Oh Flower of Scotland, when will we see your like again...

England play Scotland on Sunday in the 118^th Calcutta Cup rugby match.  For England supporters it’s an important match, but for Scots fans it is the match, the only one that really matters.  It’s always been that way, but back in 1990 the game had an extra edge, and it’s all explained in The Grudge by Tom English – simply one of the best sports books I’ve ever read.

For younger readers let me take you back to 1990.  The country was led by That Bloody Woman, as Margaret Thatcher was known north of the border, and she’d decided to use Scotland as the testing ground for the hated poll tax.  Spitting Image caricatured the situation perfectly, with Thatcher saying she needed somewhere to test things out ‘Somewhere – a long way from my house’.  It also contained the line uttered by the George Young puppet ‘And then there’s our new reciprocal fuel experiment.  We take their oil, they take our nuclear waste.  Very successful.’

England’s rugby captain was Will Carling, son of an army officer, public school educated, a City type, and in Scottish minds, a  supporter of Thatcher.  In other words, everything the Scots detested.  There was always an edge to Calcutta Cup encounters, but this time there was genuine hatred.   I don’t mean a bit of a dislike, I mean genuine hatred, with pictures of Carling’s head superimposed on cartoons of Edward 11, the English monarch beaten at Bannockburn, and a journo telling the England captain at a press conference, ‘You know the whole of Scotland detests you.’

Going into the game the situation was simple.  Both teams had won their previous four games, England brilliantly, and Scotland solidly – in the minds of impartial observers there was no doubt about it, the English would win.

Tom English – he’s an Irishman who lives in Scotland – sets the scene beautifully with interviews with all of the key figures involved in the match.  Read the Scottish coach, Jim Telfer’s, pre-match speech and I defy you not to feel a shiver run down your spine.  You’ll laugh out loud at the story of the pregnancy, and wonder that Brian Moore’s views on all things Scottish didn’t start a civil war!   

Come the big day the drama continued, and I remember it as if it was yesterday.  England ran out at Murrayfield, as teams do, but the Scots, led by David Sole, marched out slowly in single file – it was a statement of intent.   The National Anthem was played and was met with the usual Murrayfield mix of indifference and antagonism, but Flower of Scotland was a different matter, and I promise you it was being belted out in living rooms across the whole of Scotland that day.  At the ground it was very, very special: as the England back Simon Halliday remarked afterwards, ‘…their guys knew the words.  That’s when I knew we were in trouble. Previous years they didn’t sing anything.  I had a little look across and they were absolutely screaming it out.  I thought, this all looks a bit different to other years.’

The result is in the history books so revealing it ruins nothing: Scotland won 13-7 and claimed the Grand Slam, and the England team, in the words of the Scottish anthem, were sent ‘homeward, to think again’.

This Sunday’s Calcutta Cup game will hold no such surprises: it’s at Twickenham and the Scots are surely going to get hammered.  However, the miracle is that the scoreline in the 117 matches played so far isn’t more one-sided than it is – it’s 63-39 to England with 15 drawn.  Ten times the population and 25+ times the number of players to choose from, and the Scots still hold their own on many occasions – it illustrates the power of desire and commitment in sport.

Read The Grudge.  If you can, read it before Sunday’s game, and then sit down and enjoy another historic encounter between the Scots and the Auld Enemy.  It will be a very special day – the Calcutta Cup matches always are.

Elvis told me when I was down the chippy.

It’s the silly season as far as the supporters’ websites are concerned.  The Aviva Premiership is barely half over, and we haven’t got to the Heineken Cup quarter finals, but already fans are fretting about the shape and size of next season’s squads.  The comings and goings rumour mill is already in full swing, and there’s barely a club that’s unaffected.

Let’s start with the obvious: there’s a salary cap in place and from what we hear, it’s even going to be policed to some extent.  Now, whether that’s driven by a sudden desire for fair play across the Premiership, or by financial expediency, who knows?  My hunch is that it’s the latter.  So, that should make for something approaching a level playing field, shouldn’t it?  Not in the fans’ minds as far as I can see.

Bath, despite languishing in the bottom half of the table, are on a financial high: new owners, new training facilities, and, if you listen to their fans – driven it must be said by some enthusiastic coverage in their local paper – after anything that moves that has ever worn an international shirt!  In recent months their supporters have linked Bath with Messrs. Attwood, Hook, Charlie Hodgson, Croft, Haskell, Golding, Luke McCallister, Berrick Barnes, Geraghty, Cussiter, Doran-Jones and Louw, some of whom have, of course, already signed elsewhere!  That would have been some squad that was being assembled down there; however, it was the stuff of Fantasy Rugby!  If it had been even half true the Premiership salary cap policeman would have been winging his way down the M4!

The Bath fans are no worse than any others in this, and a look at most other clubs’ fans’ sites will reveal lots of ‘I heard from a mate down the pub, who knows a bloke who goes in his local chippie whose sister is married to someone who works with xxxxxx’s brother…’ and so it goes on!

And then, of course, there are the agents.  Their job is to look after their players’ interests, and if we pluck young kids straight from school and put them into the Academies, then they’re going to need someone to do their negotiating for them.   Agents are much reviled by fans but all they’re doing is the best they can by their players.  Even the most tentative of discussions with another club is sure to leak out, and that further drives the rumour mill.

