Why ‘Bloodgate’ is good for rugby

It’s been a tough summer for rugby. In a matter of weeks we have gone from a sublime Lions series to the ridiculous and depressing scandals currently consuming the sport, with countless articles on drug-taking and eye-gouging, and double-page spreads lamenting the game's demise post-'Bloodgate'. ‘The fact is that rugby’s integrity is dead,’ wrote Simon Barnes in The Times a few days ago.

Well, I’m not so sure. In fact, I think that the outrage the affairs have caused has demonstrated the sport’s underlying integrity. People are so angry and disillusioned that you sense a return to the game’s sporting roots is not just possible, but actively desired by all. The fake blood incident at Harlequins was despicable, from the pre-meditated cheating to the attempted cover-up, with bribery and blackmail thrown into the sordid and farcical mix. It was so disappointing and ridiculous, in fact, that people awoke from their egg-chasing daydreams to ask, as Mark Souster did, ‘is this where the win-at-all-costs mentality of professionalism is taking us?’ If the ‘Bloodgate’ fiasco serves as an effective reminder of the path rugby would take without integrity, it is a scandal worth suffering.

Much of the criticism levelled at rugby in recent weeks has justifiably been focused on the sport’s hypocrisy, and it’s partly because the game has cultivated such a ‘holier-than-thou’ attitude that its critics are now being so venomous – pride comes before a fall, and they’re happy to remind us of it. ‘Rugby union, a game steeped in self-righteousness, has thrown away its moral compass,’ wrote Barnes.

In some ways it’s strange that rugby should have been so proud of itself – the game has seen violence and cheating of a sort for so long (certainly before professionalism, although not as seriously) that one might well ask where the basis for its moral superiority comes from. We constantly sneer at footballers for diving, but every week both amateur and professional rugby players spend eighty minutes trying to con the referee in the messy melee of rucks, mauls and scrums. Granted, there’s something really cringeworthy about grown men rolling on the floor in fake agony, but it’s the same 'gamesmanship' illness, just with different symptoms - you can't condemn one but not the other. If the ‘Bloodgate’ affair brings rugby fans down from their high horses a little, it would certainly be a good thing.

This said, there are some areas where rugby definitely still has it right. While the Harlequins affair rumbled on, the story broke that a man was stabbed in the widespread violence surrounding a West Ham vs Millwall match. The shedding of real blood lent the fake blood incident some perspective, and also perhaps helps to explain the moral high ground (in this case more legitimately) taken by rugby fans: one part of rugby’s underlying integrity has always been demonstrable in the friendly attitude of its fans to one another.

Where I think rugby has also done well is in its reaction to the Harlequins affair. A serious punishment was given to those involved, unlike in many other sports – I don’t think three years is too much for Richards, because if you want to stop corruption you have to be harsh when it occurs. A panel has also been set up - with big some big names included - to explore just how deeply the rot has set in, and will hopefully help to bring more cases to light.

The best reaction, however, has come from the fans. As we have seen, the disappointment is so great that any dubious behaviour will surely be roundly condemned if it takes place in the coming season, while diving has now become an apparently irremovable part of football. I’m sure the same feeling also extends to a large number of rugby players, for whom this sort of pre-meditated cheating was a frustrating and regrettable aspect of the game they love (some might still defend and enjoy the odd spot of 'gamesmanship', but it's a slippery slope). The most important thing is that the attitude is right at the individual level – changing the laws on substitutions or having greater surveillance of players may seem like the best way to ensure that this sort of incident doesn’t happen again, but far more desirable is a system where honesty and integrity are more important to both players and fans than short-term advantage or victory.

‘Bloodgate’ is a perfect demonstration of how far from the ideal rugby has drifted, and will hopefully see the game better itself as a result.

Margins great and small

Before the Lions spiral too deeply into despair at the dominance the Springboks showed in most areas of yesterday’s game, they should remember that, in spite of everything the South Africans threw at them, they created more than enough opportunities to pull off what would have been an historic against-the-odds victory against the World Champions in Durban.

