Welcome and Ireland
In light of recent events in Welsh rugby I couldn't help but feel I wanted a say. Perhaps this is a telling indictment on the goldfish bowl that is Welsh rugby; everyone seems to want a say, nonetheless at least I'm not using it to influence the actual set-up .... unless of course they ask me.
So where do I start: with Ruddockgate? With Johnsongate? or how about Lewisgate?
To be honest I'd prefer to start with what happened on the pitch and just off it.
I understand that the Welsh team don't like Graham Thomas, my father has been calling him some less than flattering names for some time now, and that maybe he hasn't done anything legally wrong, but did the Beeb really have to bring him back for the Ireland game? Apart from being about as unrepentant as Casanova after yet another conquest, Thomas also comes across as insufferably smug. Perhaps it's merely my interpretation (god knows there's enough of those on the pitch let alone off it) but he seemed very keen to clearly enunciate Scott Johnson as 'Caretaker Welsh coach' and also declare, with what can only be deemed a smug grin, that Johnson's reign had begun with a loss.
Two things spring immediately to mind.
The first, that he is more than happy to chew the bones over a Welsh loss in such absymal style (more on that later) but secondly, it somehow gave a two-fingered salute to the players themselves. Personally I don't believe in commentators who have zero rugby experience even at club level, being able to adequately understand what an international rugby match feels like. I also hate this 'smarter than thou' attitude from the media. It seems we really are a cannibalistic people willing to eat our own at the smallest of persuasions. There is always a 'but' in Welsh rugby, some reason to not fully back the team and set-up. Partly this is the management's fault for not staying in the background and creating ideal conditions for the team, but mainly we just don't give our players a rest. Alfie is a prime example. They love him in France, where he plays at their joint biggest club (Stade or Toulouse is a toss-up to me) yet within a few hours of entering Wales he has a breakdown (I will be covering this issue in a coming post)
So with that off my chest, the Ireland game. Could we have started any better without putting more points on the scoreboard? The rugby was fluid, we made several deep, scything incisions through the Irish defence, mostly off the back of Stephen Jones. Had we had the wind in our favour, we may have been 12-15 points clear. Instead disaster struck, hopefully Jones's dead leg will recover quicker than Shane William's has, and Wales's lack of depth in such a crucial position had been exposed. On at least two occasions Stephen Jones got in behind Ronan O'Gara's shoddy defence, and we looked at the races. Without Stephen Jones we were lost. For all those who view Gavin Henson as a future Wales No10, sorry but he doesn't fit the position. I'm not referring to the lunancy to give him a place in the Wales squad after five games rugby all season, or on the basis of one match in ten weeks (which was poor anyway) but he simply does not have a rugby brain for decisions. His ability to play the game is governed by someone else putting the ball in his hands and saying Gav, go play your game. Not him receiving the ball from the scrum-half and being asked, in a split second, to make a potentially game-changing decision. In all fairness to the lad he wasn't the brightest in school and his headless-chicken displays at 10 are evidence of this. (Incidentally if ten years down the line he is remembered as the greatest Welsh outside-half of all time (that will take some doing) I will hold my hand-up and say maybe I was a little wrong)
If not Stephen Jones, if not Henson, then who? For a country who has produced some of the greatest magicians of all time, we are in dire need of some new talent to come rolling off the No10 production line. Ceri Sweeney is a decent utility back whose progress has been rapid in it's backward movement. Matthew Jones is too small, even for a Welsh 10, and lacks that initial acceleration so vital for the international game and to the way Wales play. That leaves us with exactly nobody. The boy Hook playing for the Under-21s looks very good but Wales is a graveyard for youth players who have promised much but never made it onto the big stage. Assuming he does get into the senior set-up AND turns out to be international class, then we will still be short a back up for him. It's not a great scenario to say the least and I think the WRU needs to take it's remit of youth development even more seriously. All credit to them and the coaching staff for the way the youth teams are playing, Under-21 Grandslam last year to go with the senior side's and looks like being an Under-19 one this year, but it needs to be stepped up. Two of the options that will likely not be countenanced in this process, for monetary reasons, are the revival of a Wales 'A' team or creating a fifth region, purely so all these great young players will have somewhere to go, other than one of the four region's benches, once they are considered senior players. It's sad that this cannot be done because with the current Welsh structure, young players are still being lost. No-one can have had more of a change in fortunes than Chris Czekaj over the last eight months. Then there are Under-21 players like James Merriman languishing on Gloucester's bench if he's lucky. At some point we will lose senior players, this season is a prime example, and new blood must be given a chance to play, in order to create competition for those open places.