It’s the nature of professional sport that players come, and then they go – one-club men are getting fewer and fewer, and the days of clubs being dominated by local boys are long gone.   However, it’s hard to escape the feeling that the merry-go-round is going to be spinning faster than ever over the next few months.   Financial pressures aside – and rather than increasing the salary cap, a bigger question is which clubs are able to spend up to the current limit – the Rugby World Cup complicates matters.  The final is on 23 October, and shortly after that expect the flights into Heathrow to contain more than a smattering of Saffers, Kiwis and Wallabies.  Some will be heading to France but purse strings are tightening there, to the extent that fans over here are picking over the bones of some of the clubs in the lower reaches of the Top 14.  More than one website has the entire Bourgoin squad listed with the question ‘Anyone we fancy?’ being posed.  We live in interesting times!

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Crisis at Sky Sports.  I fully expected a black screen and martial music to be playing around tea time last Sunday, after Munster crashed out of the Heineken Cup.  It’s part of the British psyche to react against something, someone or some team being ‘hyped’ beyond belief: for a while we take it, and then it starts to grate.  Such has been the depth of the Sky love-in with the men in red that I have found myself longing for them to get stuffed, just so I can see the Sky guys squirm, and I know that I’m not the only one who has felt that way.

The Barnes/Harrison combo is the best comment and commentary team around in rugby – so good that it simply makes all of the others look worse than they actually are – but Munster has long been their blind spot.  They have been so over-the-top in their admiration and praise that one has to wonder whether their genealogy efforts have uncovered some long-lost Limerick relative. 

The Republic has a population of less than 5M, compared to England’s 50M, and it might be reasonable to suppose that the proportion of Sky subscribers in each country is broadly similar, but it seems as though the Irish province gets a disproportionate amount of Heineken Cup coverage. 

I’m pretty well Munstered out for a while, and I’m not sorry to see the back of them in this year’s competition, although the danger signs were there late on Sunday afternoon: you mark my words, Leinster is the new Munster as far as Sky is concerned!

First published in The Rugby Paper on 23 January 2011 and reproduced with the editor's permission

Yes, rugby is a posh blokes' sport!

With late date and kick-off changes happening more and more, who could be forgiven for thinking that no-one is  listening to Aviva Premiership rugby fans’ voices.  Not so, every other year we are asked whether we’d like to participate in an on-line survey, and last year’s results have just been published.   Just over 12,000 of us bothered to take part – not a huge number, but enough for some conclusions to be drawn.

The first think we learn is that one in five rugby fans who did the survey are women, and that percentage has stayed pretty well constant over the last few years.  Just over half of us are 35-54, with nearly one third even older – there has to be a worry that rugby’s audience is ageing, and we badly need the influx of new blood that a good RWC2011 campaign would bring.

When it comes to socio-economic groupings, it seems as though there is some validity to the hoary old chestnut that rugby is a posh game.  Nearly six in every 10 of the survey participants fit into the AB category, and when you add in the C1s, it means that less than 15% of rugby fans come from the ranks of what are referred to as the semi-skilled and unskilled.  

That’s further reinforced when it comes to what respondents say are the key values that attract them to rugby: high up on the list comes ‘For people like me’!  The other words that fans use about the Premiership are exciting, competitive, respectful and friendly, and it’s hard to argue with any of those.   

It also seems that as a group we have embraced technology, with more than 90% visiting their club’s website, and more than 70% buying tickets on-line.  A big growth area is fans having smartphones – almost 50% do, and almost 40% have watched video content on them. 

When it comes to the vexed question of the role of TV broadcasters, the companies will be taking plenty of encouragement from the stats.  Seemingly, 64% of those surveyed have access to Sky, and 34% to the new boys, ESPN.  Remarkably, 79% of those ESPN subscribers cited rugby as being one of the reasons for their purchase – that has to be music to ESPN’s ears.  The TV highlights package shown by ITV is watched by three quarters of the survey respondents, proving that there’s a huge appetite for televised rugby.

When it comes to attendance figures, after 13 rounds numbers are 4% down on last year, and it isn’t down to the weather as the number of postponements are similar across the seasons.  Mark McCafferty, the CEO of Premier Rugby says that he doesn’t believe that the fall is down to the increased number of televised games, but rather to the general economic malaise.  To support that he can point to the even bigger decline in Magners’ League attendances, but I think he’s plain wrong.

It was always going to be the case that fans would start to balance the cost of tickets versus the cost of a satellite subscription, and when you add in the anti-social practice of late changes to kick-offs, and the increasingly bizarre times at which matches are played, it’s probably an achievement that attendances haven’t fallen even further.  In the French Top14 attendances are up, and their economy is in as bad a state as ours, and more fans than ever are watching the Heineken Cup.  The fact that television audience figures for rugby are up, would seem to me to support the view that TV coverage is by far the biggest factor in declining attendances.  For McCafferty to say about fans that "It's certainly not the case that they're the last people thought of”, will raise a wry smile or two – the fans I meet tend to think that their interests are becoming less and less important as the clubs get more television revenue.

