Times Column 6/11/04

When a referee gets noticed, the saying goes, he’s had a bad game. If so, then this season the refs are in trouble. Rob Andrew (who used to be such a nice boy) lashed into referee Sean Davey after only the second home game of the Premiership campaign. Chris White was booed at Welford Road.  The London Irish coach Gary Gold slammed refereeing standards throughout the league after his side’s one point home defeat to Leeds.

These kind of cry-baby tantrums tend to happen more often before Christmas.  When Andrew had a go at Sean Davey, the season was only three matches old and Newcastle Falcons were top of the league.  It was still possible for Andrew to cross his fingers and hope his team’s dismal performance was all the fault of the ref.  Four matches later and Newcastle have dropped to fifth. Their close encounter against basement club Harlequins now looks a truer indicator of their prospects, and not a result miraculously saved from a dodgy referee.

Just when officiating was fading as an issue, the Heineken Cup arrived to prompt more of the familiar whingeing.  Joel Jutgé was criticised for awarding 30 penalties in the match between Neath/Swansea and Munster. Perpignan had a pop at Nigel Whitehouse after their defeat at Kingston Park, while according to coach Mark Evans, Harlequins were denied their first win of the season by … well, it was the ref what done it.

At this stage, it’s still plausible for most teams in the European Cup to blame the daylight robbery of the referee. By the end of the pool stages, the excuses tend to dry up. The referees are forgotten as the truth is revealed about the teams we love, good or bad, and we conveniently forget the debt the game owes to the man in the middle.

Having said that, the cause of the referee isn’t helped by a misguided attempt to persuade people they’re human. This is a misconception encouraged by enlightened coaches and such humane and honest individuals as New Zealand’s Paddy O’Brien, who this week was publicising his refereeing autobiography entitled If you can do any better, sunshine, you write it. Not really, but every time you disagree with what he says, you get marched back ten pages.

The short-wave radio Reflink, available at Twickenham and several Premiership grounds, has also contributed to this humanisation of the ref. He speaks, he breathes (often very heavily), he stutters and gets confused.  Anyone genuinely interested in what a good ref is saying can save money on Reflink by watching any match involving Tony Spreadbury.  You don’t need radio assistance to hear him, and his reffing works on the principle that because he’s talking, he must be watching.  He talks very loudly, all the time, and he has the players convinced.

While referees are often perceived to be unjust, the Reflink has accidently revealed the greater injustice of players.  The most shameful performance overheard so far comes from John Eales in the 1999 World Cup Final.  Eales repeatedly bluffed referee Andre Watson that he’d take his team off the pitch (in the World Cup Final!) if the French weren’t penalised for gouging, a horrible crime but one for which on this occasion there wasn’t any evidence.  Four year later the same referee, Andre Watson, whistled the 2003 final as if the Australians were still about to take their ball home.

Referees at every level deserve better than the sullen admission that without them there’d be no game.  The best referees are stronger than 30 men put together, and even the worst is as good as the best of the players. It takes more courage to go out there and commit to an opinion than it does to commit to a tackle.  And more knowledge. And the less knowledge, the more courage, so that referees at lower levels and in developing nations are the strongest and bravest of all, even if technically they’re not the most precise. 

Let’s face facts: refs are special people. They have to be, by definition, because unlike the majority of normal people they don’t get their enjoyment from playing or watching. They’re different – they’re not human, of course they aren’t, because to err is human and even the smallest mini-rugby player can tell you that the referee is always right. Even when he’s wrong.

We don’t love our referees enough. Not that it matters. Over the next four weekends of internationals, we can expect to be reminded that the best referees couldn’t care less.

 Times Column 23/10/04

Something is stirring in the land of the rising scrum. At the end of May, Japan outclassed Canada to claim the IRB Super Powers Cup, inspired by 20-year-old fly-half Kyohei Morita. And this autumn, after the fifth weekend of the increasingly competitive Top League, five teams are tied one point behind front-runners Kubota Spears.  Last Saturday alone, Toutai Kefu, Jaco van der Westhuyzen, Glen Marsh and Pita Alatini could be seen in action in Tokyo, with standards rising so fast that not all of them were on the winning side.

Off the pitch, at a glitzy central Tokyo hotel, former prime minister Yoshiro Mori was introduced on Monday as the president of Japan’s 2011 Rugby World Cup candidacy committee. He talked with passion about his love for rugby, and his faith in Japan’s ability to stage a tournament at least the equal of last year’s vibrant extravaganza in Australia.

And why not? Japan is ideally placed to pioneer the World Cup beyond the well-trodden base-camps of the established Unions.  It has the infrastructure, the know-how, and is one of the safest countries on earth.  It also has 100 years of rugby tradition, and more registered players than New Zealand.