As Lions nerves frayed and snapped in the first scrums and lineouts, the South Africans capitalised with an early try and penalties to convert their pressure into points. The opening try sums up the difference in forward play for the majority of the match – Jon Smit hit the Lions defence at pace from the back of a ruck, his momentum creating the five metres or so he needed to score; the Lions, by contrast, only ever gave static targets to the Springboks, who duly rushed up and stopped the forwards where they stood. The Lions must take the ball at a charge, and with the minimum of support runners to clean out quickly for another wave, as the South Africans do so well.

Phil Vickery seemed more surprised than anyone at the schooling he was given in the scrum by Tendai "The Beast" Mtawarira. Whether Mtawarira was boring illegally into Vickery or whether the Englishman was simply outplayed is a matter for debate – those who are more au fait with the scrum have told me it was a bit of both, and McGeechan has asked for clarification from yesterday’s referee – but tellingly the scrum’s problems disappeared almost entirely when Adam Jones came on five minutes into the second half. Jones, ever the diplomat, has said he didn’t understand why Vickery was being penalized either, and that by the time he came on man-of-the-match Mtawarira was exhausted.

Similarly, the Lions lineout looked safer with the introduction of Matthew Rees at hooker, and the all-Welsh front row that finished the game made invaluable contributions in the loose as well – their odds of starting the second Test have rocketed, for their presence on the field (admittedly with a number of other factors such as South African fatigue and substitutions) correlated with a stemming of the Springboks’ dominance and the beginning of the Lions’ fightback.

If I could single out one moment in which the Springboks were at their most superior, it was a rolling maul that covered half the pitch before eventually ending in a try from a lineout – this was where the South Africans’ much-vaunted physicality really came into play, as they smashed their way to the Lions’ line, but it was a technically superb move too that swerved, rolled and broke like water over rocks, finding its way to the sea. So naturally and powerfully did it flow that the Lions never looked at all like stopping it – have the ELVs that killed the rolling maul left us weak in this area, I wonder?

The Lions kicking was once again abysmal – touch-finders mostly found the arms of Francois Steyn instead – and although they collected one or two of the many Garryowens they hoisted, they looked so much more dangerous with ball in hand that the coaches must encourage them to attack this way in the next two Tests. Roberts and O’Driscoll are a match made in rugby heaven, and they had the beating of the South African backs all afternoon. The Springboks rushed up to try and blitz this threat so often, in fact, that I can’t help but wonder if the coaches will consider selecting O’Gara on the basis of his current love affair with the rugby league style chip. Hook, if fit, may well offer a similar option.

This is not to say that Jones had a particularly bad game – he missed a couple of difficult penalties, and his kicking from hand was indicative of the Lions’ kicking on the whole, but he got the ball out when it did eventually filter its way down through the forwards and his scrum half’s ever-so-slightly delayed delivery. Phillips almost always takes one unnecessary step when passing, and he was shown up yesterday by Fourie du Preez’s instant, inch-perfect service to Pienaar. Phillips also used the blindside too often, so predictably following the “use up all the space on one side before switching” theory that it killed the urgency of many a Lions attack.

Despite their failings, these two did get the back-line purring from time to time. It is strange to think that, but for the most desperate and fortunate of interventions from Jean de Villiers, Monye would have touched down after five minutes, and with a little more strength in the tackle he would have held onto the ball to score again at the end of the game. Phillips, too, spilt the ball over the line Shane Williams style while stretching out from a tackle. By such small margins are games won and lost, and theoretically the Lions could have won this one easily – it would have been a travesty/miracle depending on your point of view, because they only really played for 20 minutes of the match, and despite the Lions’ 60-65% possession there was a huge margin in class between them and the South African forwards.

As Jon Smit said after yesterday’s game, the pressure and intensity of next week’s match will be even greater – the Lions showed they could play wonderful rugby at times, and losing by such a small margin with a number of wasted chances allows them legitimately to believe that they can beat this South African team. The Springboks will be looking to close out the series after a scare yesterday – they were dominant, but with it came an unwarranted arrogance that allowed the Lions back into the game, and which, as Smit will be telling them all week, they cannot afford to show again.