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It’s a feature of the professional game that players come and go, and last weekend it was confirmed that Charlie Hodgson was leaving Sale and heading off to Sarries.   It’s been a miserable time at Sale this season, with things clearly not working out with Mike Brewer at the helm.  Brewer moved on before Christmas and it was an open secret that relations between him and some of the senior players at Sale hadn’t been good.  That said, the fact is that Brewer lost his job, which is a tough thing for anyone to suffer.  However, most people in that situation don’t then have to suffer public criticism on top of the trauma of becoming unemployed.  That’s what happened to Brewer when Hodgson was quoted as saying that “The environment is a much more enjoyable place to be. People don’t get abused every day, they don’t get kicked in the back every day and it’s a nice place to come to work.”   Talk about kicking a man when he’s down!  Better to have kept your own counsel Charlie.   

First published in The Rugby Paper on 16 January 2011, and reproduced with the editor's permission

Punishing the cheats

My rugby wish for 2011 is a simple one: I’d like to see the authorities tell referees to take major steps towards eradicating the cynical cheating that is damaging the game.  Last weekend’s ‘Big Game’ at Twickenham attracted 75,000 people, but the spectacle they saw could have been so much better.  Referee Andrew Small, and it’s a tad unfair to single him out because he’s a good ref, and plenty of other refs have put in similar performances this season, took an age to yellow card anyone, and as a result the game made dire viewing.

Players were deliberately miles offside, and they were lying all over the ball at the breakdown.  When it became apparent that all the referee was going to do was issue a telling-off, of course they did it more than ever.  In these situations rugby players start to act like small children with a parent who threatens discipline but never acts.  You know the sort of thing: “Do that again and there will be no birthdays or Christmases ever again!”  Yeah, right.

The result of Small’s inaction was a first half that was pretty desperate stuff.  On the stroke of half-time he binned Bob Casey, and lo and behold the game got a bit better – not much better as this was two sides low on confidence playing tedious stuff, but it was still a step up from the first half.

If we want good flowing rugby then it’s easy: reduce the level of cheating and that’s what you’ll get.  For a few weeks it might involve twelve against eleven for a few minutes, but if that’s the cost of cleaning things up, so be it.  Once coaches had seen that the refs meant business, they’d act.

I’d also like to see the interpretation of a situation that merits a penalty try being strictly enforced.  The key word is ‘probably’ in the Laws – the penalty try can be awarded if the ref believes that a try would probably have been scored had the cheating not taken place.  In the second half of the Quins v Irish game Danny Care got binned for cynically slowing the ball down on his own line – you see similar occurrences in pretty well every game.  Quins fans would have reacted badly had a penalty try been awarded, but I’d have supported the decision.  Let’s have a few refs who take the line, ”He only cheated because he believed he was stopping a try-scoring move – that’s good enough for me”, and head under the posts.

During the second-half, Quins stand-off, Chris Malone, did something that rightly sent Sky’s Stuart Barnes off on one.  When Irish once again slowed the ball down illegally at the breakdown, Malone appeared to make a gesture to the ref’ suggesting that he show someone a card – the thought was dead right, but he was oh so wrong to do it..  Barnes made the point that rugby doesn’t need such football histrionics, and it’s hard to imagine that many would disagree with him.  I recall seeing an England international once take a deliberate dive, and the ref clearly said ‘We don’t need that in rugby, do it again and you’re off”, awarding a penalty against him.  That’s what we need if we are to stop rugby heading down the same cynical and unpleasant road that football has taken.

While I’m ranting, here’s another area I’d like to see sorted in 2011.  Gloucester’s England lock, Dave Attwood, is up before the Beak on a charge of alleged stamping.  It’s not for us to pre-judge the case against Attwood, but the circumstances are those that you see in every game.  Play moved on, and a player on the ground had a hold of Attwood’s leg, preventing him getting back into the action – in this instance another player was also trying to tackle Attwood without the ball.   Attwood was perfectly entitled to try to free himself, and we’ll leave it to the authorities to judge whether he went too far in doing it.  That, however, isn’t the point: two players blatantly cheated, and their victim is in the dock – where’s the justice in that?

In such situations –  and when you’re watching a live game you see a lot more than the camera picks up in a televised match – it’s hard to blame the officials as they’ve got enough on their plate following the action.  I’d like to see the citing officer’s role extended to encourage them to pick up on off-the-ball incidents – once a few culprits had copped bans then coaches would tell them to cut it out, and the game would be better for it.  It doesn’t need to be violent, cynical play is more of the threat to the top-level game than thuggery is these days.

I can hear the squeals of outrage from some old timers about this, and I’m sure that the argument will be that we’d take some of the game’s character away, but they’re just plain wrong.  Stop the cynical cheating and the game will prosper even more.

Happy New Year.

First published in The Rugby Paper on 02 January 2011 and reproduced with the editor's permission

Rugby predictions for 2011

With the New Year just around the corner, what will the rugby headlines be in 2011?

January.   Sarries announce the signing of a new half-back partnership in Anton du Beke and Wagner Carrilho.  Newly-appointed Director of Rugby, Will Young, says, “Some may see these as risky signings but we think that they can help us attract a new audience to Sarries – after all, what’s rugby about if it’s not entertainment?”