Then there’s the vision thing. Rugby’s flagship tournament can be staged in rugby’s new world, next to the planet’s largest emerging sports market. This would go a long way towards convincing sceptics that the IRB is sincere in its ambition to make rugby a truly global sport.

So on the one hand there’s an unmissable opportunity.  On the other, there’s rugby politics. The IRB, shocking though this might sound, can make mistakes. The 1999 World Cup was blighted by a corrosive ho-hum factor, with less than 10,000 people turning out to watch Scotland at Murrayfield. After this fiasco, a consensus seemed to have been reached on the desirability of single nation World Cups.  Yet for 2007, the tournament is heading for France via another proposed pool-share with Ireland, Wales, and Scotland.

Blame the system.  Until now, in selecting the host-nation, the IRB has allowed 21 votes into the pot, two each for the eight foundation Unions (the Home Nations, France, and the Tri-Nations) and one each for Italy, Argentina, Japan, Canada and FIRA (the European Association of Rugby). No-one else in the wider rugby world has a say, despite the fact that the IRB now boasts 96 member Unions from all continents.

To host the World Cup, a country needs 11 of the 21 votes. When France offered a share of their games to Wales, Scotland and Ireland, that immediately created a useful starting cushion of eight votes. Only three more to go. In this way, regardless of the sport’s wider needs, the World Cup can be broken up like an aspirin.  It’s still essentially a good thing, but less so if allowed to fizzle out piece by piece in separate national pools.

For RWC 2011, if the system remains unchanged, Japan’s fellow-contenders New Zealand and South Africa start with twice the number of definite votes – their own. Japan will therefore have to rely on a humdinger of a bid which could single-handedly establish rugby as a global sporting force in the twenty-first century.

Will this be enough? New Zealand lacks infrastructure, with doubts already voiced about the Lions tour, and where everyone’s going to sleep. As for South Africa, it’s difficult to see how rugby can benefit from tailgating the 2010 FIFA football jamboree. If there are hitches or worse in 2010, twelve months is unlikely to be long enough to put the problems right. Or if the football is a huge success, and let’s hope it will be, it’s hard to see what the smaller rugby World Cup can gain by an immediate comparison.

It’s a constant refrain of the voteless Pacific Islanders, justifiably, that the established rugby community does too little to foster and promote the sport outside its traditional strongholds. If rugby is ever to fulfil its potential, it surely needs the courage to move beyond Europe and the Empire’s sporting comfort-zones.

Rugby has many men of courage and proven leadership, some of them council members of the IRB.  Elsewhere, it’s worth listening to one of the great chiefs still taking a lead on the field. Step forward Martin Johnson, speaking last week to the Sunday Times: “Japan have bid for the World Cup. Surely, if we are serious about expanding the game, they have to have it.”

 Times Column 9/10/04

This season, the well-dressed Zurich Premiership player will mostly be wearing – white socks.  Already four clubs, Sale, Bath, Newcastle and Leeds, have sent out teams in the latest rugby fashion, and the country hasn’t seen so many men in white stockings since the court of Charles I.

This surprising new fad is unlikely to be a coded welcome to Prince Harry. So what can be the reasoning behind the decision of four separate Premiership Clubs to choose socks for away-day matches in a colour which might fairly be considered junior schoolish? If not downright netballish.  

Ever since professionalism, kit in rugby has been an issue.  This is partly because as an amateur sport rugby had become so backward that ten years ago teams were still running out in heavy-guage cotton jerseys and shorts with buttons and pockets. Pockets! Of course pockets, or where were the backs supposed to put their hands?  As for the socks, hi-tech meant a cotton tie sewn into the wool, which then stuck out nattily beneath the rollover like a crisp snake’s tongue.

Rugby kit had nowhere to go but forward, and so far its most radical incarnation is the synthetic superhero range revealed for last years’ World Cup.  For once, professional sports-shirt manufacturers couldn’t be accused of marketing cynicism, and trying to shift as many units as possible.  To wear one of these replicas, and not care what your belly looked like, you had to be a true England supporter.  If you could wear one and look good, buffed and chiselled, then you were probably already in the England squad.

It was only a matter of time before someone turned their attention to socks, and this really could be a cynical marketing ploy. Not many fans can wear the shirts or the shorts, but everyone can carry off lycra socks. As at the court of Charles I, even Trevor Woodman and Andy Beattie probably think their calves look shapely in white.

There may also be a valid playing reason.  At some stage in the early nineties, for a match at Cardiff against France, Wales decided to change their socks from red to green. This was to avoid any clash with the French, who also wear red socks, and who were much more likely to be guilty of foul play at close quarters (this was in the days of the innocent Quinnells).  The change didn’t seem to make much difference to the result, but the point had been made.

