is missing its own emblematic position.  Instead of focussing on one area, the Irish expression of national character has traditionally been to spread the red mist equally in all areas. 

As it happens, this year the Irish have superior players in all the positions coveted by others. They have formidable English-style locks and inventive French centres, a pair of Number 10’s as wily as any Welshman, and in Johnny O’Connor and Denis Leamy two young breakaways stolen-at-birth from across the Irish Sea.

If the Irish can overcome a slightly different rugby tradition, of slipping up when all seems won, then they won’t need a particular jersey with a distinct emotional and historic significance.  That honour will be given to the whole team, all 22 of them, to be treasured collectively for ever.