February.  Sky announces that the LV= Cup game between Leicester and Bath will kick off at 02:30 on the Monday morning, following on from its Superbowl coverage.  A spokesman said, “We think that families will welcome an all-nighter in Leicester and we’ll be handing out free cocoa to everyone who attends – it’s another first for English rugby.”

March.   The Six Nations decider between Scotland and Italy goes the way of the Azzuri, with England finishing fifth and Wales picking up the Wooden Spoon.  Rob Andrew announces himself ‘Happy with the progress that’s being made’, and says that it sets England up for a successful RWC campaign.  The WRU offers Warren Gatland a further extension to his contract.

April.  Sky’s Rugby Club devotes 58 of its 60 minutes to in-depth analysis of Munster’s  prospects in their forthcoming Heineken Cup quarter-final, with Leinster getting the remaining two minutes.   Subscribers are told that it’s now mandatory to wear a shamrock as part of the Sky Sports package.

May.  The Heineken Cup final is played at a newly ploughed Millennium Stadium with organisers saying that they think this has finally resolved the concerns about the quality of the playing surface. 

June.  Sale and Newcastle’s pitches finally are free of snow, so the backlog of Aviva Premiership games can be tackled.  The Premiership final is rescheduled for a second time and will be played in late August.

July.  The IRB announces a change to Law 20.6 on the put-in to the scrum.   In future the scrum-half will stand at the back of the scrum and place the ball in front of the No.8.  An IRB spokesman said “All this throwing-in nonsense was too complicated, and refs were finding it hard to understand..  As long as the opposing team doesn’t push too hard we think this new Law will work.  We’re looking for co-operation from the players on this one.”

August.  All twelve Aviva Premiership Head Coaches release a statement saying that pre-season has never gone better and that morale within their respective clubs is at an all-time high.  The RFU and premier Rugby announce a play-off system that will include all twelve clubs, thereby extending the AP season into late August, saying that player welfare remains an issue.

September.  England lose to Argentina, Georgia and Romania in the pool stages of the RWC, and fail to make the quarter finals. Just before garrotting Graham Simmonds live on air, Johnno says “What’s the point of us having the best coaching team in the world if that load of muppets are going to bottle it every time they run onto the park.  I’m moving the England training set-up to

Welford Road

as soon as we get back home, and no, I’m not going to resign.  Rob Andrew tells me everything’s hunky-dory.”

October.  New Zealand lose 42-3 to Namibia in the RWC final.  The All Blacks field a weakened side after their squad succumbs to food poisoning.  Graham Henry complains, “We think it was dodgy lamb that caused it – the chef was French so you can draw whatever conclusion you like from that. Only one side wanted to play rugby out there, and clearly all six of the Namibian tries should have been disallowed – I wasn’t happy with the ref’’s performance.  On the positive side, I thought that Dan Carter took his kick really well.” 

November.   The post-RWC influx of foreign stars hits the Aviva Premiership.  The incoming All Blacks, all now restored to full health after ‘Lambgate’, offer to run workshops for English referees in order to pass on their wisdom about the way the game should be ref’d.   Richie McCaw offers to ref’ a few games by satellite link from New Zealand in the spirit of cross-hemisphere harmony, and to show how easy it actually is.

December.  Edward Griffiths, with his new title of Impresario-In-Chief, announces that Saracens will no longer play rugby, and that more than 90% of the current squad has been released.  “Our management consultants have recommended that we focus on our core business of entertainment, and to be frank, rugby has become peripheral to what we’re all about.  I guess one or two of our fans will be disappointed at this, but we’ve offered them cheap tickets to Will Young’s next Wembley gig, so that’s all right.”  Technical Director, Brendan Venter, enthused “Will Young, bit of genius, bit of magic.  Three cheers for Will Young!”

I hope that your New Year celebrations turn out to be as good as you hope, and let me wish you all the very best for 2011.

 First published in The Rugby Paper on 27 December 2010 and reproduced with the permission of the editor

RIP Tom Walkinshaw

Rugby lost a big figure when Tom Walkinshaw died last weekend at the too-early age of 64.  It’s for others to write about his motor sport career, but his impact on English professional rugby was immense.

He bought Gloucester RFC in 1997 when the club was teetering on a knife edge: would it step up to the demands of professionalism, or go the way of equally illustrious names like Richmond, London Welsh and Coventry?  Those who were closest to Gloucester at that time have little doubt that without Tom the latter route was the more likely one.   The best way to assess his significance to Gloucester is to have a look around the modern Kingsholm and compare it with what he inherited.

There are new stands on two sides of the ground, including the huge South Stand which, if there’s any justice, will surely become the Tom Walkinshaw Stand, and capacity up to 16,500.  No move out of town, no sharing with a football club, and the famous / infamous Shed still firmly in place.  No tacky and unpleasant mascot, no dancing girls, not too much music (they tried it once but the natives revolted and the idea was rapidly dropped), and an announcer who doesn’t make a plonker of himself every time he opens his mouth.  In other words, tradition and standards still being maintained, but in a thoroughly modern context.. 