Got a little, necessarily, sidetracked there. What has disappointed me most about the Six Nations to date is the refereeing. Now I understand refs cop way more flak than is right. I also understand that refs are human. What I don't understand is why a paid international referee, with a precise and exacting structure behind him, can get away with making so many mistakes. Take any Six Nations game this season and you'll see some absolute howlers. More annoyingly though, is the use of Southern Hemisphere referees. All I can say (not really) is why? Why did the Scotland vs England match have an Irish ref, the France vs Italy match have an English ref and the Ireland vs Wales game have a South African ref? I don't understand. In the first game when Wales played England there was a New Zealand ref who missed so many vital errors/decisions that it was hard to credit. Fast forward a week to the Scotland game and Wales have another New Zealand ref, Steve Walsh, who the commentators down under call 'Elvis' because he always has to be in the spotlight (see his Super 14 performance this week if you don't believe me) had a mare. Mostly some terrible decisions given against Scotland.
So OK, fair enough they tried to quicken the games up with Southern Hemisphere referees at the start of the tournament and it didn't work, so why keep only one for the third week? It doesn't make sense that you have refs like Alan Roland who speaks fluent French, is familiar with all the French players through the Heineken cup and refs all the big French-English Heineken cup encounters, not having a game because southern hemisphere refs are supposed to be better. All the games in the last three weeks have been fractured encounters purely because of poor decisions and an unfamiliarity with the competition and it's players. I'm amazed none of the Six Nations have complained about the appointments because this would not happen down under. After all it's not exactly been an issue in the last hundred years of Northern Hemisphere rugby. There have been some good games and some decent rugby in the tournament to date, but oh for an invisible whistle blower.
Another factor is that there are just too many rules against positive, fluid play. It's too technical a game now. A player runs accidentally into his own man and then gets tackled anyway - do we really need to stop the game, have a scrum or penalty given to the opposition for that? Or a player jumping for a ball he's not going to get - is that a yellow card? A lot of the refs in the international game have not played first class rugby and so don't have what I'd call a 'feel' for the game. They use every possible law when it suits them, if it was consistent there wouldn't be a problem, but they aren't. players are being frustrated by the varying treatment during a game with the same ref and with different refs over the course of a season. Yes you play to the ref, but when the ref isn't being consistent then it becomes impossible to do that at international levels where the margins are so small. Consistency in interpretation is all that is being asked.
Which just about concludes my opening rant :) Over the coming days and weeks I will be expounding my views on rugby, for what they're worth, and I make no apology if they focus on Welsh rugby in particular. It is after all the reason I started this. Keep on rucking
So where do I start: with Ruddockgate? With Johnsongate? or how about Lewisgate?
To be honest I'd prefer to start with what happened on the pitch and just off it.
I understand that the Welsh team don't like Graham Thomas, my father has been calling him some less than flattering names for some time now, and that maybe he hasn't done anything legally wrong, but did the Beeb really have to bring him back for the Ireland game? Apart from being about as unrepentant as Casanova after yet another conquest, Thomas also comes across as insufferably smug. Perhaps it's merely my interpretation (god knows there's enough of those on the pitch let alone off it) but he seemed very keen to clearly enunciate Scott Johnson as 'Caretaker Welsh coach' and also declare, with what can only be deemed a smug grin, that Johnson's reign had begun with a loss.
Two things spring immediately to mind.
The first, that he is more than happy to chew the bones over a Welsh loss in such absymal style (more on that later) but secondly, it somehow gave a two-fingered salute to the players themselves. Personally I don't believe in commentators who have zero rugby experience even at club level, being able to adequately understand what an international rugby match feels like. I also hate this 'smarter than thou' attitude from the media. It seems we really are a cannibalistic people willing to eat our own at the smallest of persuasions. There is always a 'but' in Welsh rugby, some reason to not fully back the team and set-up. Partly this is the management's fault for not staying in the background and creating ideal conditions for the team, but mainly we just don't give our players a rest. Alfie is a prime example. They love him in France, where he plays at their joint biggest club (Stade or Toulouse is a toss-up to me) yet within a few hours of entering Wales he has a breakdown (I will be covering this issue in a coming post)
So with that off my chest, the Ireland game. Could we have started any better without putting more points on the scoreboard? The rugby was fluid, we made several deep, scything incisions through the Irish defence, mostly off the back of Stephen Jones. Had we had the wind in our favour, we may have been 12-15 points clear. Instead disaster struck, hopefully Jones's dead leg will recover quicker than Shane William's has, and Wales's lack of depth in such a crucial position had been exposed. On at least two occasions Stephen Jones got in behind Ronan O'Gara's shoddy defence, and we looked at the races. Without Stephen Jones we were lost. For all those who view Gavin Henson as a future Wales No10, sorry but he doesn't fit the position. I'm not referring to the lunancy to give him a place in the Wales squad after five games rugby all season, or on the basis of one match in ten weeks (which was poor anyway) but he simply does not have a rugby brain for decisions. His ability to play the game is governed by someone else putting the ball in his hands and saying Gav, go play your game. Not him receiving the ball from the scrum-half and being asked, in a split second, to make a potentially game-changing decision. In all fairness to the lad he wasn't the brightest in school and his headless-chicken displays at 10 are evidence of this. (Incidentally if ten years down the line he is remembered as the greatest Welsh outside-half of all time (that will take some doing) I will hold my hand-up and say maybe I was a little wrong)
