This week we will mostly be concerning ourselves with mentors, final calls and crossing codes…
I am your mentor
Eddie Jones is never shy of thinking and looking outside the box. We know this. We’re prepared for all things. He takes his team to judo lessons and we find it logical – even when one of the players finds his season ended by a broken leg. He gives his forwards live scrummaging sessions against their fiercest enemies. He smothers balls in fairy liquid before line-out sessions. He’s asked Pep Guardiola how to best find space on a pitch.
But Will Carling? Even by his own standards, this one isn’t just out of the box, this one seems plucked from another box marked simply ‘crackers.’
In Carling style, let’s not beat about the bush: he ruffles feathers. Carling’s was the infamous ’57 old farts’ comment which helped propel English rugby towards proper professionalism. His was also the scorn of England’s 2015 World Cup performance which drew the ire of many of the players, one or two of whom are about to find him hired as their mentor. And let’s not even consider the somewhat showy nature of his personal life.
But appointing Carling is a clear sign of Jones wanting England to adopt a unique siege mentality. Carling’s was the England side which was continually slated for being boring and functional, but which achieved levels of unpopular (among all the other teams) success since unrivalled – the team of the Woodward era is significantly more lauded than Carling’s was and not just because of Sydney 2003.
Carling was the epitome of Englishness which used to rub up the old foes in just the wrong way. The French despised him particularly, closely followed by the Welsh and the Scots and he had few friends in Australia either. Had he played in the real post-apartheid era, goodness only knows what the Afrikaners might have made of him.
It should not be lost on readers here that he was less of himself outside of England as well. Ian McGeechan is particularly critical of him in his autobiography, saying his failure to slot humbly into the Lions as non-captain was the difference between Carling being a good player and a great one. In fact generally, he was great for England rugby, rather less so for anything else.
Which probably makes him perfect for the role Jones has in mind. He wants, and has always wanted, England to be a hard-edged, belligerent and utterly inconsiderate side, with motivation deeply rooted in culture and character, as well as the simply shallow rewards to be gained from winning.
And as Jones himself notes, “Because I’m not English, I can’t preach to the players about having pride in England…He (Carling) understands English rugby, he understands what made English rugby great…This is not a coaching job. In a lot of ways it has got to do specifically with English rugby.”
Which is not a bad thesis at all, linking the attitude Carling brought to the present and trying to find a way of inculcating it into the team.
There is just one problem we see though: Brad Shields, Michael Rhodes and one or two others in the squad might not buy into Carling’s Englishness in the same way as, say, Owen Farrell. It will be interesting to see whose feathers get ruffled over the next few months.
“Sometimes people don’t know what is good for them,” quipped Jones as he asserted that Carling will bring value. A fair enough statement, yet if Carling cannot convince, those self-same people might not be firing the way Jones wants them to as the World Cup approaches.
The light fades on hopes of an Australian renaissance
A couple of weeks or so ago, this column suggested that on the basis of Australia’s second-half performance against Argentina, Michael Cheika still had what it takes to lead Australia to something approximating glory at the next World Cup.
After Saturday’s somewhat supine defeat to New Zealand, we’re doubting our own judgement. It wasn’t so much the result as the mistakes and looseness that continue to chip away at the morale and effectiveness of this Australian team, in a match that really served as little more than a ‘probables’ trial for the ABs before the ‘possibles’ take on Japan this weekend.
Australia’s recent W-L record is pretty dire, but that has to be tempered with the fact that they play two of the best in the world so often.
Yet the morale-sapping series defeats at home to Ireland and England in the past three years have been more significant, while the November Tests have hardly served to convince too often, bar the impressive wins in Wales. 2017 was a catastrophe.
How long does it go on? It is probably too late into the cycle before the Rugby World Cup now to expect Cheika to face the chop, but this November will be extremely instructive as to how the squad and its coaching team is feeling ahead of the stiffer Tests to come a year from now.
Farewell, and good luck
Christian Wade’s decision to drop the beautiful game for the NFL this week came out of the blue, but it is extremely instructive of just how modern English rugby seems to still manage to exclude talent for the sake of something else.
Wade departs at the young age of 27 with 82 Premiership tries to his name, a tally bettered by only two players. Had he carried on, he surely would have become a record-holder. Yet he won only one single, solitary England cap; in 2013 against Argentina.
He claims to have continually fought against size-ism, a claim hard to disprove. The rumblings behind the scenes have often suggested that, although his footwork and speed are assets, his lack of size made him a bit of a liability on defence. Wade’s stats were always up there at the right level. But like Alex Goode, somewhere in the mix is something that just doesn’t seem to fit to those who matter.
Rugby’s history is full of players, especially wingers, who bucked that trend. Shane Williams and Jason Robinson are the obvious examples. If you want to include full-backs, even now you have Damian McKenzie, who would waltz into most international teams. But there are so many who fall foul of the size obsession.
Hopefully Wade does find his slot in the NFL – the slot receiver role is the one most seem to think is the one for him. It would be good to think that rugby’s loss is at least someone else’s gain.
Loose Pass compiled by Lawrence Nolan