North vs South

Stephen Jones, the London hack with the unmatched knack of raising the hackles of southern hemisphere rugby aficionados, has been at it again with his scornfully critical view of the Super 12.

The London Sunday Times rugby correspondent who in the past has dismissed the spectacular passages of play in the Super 12 as “basketball” and “candy floss” has yet again raised the ire of the south by writing in his column on the planetrugby website that the tournament which enthralls the southern hemisphere is no breeding ground for test match rugby.

It is a view with which I am not entirely in disagreement, but I was astounded by Jones’ eulogies of the stodgy Heineken Cup.

Thanks to the wonders of DSTV one has been able to keep track of rugby in the north and I have often been amazed that people can even compare the two competitions; so much more spectacular is the Super 12.

However, Jones’ views are worth considering. He writes:

“The quarter-final weekend of the Heineken Cup saw four outstanding ties, full of passion and also skill. Biarritz were sensational in hammering a brave Llanelli at Stradey Park; the Munster-Stade Français game, in which Stade were afflicted by injury and illness to their props was slightly looser but another classic, and the Toulouse-Edinburgh game a glamorous affair at the vivid Toulouse Stadium.

“The contrast with the several Super 12 matches which were also televised live in the United Kingdom was again substantial. The likes of Graham Henry, Eddie Jones and John Mitchell are all firmly on the record in the last few months that the Super 12 is not a help in preparing teams for real rugby and especially, for international matches.

“In this respect they finally caught up with me after six years but I confess that I felt the Super 12 of 2004 would be a far tighter, more passionate, more thumping and more forward-based affair. I felt that men with the influence of Henry and Jones would hold sway over the rump of the discredited marketing people who still feel endless movement and torrents of tries is the way forward.

“It simply has not happened. It seems the scrums are still used merely as some excuse for the 16 forwards to meet up for a chat. The lineout is rather more of a contest these days than it was in the early days of the Super 12 but there is still not the full-on desperation in the part of the opposition to ruin the throwing team's ball.

“It still seems that referees, marketing fools and even coaches and players are labouring under the rubbish ethos of old, that you deserve to win your own ball.

“The rucks are an apology. Occasionally, a referee might come to life and penalise the team in possession for holding on too long when isolated but the forward phases as a whole, in tight or loose play, are still predictable, still not contested with any real passion, and the ball whizzes this way and that with what many would consider a lively but unsatisfying rhythm.

“Time will tell if any of the three coaches of the major southern hemisphere nations can drag their team together and forge a proper forward effort in time for the international season. But one thing is for sure - there is not a single Super 12 pack who would not have found a meeting with Craig Dowd's Wasps last Sunday a brutal experience.”

This was Jones’ first salvo and, although I suspect he is also having some fun with the one-eyed and humourless who abound in rugby, he was even more dismissive of the Super 12 in response to the swarm of angry responses his views elicited – especially as he was able to call upon some strong southern hemisphere support of his views.

“It always saves time and energy when points that you make are confirmed entirely by other people or by events,” he modestly informed his readers. “Last weekend, you see, six-inch nails were hammered into the coffin of Super-12 pretensions - pretensions to be a serious rugby event which prepares players for Test rugby.

“Take the (London) Sunday Times of April 18. These were the words of one of our interviewees. ‘If I was preparing a side for Test rugby, I would encourage the sort of contest you find in the northern hemisphere, because it prepares you far better than the Super 12. The first 20 minutes of Gloucester against Wasps put goose bumps on you. It was like the opening minutes of a Test match, it was that physical.

‘The Super 12 does not match the Heineken Cup in its intensity or overall examination of players. Super 12 game plans are very similar, whereas in the Heineken Cup there is variety in terms of attacks, defences and refereeing. That variety prepares you for Test rugby far better than the Super 12, and, like the international game, the 'shutdown' comes very quickly in terms of the contest at the breakdown and the speed with which defences press.’ “And who is this speaker?” asks Jones. “Some northern hemisphere half-wit? Actually, it was some guy named John Mitchell, speaking in a fascinating interview with my colleague, Nick Cain. I have privileged information and can tell you that Cain simply did not have the space to run all of Mitchell's unfavourable comparisons of the southern hemisphere pop-gun championships.