It can be done...

“They don’t respect you. They don’t rate you. The only way to be rated is to stick one on them, to get right up in their faces and turn them back, knock them back. Outdo what they do. Outjump them, outscrum them, outruck them, outdrive them, outtackle them, until they’re fucking sick of you.”

Jim Telfer

If the Lions are able to turn Telfer’s words into actions, only then will they stand a chance against the Springboks tomorrow.

The 2009 Lions have at times danced and at times stumbled past the provincial opposition, overcoming the difficulties of the touring format with the modest dignity of a six-match unbeaten streak, but it is the Test series that decides whether a tour will be inked into or erased from our knowingly-biased collective memory.

The flaccid record of recent years, when compared with the relative success of the individual home nations internationally, proves that the task awaiting any Lions team is a particularly daunting and difficult one. We harp on about ‘The Invincibles’ of 1974 and the desperate victory of 1997 precisely because their feats are so rare – we care more about the Lions because we are expected to lose.

To defeat any of the Tri-Nations teams (let alone the current World Champions) on their home turf, with a squad drawn from four countries which has spent little over three weeks playing together, is a minor miracle. True, the Lions can pick the best players from those four countries, but international rugby teams hit their peaks and troughs in different cycles, and the Lions rarely gain a significant advantage over their hosts in this regard. In fact, it is the South Africans who are riding the crest of a wave at the moment, with Bryan Habana claiming that they are an even stronger outfit than when they won the World Cup two years ago.

The Lions go into the first Test tomorrow, like so many of their predecessors, as rank outsiders - Bakkies Botha is even reported to have laughed at the idea of Paul O’Connell and Alun Wyn Jones competing with him and his second row partner Victor Matfield on the field. Much has been made of the lack of size in the Lions squad but, as the ’97 Lions proved by embodying the energy in Telfer’s words, victory can come by outperforming the opposition, not outmuscling them.

"I didn't look at the size and the weight of the players I picked, I just went for the best players I had seen in the Six Nations," McGeechan said of his touring squad at the end of yesterday’s press conference. "Some happen to be bigger than others, but it wasn't a criteria. I just wanted good rugby players."

The Lions will need those players to demonstrate the athleticism that has repeatedly been mentioned as the alternative to size; we must not forget that the South African side is also one of the most athletic teams around, with Pierre Spies showing his mind-boggling pace and Heinrich Brussow appearing to steal or slow the ball at every consecutive ruck for a full 80 minutes for the Cheetahs. Croft, Wallace and Heaslip are no slouches, but do they have what it takes to outperform the South African back row consistently?

In all their matches so far, excluding the 74-10 victory over the Golden Lions, the Lions have not shown the same aggressive enthusiasm as the opposition. I’m not advocating the recklessness that the Southern Kings showed on Tuesday, nor suggesting that the Lions should lose their cool, but merely that they should mark their territory more forcefully – it would be nice to a see someone in a red shirt doing the clattering for a change, tackling and crashing into the defense à la Scott Gibbs. You can have no doubt that the Springboks will climb into the Lions from the first whistle tomorrow, and the Lions must give as good as they get and more.

We all seem more confident about our back line, with at least two players who could be deemed the best in the world in their positions: Lee Byrne and Brian O’Driscoll. It is true, Sir BOD’s star is on the wane, but who better to stir the blood of those younger Lions around him than arguably the finest centre of all time? Some of those younger players have found fantastic form on this tour, with the likes of Tommy Bowe and Jamie Roberts consistently demonstrating their talents – if they are able to match tomorrow’s challenge with the performance it merits, Roberts’s forward momentum and Bowe’s finishing will give the Lions a fighting chance.

The Springbok back division is, of course, also very strong. Fourie du Preez is often advertised as the best scrum half in world rugby, a fantastic runner with sharp passing and kicking games to boot. Ruan Pienaar proved himself equally adept in the fly-half position during last year’s autumn internationals, and Jean de Villiers has the size, handling ability and pace to offer a multitude of options from inside centre. Bryan Habana burst onto the scene with bestial speed a few years back, and will certainly still be a threat if the Lions allow him too many liberties, while Francois Steyn has shown that weak clearance kicking (as the Lions have been prone to do) can and will be punished with the kind of metronomic drop goals that seem to have become a requirement of all South African full-backs.

