What A Difference A Week Makes!

It's taken 2 days to find the strength to write this!

Saturday evening I sat down to watch England play Wales at the Millennium Stadium in Cardiff in the firm expectation of watching a renewed England side consolidate the march back to the top of world rugby. We were playing a Welsh side that had even lost to Italy! From last week's well constructed win against France, this match should have been a breeze.

Well it would have been if the forwards had bothered to turn up! Last week, they were magnificent, and stopped the French from playing while giving the England backs time to make their moves, but this time? They were all over the place. Hitting mauls and ruck in ones and twos, providing the slowest of balls giving Wales time to prepare their defence. The England back line was under constant pressure, and as a result, mistakes were made that Wales capitalised on. When Mike Catt had to leave the field injured, it left England with the youngest and most inexperienced set of backs we've had for a long time, and would have looked to the forwards to give them some protection and time to play. The problem was, that the forwards seemed to be playing as if they had never met each other before!

It was so depressing!

As a matter of record, France won the 6 Nations Championship by scoring a try in the last seconds of their match against Scotland. That gave them a marginally better points difference to Ireland, who up until that moment, thought they were champions.

Ah well. Next stop the World Cup where no doubt we will probably go out to the American Eagles if we carry on playing the way we are playing at the moment!

England Beat France (Again)

An eerie piece of magic happened yesterday on a rugby pitch in Twickenham, - just south west of London. England won a rugby match!

Moreover, that match was against this year’s potential world cup finalists, France.

It has to be said that although France did turn up in person, they didn’t in spirit. They looked flat-footed, slow to react and very devoid of ideas. Very much like England did against Ireland two weeks ago! They rarely competed in the loose, and when in possesion, tended to go backwards and sideways. They only had a couple of decent mauls and a lot of their rucks were turned over. One telling statistic that explains this is that England managed to create over 100 phases to 33 by France.

In contrast, with 8 changes of personel, and a new captain, England looked a totally different side to the one that surrended to Ireland at Croke Park. Although at times, England looked ragged and made silly mistakes, that was more than made up by spirit, endeavour and sheer guts. Led by 35 year old Mike Catt, by the time the first half whistle came, England were on the front foot, and although down at the interval by 3 points, looked the far happier side.

The second half saw England, basically set up camp in the French half. On the rare occasion when France did manage to cross the half-way line, the move, more often than not, ended in a turnover, and in seconds they were back in their 22, defending their line.

From what I could see, all the England players put in a performance for the first time in this 6-Nations, - though all made mistakes as well, which a more positive side than France, would have exploited and punished. None-the-less, this was a good positive start to England’s long road to recovery.

As for the other games, in a very close match, Ireland edged out Scotland by 19 points to 18 at Murrayfield to win the Triple Crown while Wales lost to Italy, - Italy’s second win in a row! This was the first time that Italy have managed to win back to back matches and marks a real step up for Italian rugby. Wales were very upset at the end as they felt the referee had misled them out of the chance to win the game, but on balance, Wales didn’t deserve to win.

Next weekend sees the last matches in this year's Six Nations. France take on Scotland in Paris - God help the Scots now; Italy play Ireland in Rome, which has now become a tough one for Ireland and England take on Wales in Cardiff. All I'm looking for now is that England step it up a gear or two and aim for a full 80-minute performance.

Six Nations - Third Weekend

After this weekend's matches, the Championship is now wide open. All teams have now lost at least one match, but more worryingly is the quality of the rugby being played at the moment. If the Northern hemisphere teams are going to vanquish the All Blacks or the Aussies, we need to be playing a lot better than we are.

France 37-12 Italy

The scoreline may be emphatic, but most of those points were won by France in the last quarter when Italy began to tire. For an hour, Italy matched France's endeavour and their defense held. Italy actually went into half-time 4 points ahead. The second half saw a much looser game that suited the French, and with Thomas Castaignede back to something like his best, opportunities started to become available. They took a stranglehold when prop Peter de Villiers emerged with the ball after the France pack powered over the line with 15 minutes to go. Suddenly France started running the ball at every opportunity and Rougerie and Michalak touched down late on as the Italian defense started to tire.

Scotland 18-12 England

Scotland was everything England wasn't. England tried to keep it tight in the forwards, never really allowing the backs to get going, but Scotland matched them in just about all aspects of the game. In particular in their commitment at the breakdown and loose. They were often to the ball first, creating a number of turnovers. Scotland thoroughly deserved their win, - I'm just very depressed at England's lack of invention and ambition. They did not look like potential World Cup contenders.