“All I can say is that Mitchell's words bore uncanny resemblance to mine on planetrugby. Mitchell's views, however, were only echoes of those of Eddie Jones and Graham Henry, made in the last few months. They say great minds think alike. Nice of them to bracket me.

“Then there was the clap-trap served up last weekend in the name of professional sport. It seemed originally that my Saturday night out was going to be ruined. I'd already booked a rather nifty Indian restaurant in the Eton area but my three companions had spotted that the Sharks-Chiefs match was to be shown live on television.

“The trio comprised a rugby-loving executive high up in the media world, the coach of a local team and a Kiwi wanderer, who played years of his rugby at Christchurch at that rather nice park to the right of Memorial Avenue as you come in from the airport. They insisted we stay in.

“Remember that we had already seen 'highlights' of a match between the Bulls and the Reds whichplanetrugby described as "bordering on the disgusting." Our reporter was moved to observe "to call it shocking would be to pay it a compliment." If what we were shown were the highlights then I can see where our man was coming from.

”We were on the same borders when we watched the Sharks against the Chiefs. It was pitiful. The skills level was a disgrace. The Chiefs were reasonably together but mediocre, the Sharks were appalling. It was patchy, pap, rubbish. God only knows what poor old Gregor Townsend was doing out there. Surely he's suffered enough playing for Scotland. Great old Natal players from the King's Park days must have been turning in their graves.

“After around half-time three of us had seen enough. Our Kiwi pal stuck it out and he joined us later in the pub. ‘Jeez,’ he said after complaining about the warm pint of London Pride. ‘To think they pay good money to those jokers to play pro rugby.’ Unbelievable indeed.

“Still, he was happy enough. He has a ticket for Dublin this weekend, 48,500 sell-out Heineken Cup semi-final and the Irish RU say they could have sold it out twice over. Real rugby, physical crunch, a contest for possession, tens of thousands of Munstermen and women living and dying on it, and Wasps and Lawrence Dallaglio playing for their skins.

“As John Mitchell says, Kiwis should try it sometime. Maybe they'd even reach a World Cup Final.”

Well, there you have it. One man’s view, but you have to ask – after his recent experiences in New Zealand what else would John Mitchell be saying and why didn’t he do something about it when he was in charge of the All Blacks instead of sending them out to play wildly undisciplined rugby?

It is no secret that I have never been entirely convinced about the Super 12 – especially the off-beam decision to introduce regional sides in South Africa – and Jones may have a point when it comes to the demise of southern hemisphere forward play.

But I disagree entirely with him about the merits of the Heineken Cup where matches often resemble all-in mud wrestling because referees are so lax at applying the off-sides laws.

Apart from the jarring and gaudy uniforms worn by some of the teams the one thing that has stood out for me is the lack of space afforded teams to play – with the result that epic rolling mauls and biff-bang tussles become the order of the day; for the simple reason that there is no other way because defences are up so quickly.

The lineouts, too, are a complete mess and are run with a complete disregard of the laws as players constantly and with impunity transgress in, to use a Jones phrase, their “full-on desperation” to foul an opponent.

There was much to savour in the Munster-Stade Francais clash, but the Llannelli-Biarritz match that Jones lauds was of embarrassingly poor standard when it came to skill and continuity and my view was that if the European Cup sides were to play through a Super 12 season they would struggle to reach the play-offs.

Even John Robbie, who can be quite scathing of modern innovation, describes the Super 12 as the “best rugby tournament in the world” so the men from the north, blinded by the coming together of a fine England side at the fifth Rugby World Cup, must know there are many who disagree.

The one certainty is that Jones in singing the praises of the old is hastening in the new for talk such as his will surely hasten the day that a competition pitting the best of the Super 12 against the cream of the Heineken Cup will be instituted – and it will be attendant of all the embellishments he so resents.