That’s not to say that it happened without incident along the way.  Some of the dyed-in-the-wool Glaws fans fought every change that was made, and Tom must have found the supporters’ websites making uncomfortable reading from time to time.  The South Stand displeased some because it wasn’t a cantilever construction and had pillars, and some of the diehards still refuse to use the new name of Gloucester Rugby.  Some of the abuse dished out by ‘fans’ on the websites was deeply personal and simply unacceptable – reading it made one wonder why owners  give their time and invest their money in the game.  However, the players who have been at Kingsholm the longest, and knew Tom best, have, to a man, come out and praised his loyalty, passion and commitment to the club.

Tom’s impact on the wider English game was huge too.  One of the new breed of businessmen who came into rugby when professionalism arrived, he was Chairman of  Premier Rugby between 1998 and 2002.  During that period the salary cap came in, and attendances grew rapidly.  He locked horns many times with the RFU over the issue of player release, and the current agreement is in no small part down to his influence.

I last saw Tom a few weeks ago at Kingsholm, when it was clear to everyone that he was desperately ill, and his response to a question about his well being was typical of the man: “Still here, still fighting!”.  He’ll be sorely missed.

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On the subject of owners, you have to wonder what those at Sarries thought of Brendan Venter’s performance last weekend.  The bizarre interview with Sky after the defeat to Racing Metro didn’t really divide opinion.  Bar a few on the radical wing of Sarries fans who thought it was great to see someone sticking up two fingers to the ERC, the rest of the world seemed to shrug it off as a typically daft bit of calculated Sarries’ nonsense.  Being shocking only works for a short while: after that it just becomes plain boring.

Someone somewhere in the Sarries ranks needs to be thinking carefully about their club’s responsibility to the game and to supporters.  At one time it was simple: keep your own fans happy because they pay for their tickets and that’s where the money comes from to keep the club going.  Well, it doesn’t work like that any more.  Rugby fans pay their subscriptions to Sky and ESPN so that they can watch live matches, and part of that money makes its way back into rugby through the satellite broadcasters’ sponsorship of the game. 

By my reckoning that makes thousands of us Sarries’ customers to a greater or lesser extent, and we deserve a bit of respect for our contribution to their finances.  After a game, part of the deal is that someone from the club goes on air to comment on what has happened, and we deserve that to be done with a modicum of professionalism, irrespective of whether the club has won or lost.  If ‘Fortress Saracens’ doesn’t like that then they should simply pack it in and let one of the Championship sides take their place – in their current frame of mind they wouldn’t be missed.

Dr Venter heads off back to South Africa in the New Year, and time will tell what the real meaning of his new role of ‘Technical Director’ actually is.  The sad thing about last week’s shambles was that all it achieved was to add me, and probably quite a few others,  to the ranks of those whose attitude to his departure will be ‘Good riddance”.

First published in The Rugby Paper on 19 December 2010 and reproduced here with the permission of the editor.

Rugby Test Matches used to be something special, but now they’re ten-a-penny, or so it seems.  The first games of the autumn series of internationals should serve as a warning that the paying punters are a bit more savvy than the home Unions seemingly thought.

Starting with Ireland, it’s hard to imagine a bigger PR disaster than the shots of the newly-redeveloped  Lansdowne Road – now the Aviva Stadium – with row upon row of empty seats.  It can’t have been what the powers-that-be or the sponsors wanted, but why did it happen?  First of all let’s state the obvious: the Irish economy is down the pan with a vengeance – more a tired old moggy than a Celtic Tiger nowadays.   In those circumstances whose bright idea was it to construct a ticketing policy that obliged punters to buy tickets for all four autumn internationals rather than on a game by game basis?  The economy’s shot to hell, but supporters are asked to fork out €340 for their seat – oh and by the way, those prices concealed a roughly 25% hike over the previous year’s matches at Croke Park! 

Not surprisingly, the fans told the IRFU what to do, and kept their credit cards firmly in their pockets.  At the eleventh hour the Union had a change of heart, ate a sizeable helping of humble pie, and announced ‘a comprehensive review of its entire ticket sales strategy, which includes price tiering, bundling and distribution channels’.  Too little too late, and attendances for the first two matches were embarrassingly low – 35,000 for a Test against the World Champions was a humiliation for the IRFU.  Incidentally, at the Ireland v Samoa game it was announced that 31,000 was a record for a clash between the two nations – talk about making the best of a bad job!

Wales’ first game, against Australia saw more than 20,000 empty seats in the Millennium Stadium, and there were still huge gaps for the clash with South Africa.  The WRU Chief Executive, Roger Lewis, lays the blame fairly and squarely at the door of Wales’ economic troubles, saying that his customers are being very cautious about where they spend their money.

Scotland too had their woes: failing by about 10.000 to sell out a game against the All Blacks is shocking, and those that did turn up will surely think twice about going again!  The result was so dire that almost a week after the event the SRU had ‘forgotten’ to update the results section of their website – I’m not surprised.

England did sell out their first two games, and so they should.  With a population of over 50M compared to Ireland’s 6M, Scotland’s 5M, and Wales at 3M, it would be a major surprise if it didn’t happen.   That said, tickets for the clash with the All Blacks were still available late in the day, and that must be a slight cause for concern.