A clash of sock-colour in rugby can be significant in a way it isn’t in most other team sports.  In the final stages of a shambolic ruck, it may not be easy for the referee to see at a glance which boot is connected to which sock to which leg to which shorts and jersey. Clearly this can affect his decision.  A lower-leg over the ball may be an incompetent attacker delaying release, and even these days incompetence isn’t a punishable offence.  However, it might also be a canny defender getting in the way, which is.

For any coach confident of the virtue of his team, who would never knowingly delay the ball at a ruck with a stray leg, it therefore makes sense to end any possible confusion of socks at the breakdown. And if he’s that sure of their innocence, then the obvious colour to choose is white, pure as the driven snow.

A case could also be made for white socks in open play.  They’re flash, and distracting, and for a flying winger with one man to beat, the white socks can act like Curtly Ambrose’s oversized sweat-band. It’s a simple ploy, and momentarily beguiles the eye.  The defender glances at scything lower legs when he should be concentrating on thighs and hips for the tackle.

Such tiny percentages, we learn from Clive Woodward, add up to a winning combination, and in planning ahead to next summer perhaps he should be thinking socks. The Lions socks seem to have been getting darker with each tour.  They’re supposed to be navy blue, as Scotland’s contribution to the kit, but as the Scottish influence declines they increasingly resemble the English black.

This presents a clear overlap with New Zealand’s sock of choice, and Woodward might like to address the IRB on the problem this can cause both referees and the TV viewer (show them the money).  As the home team, in the courteous tradition of international rugby, New Zealand will have to make a change.

You read it here first – the All Blacks in white socks.  Now that’s a haka I’d pay to see.

 Times Column 25/09/04

This rare close-up of George W. Bush in sporting action was recently discovered and published by the Los Angeles Times. The caption is from the Yale University yearbook of 1969, and the key question is the same for American voters as for rugby adepts.  Can playing rugby, and the way rugby is played, provide any clue as to the character of the man? 

Traditionally, rugby encourages a rainbow of virtues including stoicism, co-operation, dedication, and of course courage. There is also responsibility, decision-making and patience – not a bad list of boxes to tick for an aspiring political leader.

Bill Clinton, another rugby-playing President (spooky, you might think, if you weren’t already beginning to suspect the often unacknowledged role of rugby in presidential politics) certainly valued the educational qualities of the game.  In his recent autobiography, My Life, he remembers a rugby match for his Oxford college in which he was concussed, but refused to leave the field: “As long as you don’t quit, you’ve always got a chance.”

Unfortunately, he learns this lesson from all his other experiences, as well, despite the fact that it isn’t true.  Ask the Scottish rugby team.

The author of the LA Times article which first accompanied the Bush photograph, a Yale lecturer in political science, thought it illustrated Bush’s rough diamond charm.  Boys will be boys.  Punches get thrown and it’s a bit of a lark, and then after the match, at least until discovering religion, we can all have a beer. (In 2001, the Yale rugby club was sanctioned by the New England RFU for keeping a beer keg on the field. During play.).

However, this being an election year, the ball bounces both ways.  Democrat commentators hijacked the photo as evidence that Bush was a cheating thug.  ‘Even in rugby’, one solemn website opined, ‘grasping an opponent by the back of the head and punching him in the face’ isn’t strictly allowed. Except in Gloucester, though in the States they couldn’t be expected to know this.

Disappointingly, this potential Rugbygate lost steam because of the alien nature of rugby to Americans – and I feel it’s our cousinly responsibility to explain the true significance of the image. Let’s look at it more closely, from a rugby point of view.

Bush appears to be travelling backwards. Instead of putting his weight into a punch, it seems more likely that he’s falling off a tackle, his fist clenched from an attempt to grab his opponent’s collar.  Still photos can freeze all-action rugby players in an endless variety of bizarre poses, a fact exploited on the covers of ‘humorous’ rugby books showing players clutching each other’s goolies.  When they don’t. In case you were wondering. 

Back in the Bush photo, notice that his opponent has a firm grasp on the ball. This is not a contest the future President is winning. So, for the Democrats, it seems that George is living up to his boast that he ‘didn’t learn a damn thing’ at Yale. He certainly didn’t learn how to tackle.

In the interests of parity, however, and as ammunition for Republicans, it’s known that George W. Bush played as a winger. The tackle seems to be taking place in the left corner with Bush’s team defending. This means he’s run the long distance from his natural position on the right to provide the last line of defence for his team. Also, he’s not even wearing a gum-shield, while his opponent has a scrumcap.  In the late sixties, this means he’s a forward, and therefore probably bigger and stronger than the feisty Bush, who is officially ‘just under’ six feet tall (as are many diminutive wingers and all men under six feet).

