Top teams acting in self-defence

Published on Wednesday 26 November 2003 00:00

TO ENGLAND the glory - and they deserved it. It is a great achievement to have won the World Cup, and in their case perhaps even a greater one to have done so without, at any time in the tournament, matching the form they showed in the first half of the year. Theirs was what we often like to claim for Scottish victories: a triumph of character.

The final itself was gripping and tense, simply because it was so close, and might have gone either way. But, like the two semi-finals, it was also disappointing. The three matches showed modern rugby at its most sterile, its most rugby league-like. Only five tries were scored, and two of them, Mortlock’s against New Zealand and Betsen’s against England, were opportunistic. Defences dominated. England indeed won the Cup despite scoring only two tries (while conceding five) in their three matches after the pool stage.

Before the tournament we were being assured - were indeed assuring ourselves - that this year wouldn’t be like 1999 when Australia won by consistently stifling their opponents’ creativity, while displaying very little of that themselves. But it was, in the end, like 1999 re-run. The two sides with the best defences reached the final, where they all but cancelled each other out. The final and semi-finals lacked nothing in commitment, which was absolute, but offered little other than hard pounding. There was a wretched absence of imagination and intelligence.

The final was admittedly graced by two beautiful tries. Larkham’s diagonal kick for Tuqiri was exquisite. England’s was made when Dallaglio ran into space instead of seeking the tackle, and his pass to Wilkinson and Wilkinson’s to Robinson, were both timed just right.

But that was about it. For the rest we saw players taking the tackle and going to ground, and then the same thing all over again. Very few movements saw the ball going through more than a couple of pairs of hands. Nobody was running on to the pass from deep. Nobody was switching direction, or if they were, it was when the game had come to a standstill. There were precious few checked passes to draw the defender out of position and even fewer miss-passes. There was almost no intelligent kicking. Indeed, apart from Larkham’s kick for the Australian try, it’s hard to recall a single kick which asked a difficult question of the defence.

There seems to be an assumption that if you put enough phases together, the defenders will eventually run out of men, or be found out of position, and a gap will appear. This theory works well enough when one side is manifestly superior to the other. It rarely works when they are evenly matched. One reason is that, as phase succeeds phase, the delivery of the ball tends to become slower and slower. So you often find that, after five or six phases, you haven’t actually got any closer to your opponents’ try-line.

Again the theory is that, after a number of phases, the defence will either be pulled out of position, or will leave you with a prop or a lock having to mark a three-quarter. This sometimes happens of course and a try is scored. But just as often you find that it is the attacking side that has the wrong man in place. That was England’s experience on Saturday, on the one occasion when their multi-phase build-up almost worked. Unfortunately the man on the right wing in position to take the scoring pass was Ben Kay, not Jason Robinson. He knocked it on.

It would be interesting to know just how many tries in international matches in the Six Nations, Tri-Nations or Tests between southern and northern hemisphere teams result from a succession of phases. I would guess quite few - and probably as many come from a turnover when the sixth or seventh phase breaks down.

Halves and three-quarters are often criticised for kicking in attack - ‘giving the ball away’. Sometimes of course that is the result. It depends on the intelligence and accuracy of the kick. But what the critics (who often include the forwards) tend to forget is that, at some point, multi-phase rugby itself results in the loss of possession. Indeed it always does unless you score.

Tries are scored when the team in possession finds space. This can be done by beating the tackler, which at the top level is rare, or by timing and delivering the pass so as to put the receiver into space, or by kicking. The better-organised a defence is, the more likely it is that you can’t go through it, however many phases you play. But a well-judged and well-executed kick asks new and often more difficult questions of the defence - quite often questions to which they have no answer.

When we think of the French we often think of dazzling handling movements, but we should also remember how many French tries come from the intelligent attacking kick. Think of their game against Scotland in Paris this year and of that semi-final defeat of New Zealand in 1999.

The modern game with its insistence on keeping possession too often lacks variety and becomes sterile. England v Australia would have been a very dull game indeed if the result hadn’t been so important.