The IRB’s Chief Exec says that all of this is just a ‘blip’, but I bet that was said more in hope than expectation.  Yes, the economy plays its part, but it is foolish to think that’s all that’s behind the problem.

The fact is that there is now too much Test rugby being played, and most of the games don’t actually matter much.  When games mean something – the Six Nations and the World Cup – the fans will come out in force, but they see the autumn Tests for what they are: predominantly a revenue generating scheme.

And there’s the rub.  The RFU announced its results this week and, recession or not, they were pretty impressive.  The £112M revenue was £7M down on the previous year, but that was because there were only three autumn internationals rather than four, and it was one of the years when England were away three times in the Six Nations.  The message that comes out loud and clear is that internationals at Twickenham are what keeps English rugby afloat.  Never mind that they’re not games that really matter, other than as a preamble for the real business of the Six Nations and the World Cup – the money they generate is vital.

So, square this circle: I’m convinced that fans are becoming disillusioned with too many Test matches, but rugby’s finances depend hugely on those games.  England will get away with this – their potential audience in Greater London alone is more than the population of any of the other home nations – but what of Ireland, Wales and Scotland?  Can they fill their huge stadia three or four times every November?  If they can’t then they’re potentially in real trouble.

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On the back of England’s great win over the Aussies, some awkward questions need to be asked.  They won’t matter to those in the corporate hospitality enjoying a good day out, but the dyed-in-the-wool England fans will have it in the back of their minds.  Has the sudden and wonderful improvement in England’s style of play been because of the coaches’ careful planning over the past couple of years, or has it been achieved in spite of them?  It’s wonderful to see the fresh blood – Ashton, Foden, Laws and so on – doing so well, but what took us so long to blood them? 

First published in The Rugby Paper on 21 November 2010, and reproduced here with the editor's permission

Aviva Premiership looks like an East Midlands final

First published in The Rugby Paper on 07 November 2010 and reproduced with their consent


With the Aviva Premiership season almost one third through, it’s timely to have a look at how things are stacking up, and how the pre-season predictions are doing.

The first, and biggest surprise, is the performance of Exeter Chiefs.  I put my hand up for getting them totally wrong, and I’m in very good company in that camp.  Even after they’d beaten Gloucester in their first game in the big time I still believed that the analysts would rumble them and that, come Christmas, they’d be relegation certainties.  I’m delighted to have been wrong, and with the discreet squad building that they’re doing, it seems they’re confident they can cement their Premiership place for next season.  They may have a limited game plan but it’s working, and they also have the most important qualities in top-flight rugby: team spirit and commitment.

That means that Leeds and Newcastle are the current relegation candidates, with Sale teetering on the brink of being drawn into the dogfight.  Last season Leeds did their Lazarus impersonation, and survived after being seemingly dead and buried.  Who’s to say they won’t do that again, but they just don’t seem to have the same spark this time around.  Having had the misfortune to watch the Leeds v Sale encounter I have no hesitation in saying that if that is as good as they can do, I’d be happy to see both of them drop through the trapdoor – it was a game designed to give rugby a bad name.  My hunch is that Newcastle will manage to turn things round and leave the other two to stage a latter day version of the War of the Roses, with the winner being too hard to call.

At the other end of the table I have no hesitation in saying that Northampton Saints are the best side in the Premiership, despite being a point behind London Irish at this stage.  It may be unfair but I just can’t see Toby Booth’s men as potential champions – the memory of how they fell apart last season refuses to go away.  Saints, on the other hand, seem to have progressed from last season and have to be worthy favourites to go one better and at least make the Premiership Final.

Beneath those two the surprise packet has to be Gloucester.  They started the season in tentative style and the fickle Glaws natives were getting very restless, but four wins on the bounce – admittedly three of them were at home – has bumped them up to third spot, one point ahead of Sarries who showed a very brittle side to their character when getting thumped at home by Exeter.  Not too many people saw that one coming!

Then we have Leicester and Bath.  Tigers will come good in the second half of the season – it’s just one of the immutable laws of English rugby that they do.  Bath, however, seem to have problems.  Last season they played an exciting brand of rugby, scoring at will, but without Butch James they’ve lost the knack of scoring tries: unless something changes dramatically they could well find themselves struggling to make next season’s Heineken Cup.

Quins and Wasps find themselves in the bottom six at this stage of the campaign and it’s hard to say anything other than that’s where they deserve to be.  Of course, a good run of results can still change things dramatically, but there has been precious little evidence that is just around the corner for either club.

At this stage Saints and Leicester are my reasonably confident choices to fill two of the play-off spots, with Irish, Gloucester and Sarries to fight it out for the other two semi-final places.  I fancy an all East Midland final at Twickenham is on the cards.   

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The news that James Hook is leaving Ospreys rounds off a rotten week for the West Wales region, coming as it does on the news of Gav’s departure over the bridge.  It brings home once again the problems associated with trying to keep a squad of international players happy – they all want to play in their preferred position, and if that doesn’t happen as often as they like, then they pack their bags and go.

What price now Warren Gatland’s words about preferring his star names to stay at home?  While only one or two of them are abroad then the implied threat not to select them can work, but once there’s a critical mass of players in the Top 14 or the Aviva Premiership it will be hard to ignore their claims.  Eventually the WRU will surely have to dip its hand into its pocket and reach a financial settlement with the clubs who employ their stars – if they want to deprive a club of a top player, especially for mere money-spinning matches like the Autumn internationals, then those clubs need to be compensated, just as the RFU now does.