Ireland 31-5 Wales

After the first 20 minutes, there was only one team in this game, - Ireland. Wales did produce the first score, but this only mobilised the Irish pack which imposed itself on the Welsh forward to the point that they scored a pushover try, probably scored another, but the ref didn't see it and provided lots of space for the Irish backs to express themselves. O'Driscoll was magnificent, running lines that caught the Welsh flat footed, and opening holes in the defense for the likes og O'Gara to exploit. Trys by Wallace, Horgan and Stringer just rubbed it in.

A fascinating weekend's rugby. Lots of interest with teams such as Scotland and Ireland showing that they are not spent forces. Another two weeks, and the most crucial games in the Championship are to be played. England against France in Paris, is still probably the Championship decider.

Rugby Union - The Great Game

The story goes that while playing soccer at Rugby School in 1823, William Webb Ellis picked up the ball in his hands and ran with it. Well, that's the story I grew up with, and the myth has stood the test of time His name is revered enough to have had the Rugby World Cup trophy named after him, and it is the story most people are familiar with.

However, it does seem that games similar to rugby had been played many years, if not centuries prior to 1823.

At that time he was in Rugby School, Webb Ellis' father was stationed in Ireland with the Dragoons turning good Catholics into terrorists (you would have thought we would have learnt by now), and where, it is said, he would have witnessed the native game of Caid (Cad). Could it be that he may have passed details of this game on to his son? All branches of the Celtic race played Caid. There were two basic forms, Cross-country cad and field cad. The word 'Caid' means scrotum of the bull.

The Welsh say that Caid was just a derivative of their sport of Criapan. The Cornish called it "hurling to goales" which dates back to the bronze age, the West country called it "hurling over country", East Anglians "Campball", the French "La Soule" or "Chole" (a rough-and-tumble cross-country game). In fact, there had been traditions of ball-in-hand sports games for centuries before Webb Ellis' was born.

However, a more formalised game was played at Rugby School which appears to have led to the creation of the game we recognise today. Cambridge University immediately adopted the game, popularised it and made local rules. The game grew more popular and in 1871, ten years after the common rules of soccer were set, the first Rugby Union was founded in London and firm rules of the game were established.

However, in 1895 rugby clubs in northern England called for compensation of lost wages for players. The Rugby League was founded as a result and a 13-player game with altered rules were created for professionals. The history of Rugby League is something I will perhaps return to in the future. But for now, I will concentrate on Rugby Union, - perhaps the most noble and greatest game in the world.

The Mother Of All Games

Rugby spread across the globe and competition emerged between countries. In the United States, the game emerged primarily on the West Coast.

The lack of precise rules, ambiguities in the game and complexity of the sport drew a lot of United States players away from the game and major changes were invoked. In 1880 the scrum was replaced by a line of scrimmage, drawing emphasis from the free-running characteristic of the game. The game continued to play with rugby rules until 1905 where the publication of photographs of a harsh game between Sarthmore and Pennsylvania created a stir. President Theodore Roosevelt insisted on reform of the game to lower the brutality with threat of abolishing the game by edict. In 1906 the forward pass was introduced to the United States game. The rules of rugby died and the game of American football was born.

Australian Rules Football can also trace its origin to Rugby School. In 1857, Tom Wills, one of the founders of Australian Football, returned to Australia after schooling in England where he was football captain of Rugby School and a brilliant cricketer and where he would have played the 'new', game of rugby. Initially, he advocated the winter game of football as a way of keeping cricketers fit during off-season.

The Objective Of The Game

The objective of the game is to gain more points than the opposing team within the allotted time of play. A tie is called if the scores are equal at the end of play. A try is scored when a player places the ball on the ground in the opposition's goal area. It is counted as 5 points and can be converted to an additional 2 points with a successful place kick made from a line perpendicular to the point at which the ball was scored over the goal cross-bar and between the uprights. A goal can also be scored through a penalty with a free kick or a drop kick from the field of play in a similar fashion. A goal counts as 3 points. The game is played in halves, with no stoppages or time outs. Play is continuous, and is only halted when a team has scored or a law has been infringed. At which point, a set play is commenced to start the game off again. A really good and in-depth, but straight-forward breakdown of the Laws of Rugby (rugby doesn't have rules) can be found here.

Why have I written this blog, and spent a long time explaining something about the game? Those of you who remember me going nuts during the summer when England beat Australia at cricket to win the "Ashes" might have thought that Cricket was "my" game. But no. My first love is rugby. When younger, I played it on a regular basis, - I have the broken nose as proof, and I have always followed it, and this weekend marks the annual start of an international rugbyfest. - the 6 Nations. I will talk about that in a future post later this week.