The truth is that in rugby the nature of a player can never be captured in a single image. To make any character judgement of value, we need to see the whole game, an entire season, off the pitch as well as on.

More than thirty-five years after this match at Yale, it’s also true that a President of the United States will influence ever more disparate spheres of human experience. Rugby isn’t excluded.  Last Monday, in Tokyo, 15,000 people watched Waseda University beat Oxford, in a match to commemorate the death of the Japanese diplomat Katsuhiko Oku.  Ambassador Oku played rugby for both universities, and in 1983 was the first Japanese player to represent the Blues XV at Oxford.  He was killed last year in Iraq.

Times Column 11/09/04

Fifty-one thousand people turned out at Twickenham last Saturday to swing a bottle at the launch of the Zurich Premiership 2004/5.  A new campaign begins, and in rugby, the winter season in hostile weather most closely resembles a naval campaign. From about the time of the Battle of Trafalgar, and not only because in Europe the French are still the biggest obstacle.

All the clubs know where they plan to go, with a fair wind, and at every level of the game from Premiership to South Lancs/Cheshire 4, everyone has a chance at glory. The professionals get the treasure.  The rest make do with rum and sea-shanties, but as in those Master and Commander Men o’ War, the crew each club has on board now will take their chances, increasingly ragged and bruised, until they eventually limp into the port of next May. It’s hard to recruit in mid ocean, especially when respecting the salary cap.  

What stands in the way of success? The Fates, who famously have no feelings and are blind: the referees, of course. Meanwhile, the coaches have a scheme for every eventuality, but it’ll be six months before we find out who are the Horatio Nelsons, the Admiral Warren Gatlands, and who the crazy Ahabs.

Obviously, it’s not like a sea voyage in every respect.  Rugby players get more lucozade.  And ships need captains. During the last fortnight, Club England has managed to lose both its admiral and its captain. The flagship is drifting, haunted by echoes on the wind of an exotic, already half-forgotten tongue: ‘business principles’, ‘judge me’, ‘the guys,’. 

Earlier than usual, leadership is an issue.  The England vacancy at captain seems simple enough, as Jonny’s omnipotence should by definition include captaincy.  Perhaps he can also be asked his opinion on the coach. 

It’s Woodward’s choice of Lions captain that now becomes the more intriguing appointment, as a measure of his ability to learn from mistakes. While with England, he twice appointed Lawrence Dallaglio. Both times it ended in tears, most recently with the man in the captain’s hat first off the listing ship. 

On the field, Dallaglio led from the front.  Unfortunately, he often seemed confused about where he was going. In this style of leadership (it might be called the Atherton method), there’s no doubting the grit and hardness of the individual. This type of captain is at his best in a losing cause, when no difficult or imaginative decision needs to be taken, and leading means simply bearing the brunt.  Which Dallaglio did magnificently this summer in the Southern hemisphere. 

What he and Woodward seem to have in common is a powerful idea of how they’d like to appear to others.  Early in his England career, Dallaglio developed an off-the-ball strut which made it look as if he had a barrel under each arm, and one between his legs.  Richard Hill also has impressive muscles, but they never seemed to stop him walking normally. 

Dallaglio’s hard-man posturing, like Woodward’s pose as the self-styled ‘Crazy Professor’, can be tremendously productive. It gives them both an ideal for which to aim.  But on the pitch, way out at sea, under intense pressure, postures and ideals become insufficient. Beyond the pretence there’s always something stronger: the thing in itself.

Step forward Martin Johnson. The thing. Let’s call his leadership the Nelson method.   For this kind of rare and straight-forward leader, performing for the captain means benefiting the team. The captain clearly has no self-serving motive.  He then inspires his men to take the next, daring step: the achievement of the team affects the well-being of the individual soul. It determines self-esteem, pride, and the collective satisfaction known as morale.

With Woodward now revealed as a man so conflicted he muddles his backgrounds and his foregrounds, it seems increasingly clear that along with an exceptional group of players, captain Johnson was his greatest stroke of luck. It augurs well for the Lions to have such a lucky coach, but it’s worth remembering that Johnson wasn’t Woodward’s preferred choice. 

After Dallaglio’s first resignation, the risk-taker Woodward was forced into a risk-free zone.   Johnson had already proved himself as captain of the 97 Lions, a job for which he was selected by Ian McGeechan. Now that McGeechan has been pencilled in to help with the 2005 tour, perhaps Woodward should delegate to his expert the task of selecting the captain.

The rest of the fleet, meanwhile, on less exalted missions than the conquest of New Zealand, are already under sail.