Copyrighting the Haka?

New Zealand (NZ) rugby is a weird world all of its own.  Follow it for any period of time and your jaw will drop in disbelief at the way that its coaches and administrators can, in a seemingly effortless way, get up themselves given any opportunity!  Following on from last week's session on copyright, I spotted an article which asserts that the New Zealand Rugby Union (NZRU) is trying to reach agreement with the Ngato Toa - a Maori tribe - which is trying to trademark the Ka Mate haka.

Ka mate! Ka mate! Ka ora! Ka ora!
Ka mate! Ka mate! Ka ora! Ka ora!
Tenei te tangata puhuru huru
Nana nei i tiki mai, Whakawhiti te ra
A upane! ka upane!
A upane! ka upane!
Whiti te ra! Hi!!

Which roughly means...

I die! I die! I live! I live!
I die! I die! I live! I live!
This is the hairy man
Who has caused the sun to shine again
The Sun shines!!

For the benefit of those who inhabit the real world, a few words on the haka.  It's the wardance done by the All Blacks before international rugby matches: they pull funny faces, dance on the spot and, so I am told, issue a challenge to the opposition.  It's the subject of much debate in rugby right now, with other nations questioning why the All Blacks are allowed to fire themselves up in this way while the opposition have to stand there watching and getting cold.  On the current All Black tour the crowds are, in my opinion rightfully, singing over, and in some cases booing, the haka.  It hakas off the New Zealanders no end, but hey ho that's no bad thing!  To continue with the lecture, there are different versions of the haka, including an unsavoury one which involves a throat-slitting gesture, but the one currently favoured is the Ka Mate, supposedly written by the legendary Te Rauparaha (pictured below), leader of the Ngato Toa back in the 1700's.  Still with me?



Anyway, the Ngato Toa reckon this haka is theirs, so they're trying to trademark it - I kid you not!  They tried to trademark the whole thing, but when that looked doomed to fail, they opted for key sections of the dance.  There have been ongoing negotiations between the NZRU and the Ngato Toa, involving the Intellectual Property Office in NZ.  We know this because the NZ equivalent of our FOI Act, the Official Information Act, has been used to disclose the correspondence.

Over the years the tribe has tried and failed to trademark the haka, but in 2009 the Crown acknowledged Te Rauparaha as the author of Ka Mate, and this set the ball rolling once again.

It's all about money, of course.  The Rugby World Cup (RWC) takes place in NZ next year and already merchandise - tea towels, t-shirts and so on - are appearing with pictures of the haka on them.  The tribe says it wants to end inappropriate use of the images of the haka - no Ka Mate pants then I suppose - but the suspicion is that what it really wants is dosh.

Even if the tribe and the NZRU strike a deal, that might not be the end of the matter, as others want a slice of the action.  The tourism merchadise group, ProKiwi, seem set to launch a bid to have the images and words of the Ka Mate haka available for them to use - so there's hope that there might yet be Ka Mate pants out there!

The IPO lawyers working for the NZRU are arguing that the haka is in the public domain, and that anyone should be able to use the images and words freely, without fear of being sued.

At one level this is all knockabout stuff, but the Maori might just have a different view: not content with having our land and killing our ancestors, these people now want to hi-jack our culture in order to make a fast buck.  I'll keep you posted on the Ka Mate haka saga, and how the hairy man is doing on making the sun shine again.

 

Warren Gatland a lucky man?

First published in The Rugby Paper on 24 October 2010 and reproduced with their consent

So, the wait is over and Wales have re-appointed Warren Gatland as their coach. Everyone concerned seems very pleased, but should they be? No matter how good a coach is reputed to be, and how good his past results have been, professional sport is about winning, and on the international stage, is Gatland a winner? At club level the question doesn't even need to be asked, but it's a valid one at international level.

His tenure with Wales started in a blaze of glory, winning the Grand Slam in his first season with them, but after that things got a bit more sticky, and his most recent season saw Wales lose eight and win just four – under-pressure Martin Johnson’s results are better than that, and those of Andy Robinson’s Scotland better still!  Those four Welsh wins were all at home and against Argentina, Samoa, Scotland and Italy – with all due respect to those nations, they aren't the top teams around. That set of results is surely not what a rugby-mad nation wants or deserves? Do they merit a four-year extension to his current contract? Well, someone at the WRU believes that they do but it seems to me that they've taken a sizeable risk that things are going to get better in the run-up to RWC 2011.

On that subject, Gatland went public with some pretty harsh criticism of Premier Rugby in the light of its current stance of not releasing foreign players until 35 days before the start of RWC 2011, in line with the IRB's guidelines. Their Regulation 9 declares that the assembly period starts 35 days before the competition, and that is the period when warm-up matches can be played. Similarly, the rules allow for three matches only in the November international window – play a fourth and you rely on the goodwill of a Union if you want your players released.