With very few people predicting a victory tomorrow or in the series, the Lions will be thinking as all underdogs do, turning negative expectation into energy, energy into an advantage over an enemy with superior size or skill. Martin Johnson, mixing his myths and metaphors slightly, recently explained that he relished being written off when playing as a Lion: “The good thing about ’97 was that no-one really gave us a prayer. It felt like a minnow against a Goliath, and that is a great place to be.”

So, what kind of match can we expect tomorrow? The Battle of the Breakdown looks set to be the clinching skirmish of tomorrow’s war. The Lions have so far conceded 52 penalties at the tackle area in their 6 matches, a worrying figure that must be rectified against some of the world’s best loose forwards. Lineouts and scrums are in the balance, both sides with their advantages and weaknesses – the Lions need a solid platform to release the attacking potential of their backs, who will fancy their chances with quick, clean ball. In defence, the Lions must show an aggression that has been lacking so far, and a willingness to play dirty on the floor if that is the order of the day. In short, they must outplay the Springboks in all areas of the field.

It can be done.

“They don’t think fuck all of us. Nothing. We’re just here to make up the fucking numbers. No one’s going to do it for you. You have to find your own solace – your own drive, your ambition, your own inner strength, because the moment’s arrived for the greatest game of your fucking life”.

First real test for the Lions

Ian McGeechan has announced his team to face South Africa in the first Test on Saturday. The most notable selections were those of David Wallace and Tom Croft as flankers, with Ugo Monye on the left wing. Martyn Williams joins Irish lock Donncha O’Callaghan on the bench.

1. Gethin Jenkins

2. Lee Mears

3. Phil Vickery

4. Alun Wyn Jones

5. Paul O’Connell

6. Tom Croft

7. David Wallace

8. Jamie Heaslip

9. Mike Phillips

10. Stephen Jones

11. Ugo Monye

12. Jamie Roberts

13. Brian O’Driscoll

14. Tommy Bowe

15. Lee Byrne

Replacements:

16. Matthew Rees

17. Adam Jones

18. Donncha O’Callaghan

19. Martyn Williams

20. Harry Ellis

21. Ronan O’Gara

22. Rob Kearney

With the selection holding relatively few surprises, we can turn our attention now to the challenge that faces these players on Saturday. For any decent chance of a series win, it seems imperative that the Lions take the advantage in the first test – a win over South Africa would not only give the Lions the heady drag of confidence that beating mediocre provincial opposition cannot provide, but would also shock a Springbok side that are widely expected to whitewash their touring opponents.

Some things for you to ponder this afternoon over your tea and biccies, which I’ll write about tomorrow:

Heinrich Brussow gave the Lions a breakdown masterclass when playing for the Cheetahs, and will start for South Africa in Shalk Burger’s absence. Pierre Spies is a new breed of athlete, a gargantuan No. 8 who runs faster than most wingers. Will the Lions back row have an answer to these threats?

Many believe the Lions’ greatest strengths are in their backline, with Phillips, Roberts, O’Driscoll, Bowe and Byrne all in good form. But do they outclass a Springbok team comprising the talents of Fourie du Preez, Ruan Pienaar, Jean de Villiers, Bryan Habana and Francois Steyn?

Get thinking. Get Discussing. Get Posting.

Battering from Kings limits Lions' options

It was clear that the Southern Kings wanted little more than to kick seven shades out of the Lions yesterday, and in doing so they did Springboks a service by ruling out two young players who may well have been in contention for the first Test match. James Hook and Euan Murray (neither of whom was expected to start against South Africa, but who had good prospects for bench spots) will sit out the first Test, although both are expected to recover.

The flurry of late tackles, high tackles, swinging arms and shoulder charges betrayed the Kings’ insecurity, but they achieved their goal of unnerving a Lions side that was already fracturing under the weight of the players’ desire to impress the coaches one last time. Struggling on a pitch that looked like Astroturf, the Lions failed to get any momentum, and very few players will feel that they did enough to pose Ian McGeechan and his team any serious dilemmas for tomorrow’s selection announcement.