If not Stephen Jones, if not Henson, then who? For a country who has produced some of the greatest magicians of all time, we are in dire need of some new talent to come rolling off the No10 production line. Ceri Sweeney is a decent utility back whose progress has been rapid in it's backward movement. Matthew Jones is too small, even for a Welsh 10, and lacks that initial acceleration so vital for the international game and to the way Wales play. That leaves us with exactly nobody. The boy Hook playing for the Under-21s looks very good but Wales is a graveyard for youth players who have promised much but never made it onto the big stage. Assuming he does get into the senior set-up AND turns out to be international class, then we will still be short a back up for him. It's not a great scenario to say the least and I think the WRU needs to take it's remit of youth development even more seriously. All credit to them and the coaching staff for the way the youth teams are playing, Under-21 Grandslam last year to go with the senior side's and looks like being an Under-19 one this year, but it needs to be stepped up. Two of the options that will likely not be countenanced in this process, for monetary reasons, are the revival of a Wales 'A' team or creating a fifth region, purely so all these great young players will have somewhere to go, other than one of the four region's benches, once they are considered senior players. It's sad that this cannot be done because with the current Welsh structure, young players are still being lost. No-one can have had more of a change in fortunes than Chris Czekaj over the last eight months. Then there are Under-21 players like James Merriman languishing on Gloucester's bench if he's lucky. At some point we will lose senior players, this season is a prime example, and new blood must be given a chance to play, in order to create competition for those open places.
Got a little, necessarily, sidetracked there. What has disappointed me most about the Six Nations to date is the refereeing. Now I understand refs cop way more flak than is right. I also understand that refs are human. What I don't understand is why a paid international referee, with a precise and exacting structure behind him, can get away with making so many mistakes. Take any Six Nations game this season and you'll see some absolute howlers. More annoyingly though, is the use of Southern Hemisphere referees. All I can say (not really) is why? Why did the Scotland vs England match have an Irish ref, the France vs Italy match have an English ref and the Ireland vs Wales game have a South African ref? I don't understand. In the first game when Wales played England there was a New Zealand ref who missed so many vital errors/decisions that it was hard to credit. Fast forward a week to the Scotland game and Wales have another New Zealand ref, Steve Walsh, who the commentators down under call 'Elvis' because he always has to be in the spotlight (see his Super 14 performance this week if you don't believe me) had a mare. Mostly some terrible decisions given against Scotland.
So OK, fair enough they tried to quicken the games up with Southern Hemisphere referees at the start of the tournament and it didn't work, so why keep only one for the third week? It doesn't make sense that you have refs like Alan Roland who speaks fluent French, is familiar with all the French players through the Heineken cup and refs all the big French-English Heineken cup encounters, not having a game because southern hemisphere refs are supposed to be better. All the games in the last three weeks have been fractured encounters purely because of poor decisions and an unfamiliarity with the competition and it's players. I'm amazed none of the Six Nations have complained about the appointments because this would not happen down under. After all it's not exactly been an issue in the last hundred years of Northern Hemisphere rugby. There have been some good games and some decent rugby in the tournament to date, but oh for an invisible whistle blower.
Another factor is that there are just too many rules against positive, fluid play. It's too technical a game now. A player runs accidentally into his own man and then gets tackled anyway - do we really need to stop the game, have a scrum or penalty given to the opposition for that? Or a player jumping for a ball he's not going to get - is that a yellow card? A lot of the refs in the international game have not played first class rugby and so don't have what I'd call a 'feel' for the game. They use every possible law when it suits them, if it was consistent there wouldn't be a problem, but they aren't. players are being frustrated by the varying treatment during a game with the same ref and with different refs over the course of a season. Yes you play to the ref, but when the ref isn't being consistent then it becomes impossible to do that at international levels where the margins are so small. Consistency in interpretation is all that is being asked.
Which just about concludes my opening rant :) Over the coming days and weeks I will be expounding my views on rugby, for what they're worth, and I make no apology if they focus on Welsh rugby in particular. It is after all the reason I started this. Keep on rucking
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