This doesn't suit the Welsh and all sort of pomposity was spouted. WRU Group Chief Executive, Roger Lewis trotted out 'scandalous', extraordinary' and 'deeply regrettable', and declared that he wouldn't talk to Premier Rugby, preferring to talk to his mates at the RFU. Warren Gatland repeated his scare tactics of hinting that players who dared to go over the bridge might find themselves disadvantaged when it comes to international selection.

England cracked this one when the RFU got out its chequebook and compensated the clubs for the loss of their players. If the WRU feels strongly about the situation the remedies are in its own hands: it either campaigns to get the IRB regulations changed, or it stumps up the cash to 'buy' its players back for the relevant period.  

As for the players themselves, let's hope that they hold their nerve and don't allow themselves to be spooked by Gatland's stance: if they're good enough, and playing well, then my hunch is that he'll come calling irrespective of where they're plying their trade.

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The cabaret that is All Black rugby provided yet another fascinating moment recently.  In the past the ABs have named their side on the Tuesday before a Test Match, but they now want to delay the announcement until the Thursday.  Steve Hansen explained that this is because they fear they’re making life too easy for the opposition analysts.  Fair enough, if that’s what they want to do then there’s some good sense in it, although some might think that this is justt another sign of the pressure building on the coaches ahead of RWC 2011.  However, it was what came next that caught my eye.

The AB management plans to call upon the NZ press corps to be patriotic and hold back on speculating about the starting XV until the announcement has been made because, as Hansen put it, “We’re all New Zealanders and we’re all in it together”!  So, the NZ press will see the likely combinations at training sessions, but they’ll be asked not to publish it in the national interest.  The word that comes to my mind is ‘poppycock’, and we have to hope that the members of the press down there aren’t daft enough to allow themselves to be controlled in this way.

If they gave in to that pressure, what would come next: a patriotic request only to write nice things about the coaches, or maybe a voluntary ban on reporting Tests that didn’t go well for the All Black team?  What about those journalists who aren’t at the training sessions but fancy having a punt on guessing the AB side?  After all, it’s hardly rocket science, and the opposition analysts will have done their homework on pretty well every likely combination well ahead of a Thursday announcement.

 Here’s what any self-respecting journalist should do: they should treat Hansen’s daft suggestion with the contempt that it deserves, and tell him and his colleagues to get on with the coaching, and leave the writing to them.

Crunch time for the home nations

First published in The Rugby Paper on 31 October 2010, and reproduced with their consent.

With RWC 2011 just ten months away, the forthcoming Investec Autumn internationals are crunch time for the home nations, and especially for their coaching teams. A successful autumn campaign against the Southern Hemisphere teams and confidence will be high, but if it goes badly then it will be time for them to receive the dreaded vote of confidence.

England play New Zealand, Australia, Samoa and South Africa and that might just be a propitious order of play. Lose badly against the All Blacks and the Aussies and there is still a chance that things can be redeemed in the final two games: a win against the fading RWC 2007 champions could be spun as a great success, when in all honesty it might be no such thing. The RFU's newly-appointed Chief Executive, John Steele, wants to see England heading into RWC 2011 on a high, and he recently made clear that he's prepared to do whatever is necessary to make that happen, pointedly refusing to rule out changes to the coaching set-up even at this late stage. That is in stark contrast to the view of RFU Chairman, Martyn Thomas, back in May when he was adamant that Johnson would stay in position through to the RWC.

Back in 2002 England beat the Tri-Nations sides at Twickenham in the Autumn and went into the following RWC as hot favourites, and anything other than a good set of results over the coming months will be, despite the spin that would emerge from Twickenham, a total disaster. England has the players, the infrastructure, and the money, and the coaches have much greater access to the players than ever before: all that is now needed is success. England expects, and the time has come for Johnson and his team to deliver – the stakes could hardly be higher.

Warren Gatland, new contract safely in his back pocket, sends the Welsh out against the Tri-Nations countries plus Fiji.  Dramatic improvement is needed on the back of a pretty dreadful run of recent results, but will it happen? Frankly, it's hard to see why it should. A poor Autumn in 2009 was followed by a disappointing Six Nations, and an even worse summer. All the indications are that Wales are in decline and a minor miracle will be needed for them to become a force in the RWC – let's hope I'm wrong.

Ireland too must be approaching the coming Tests with some trepidation. There are losses and then there are hammerings, and shedding 66 points to New Zealand back in June is something that won't readily be forgotten. Once again, it's hard not to come to the conclusion that it's a time of change for the Irish, with old stalwarts fading and new blood not delivering as quickly as was hoped; not what is needed with the RWC fast approaching.

In contrast, Scottish results in recent months have exceeded the expectations of all but the most diehard of fans. After his rotten experience with England no-one will surely begrudge Andy Robinson some success, and with the limited resources at his disposal he has, so far, worked miracles. Two away wins in Argentina over the summer were not to be sniffed at, and they came after a strong end to the Six Nations where they drew with the 'auld enemy', and then destroyed Ireland's Triple Crown ambitions at Croke Park. New Zealand, South Africa and Samoa will be stern tests but none of those nations will dare take the Scots lightly.

Sweaty palms times for the home nations' coaches then, and if the Tri-Nations sides maintain their recent form there could yet be some coaching blood spilled as the Unions start to panic about their 2011 prospects.