The Scot insisted that he would only pick his Test side after the Kings match, although realistically only one or two positions were still up for grabs. Most of the Lions who got the afternoon off yesterday could relax in the knowledge that they will be starting against South Africa on Saturday, but McGeechan did everything he could to encourage those playing yesterday to give him selection nightmares. Apart from the props, who once again dominated a weak opposition front row, most of the Lions were too shaken up by the Kings to show what they can really do.

Adam Jones and Ronan O’Gara will perhaps think themselves fortunate to have been offered more air-time, and both took the opportunity fairly well. Jones combined with Sheridan to tear the Kings’ scrum to shreds, and with Murray now out of the picture the Welshman has only Vickery to contend with for tight-head – most expect the English veteran to start with Lee Mears and Gethin Jenkins, however. O’Gara’s reliable place-kicking gave the Lions breathing space, and with Hook also out of action he will expect at least a bench spot for Saturday’s game.

Another position still available at the start of play yesterday was that of left wing – with Tommy Bowe raising the bar higher than a tackle from Jaco van der Westhuyzen, all the other main contenders pale in comparison. Ugo Monye looks set to start, having once again “done what was asked of him” (Gareth Abbott, 12/6/09) – his tackling was strong yesterday, at one point hurling a prop from the field like a discarded tissue, and he was on-hand to finish an important try from O’Gara’s cross-field kick, but I still have lingering doubts. He often flies up alone in defence (it looks great when you quickly stifle an attack, but if you get it wrong you leave everyone else exposed, as he did at one point yesterday), he has given away lots of penalties from squeeze-balling when tackled, and let’s not discuss his kicking in case I get really depressed. He is undeniably a fantastic finisher when given time and space, but how often do teams like the Springboks allow you such luxuries in Test match rugby?

I don’t currently have a better option, mind. Those who waited to pass judgement over Luke Fitzgerald were wiser than I, as he looked a little undercooked yesterday. Some dodgy kicking and weakness in both attacking and defensive contact mean he should probably not play in a Test match just yet – he has the talent to be a great international winger, and if he learns from Bowe over the next few years he could be just as good as ol’ Tammy. Lady Luck seems to have turned her back on Shane Williams, and I can’t help feeling that had he not dropped the ball over the line in that first match of the tour he might be in quite a different position now. I wouldn’t be at all worried if he played against South Africa, despite my disappointment at his tour performances – his experience and skill still counts for a great deal, and Test selection (unlikely as it may be) might be the confidence boost that he needs to get back to his best. Some have recalled McGeechan’s penchant for wild-card selections, and have raised the possibility of seeing Rob Kearney on the wing – the Irishman is equally comfortable there, and may win a seat on the bench at least for his ability to cover the back three.

The other conundrum for McGeechan and his men lies in the back row. Heaslip has secured the Number 8 shirt after limp competition from Andy Powell, but the question of what to do on the flanks remains unanswered. With David Wallace and Martyn Williams both natural opensides, Tom Croft might win the blindside despite some less-than-thoroughly-convincing performances. Based on their respective showings thus far, I would leave Croft on the bench and start with the two opensides, who also offer more of a physical threat than the wiry Croft. But hey, what do us backs know about the pack?

With the Test squad due to be announced tomorrow, I humbly offer a tentative prediction. Let’s see if Geech proves me wrong.

1. Gethin Jenkins

2. Lee Mears

3. Phil Vickery

4. Alun Wyn Jones

5. Paul O’Connell

6. Martyn Williams

7. David Wallace

8. Jamie Heaslip

9. Mike Phillips

10. Stephen Jones

11. Ugo Monye

12. Jamie Roberts

13. Brian O’Driscoll

14. Tommy Bowe

15. Lee Byrne

16. Adam Jones

17. Matthew Rees

18. Tom Croft

19. Simon Shaw

20. Ronan O’Gara

21. Harry Ellis

22. Rob Kearney / Riki Flutey