Allan Massie: Dearth of tries need not mean match lacked entertainment

Published on Monday 15 March 2010 22:00

IT ALWAYS amuses me that whenever England come to Murrayfield and fail to win, many in the London media tell us it was a terrible match. Then there are spectators who believe that any game without tries is boring. Well, if your idea of rugby is the sort of glorified basketball with a polite "After you, Claud" – "No, after you, Eustace" attitude to tackling and the breakdown, which produced the ludicrous 72-65 score in a recent Super 14 match, then I suppose you would have found

Of course we think we should probably have won, and this is the third game in a row which has left us with that somewhat depressing reflection. As against that, it was England who spurned the most clear-cut chance of a try when Jonny Wilkinson, instead of backing himself to get between two Scottish forwards, threw out a horrible long pass to his hooker Dylan Hartley, which floated into touch. It's true that we missed opportunities also, and Dan Parks, who otherwise had a good game, was responsible on each occasion. In the first half, his high kick to the left wing was not delivered with his usual precision, so that Max Evans had to take it standing still and some yards short of the try-line instead of being able to run on to it.

Then he took the wrong option with that little chip kick, when we had already been awarded the penalty he subsequently converted. He had men outside him and if he was going to kick, the grubber might have been the wiser choice. That was perhaps also the case in the move which ended with the clash between Kelly Brown and Ugo Monye.

Still, it would be unfair, even absurd, to blame Parks for our failure to win the game.

Some credit should be given to the quality of the English defence. If they missed a few first-up tackles, their covering and scramble defence were of the highest quality. Joe Worsley in particular checked Scottish attacks time and again. Having watched the Ireland-Wales game earlier in the afternoon, one was left with the thought that if the English defence had been as full of holes as the Welsh one, we would have scored tries and won as comfortably as Ireland did. Small consolation of course, because good sides find a way to score even against good defences.

There is reason to think that Andy Robinson and his fellow coaches are getting there, despite the dearth of tries, and developing a team that is not only improving and playing in an aggressive and adventurous style, but capable of much more than it has shown so far. Nevertheless we have to accept that its limitations are apparent and no amount of optimism should blind us to them. There isn't, on present form, a single member of the back division – not even Chris Cusiter, at somewhere near his best on Saturday – who would get into the Ireland side, let alone the French one. Indeed Marc Lievremont could select a reserve back division, every member of which was better than any we have. Nevertheless, both Graeme Morrison and Nick De Luca had good enough games to suggest their partnership may yet prosper.

Up front we were excellent in the loose and at the breakdown, and once again the back-row of Kelly Brown, Johnnie Beattie and John Barclay were outstanding. The line-out was very good. Ross Ford's throwing has improved out of recognition, and Alastair Kellock has been the revelation of the season, now surely our best line-out jumper since Scott Murray was in his prime. The set-scrum was again disappointing, and Euan Murray's apparent decline is worrying. A year ago he was regarded as the best tight-head in the championship; now it is probably only Moray Low's injury which is keeping him in the side.

Few of us know why scrums repeatedly collapse. There are, I'm sure, remedies – a subject to which I shall return when the international season is over. Meanwhile, I will observe only that I watched the second half of the Top 14 game between Clermont-Auvergne and Perpignan ten days ago, and not a single scrum collapsed or had to be reset.

And so to Dublin. Ireland are the second-best side in the championship, but England came close to beating them at Twickenham. So the gap is not that wide. I hope that next Saturday we will forget about having to avoid the wooden spoon, which is not really important, and go out to play with dash, style and adventure. I doubt if there will be many changes, but it would be nice to see Ben Cairns at full-back, not because Hugo Southwell had a bad game on Saturday, but because Cairns is capable of doing the unexpected and playing with flair – something we have been lacking. And it would be good to see Ross Rennie on the bench.

Finally the behaviour of a section of the Murrayfield crowd was deplorable. Abuse of opposition players has no place in rugby, and booing place-kickers is not only bad manners, but stupid and unproductive.

The idiots who indulge in it might reflect that an icy silence can be far more unnerving than a cacophony of boos.