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The TriNations teams: faster, smarter, harder
In rugby’s battle of North and South, it is their power and passion that have given the TriNations teams the upper hand
Stephen Jones, rugby correspondent
This is the story not only of the 15 players who started for New Zealand as they sealed the Grand Slam yesterday but also of 15 who did not make the tour party. The Slam is a magnificent feat of coaching and playing passion, excellence and resistance to fatigue. It is more remarkable since of the scores of New Zealand players plying their trade in parts of the globe other than Twickenham yesterday, about 15 would have had a serious chance of making this tour party; at their best, many of them would have made the starting team.
The absence of these players makes the failure of the northern hemisphere teams to record a single win over the past four weekends against New Zealand or South Africa all the more horrendous, though Wales did strike back against a tiring Australia yesterday. The success rate of the Six Nations teams against the TriNations sides since 2003 has sunk to about 18%.
These past few weeks, ironically, the European teams have, as often as not, made more ground with the ball in hand. That simply shows that possession is not everything and that down south they attack early in the phases, while our brave lads try to retain the ball laboriously. Remember South Africa’s dazzling one-phase attack from the lineout last weekend that catapulted Adi Jacobs over for the try?
Europe’s plight is even worse than it seems because the three touring teams may not be as vulnerable for years as they were supposed to be this time. New Zealand have a tranche of players unavailable; Australia are in the foothills of recovery from a severe dip; South Africa, whatever the gleaming exterior they presented at Twickenham, are riven with internal problems. And what happened? The European teams, Wales excepted, were dire. The weaknesses remained unexploited. Why the dominance, not only this autumn, but since 2003 and - the amazing England run of 12 wins against TriNations teams apart - through history? Why the collective excellence?
So many theories. One is that the southern teams are bigger and intrinsically superior. They are not. Statistics show that our teams have been as big or bigger for some time. They say there are too many overseas players in our game, so it hampers the development of our poor young lads. Drivel. Name one Englishman who has not risen to the Test status he deserved because an overseas player took his place at club level. The top clubs, who are limited in any case in the number of overseas players they can field, perform a valuable weeding-out process. The foreign paranoia is poppycock bandied about by the likes of Graham Henry, who would prefer his players not to disappear, and by people making excuses for their incompetence in running Test teams.
They say basic skills are better in the TriNations teams (and my goodness, they are indeed). They say fine weather and dry pitches Down Under give young players a superb grounding. Again, the theory does not wash. Yes, South Africa and Australia have these advantages, but why are New Zealand’s basic skills so vastly superior? I have been to New Zealand many times. It rains, sometimes it pours for days on end.
They say that in the south there are fewer popular sports. New Zealand’s football team is almost nonexistent. In South Africa, football is mainly the province of the black population, so other young people gravitate to rugby union. Again, it is nonsense. Maybe there are fewer competing attractions in New Zealand, but how does that square with Australia’s success? They are in powerful competition with all kinds of football codes.
So why the feeble 18%? First, because the three southern teams are, by a gigantic margin, more focused. There is far too much theorising in European rugby, there are too many talking shops and reports on the state of the game. Things never get fixed. In New Zealand, things are resolved overnight. In all the years I have watched New Zealand teams, I have never seen them come into a match with the same weakness that they had the match before. They might have a bad day at the lineout office; by the next match they have fixed it. In the UK, there will be a long-term plan put in motion to develop more lineout forwards, and sage discussions, while all around, the lineout catastrophe will continue.
This autumn, Ireland, France and England have used the Groundhog Day excuse: new or newish coaches, new-look teams, so patience is needed. Revert to day one. The demands for patience from the England camp appear to suggest every player has just won his first cap. But Mr Johnson, most of your coaches and players have been there for years, the games are ticking by and we are waiting for England to declare themselves ready to play proper Test rugby. And by the way, how many times have Frank Hadden’s Scotland told us they are just about to turn the corner?
Our southern cousins get on with it. There is no long-term plan. They start winning games, immediately. A new coach is expected to have his team up to speed for his first match, and generally he does - Robbie Deans rolled up his sleeves and improved Australia the next day. When Warren Gatland’s Kiwi nous and shortage of patience swept into Wales, the same players suddenly went from World Cup wallies to Grand Slam champions, and they have been the best of the European teams this autumn. It is a matter of focus, of a far better, more basic grasp of what rugby is, and its essentials. But ultimately, the dominance comes from something even more basic. The south are better because they want it more. In Europe, our players think they are passionate, they hang their heads when they lose, they sing their anthems lustily and know when the camera is on them as they are doing so.
You may think passion is hard to quantify. It is not. Just look at the results and the 18%. There is a burning intensity in the All Blacks and the Springboks that is light years ahead.
You sense that when one of their players comes out in the jersey, he grasps history, realises that the kit is on loan from the great lineage of former players and has to be handed on to the next incumbent; he has to honour it while it is in his possession. It is more of a disaster when they lose games. I am not decrying the effort that European teams put in but, if they lose, they try to do better next time. Southern defeats burn horribly inside for decades and must always be avenged.
It is silly to regard a hemisphere as a homogenous identity and to see the Equator as a cut-off point where matters central to the development of good rugby teams begin or end. But is embarrassingly true for European rugby that, with brief exceptions, three teams that happen to come from south of the Equator are categorically better. They are better because for us, defeat merely hurts. For an All Black and his southern peers, defeat lacerates the soul.
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