While football was always my first love, the oval ball game
has constantly nibbled away at its supremacy. I never played it as a boy. It
was only introduced at school for the lower school once I had advanced to what
we then called the 4th Year, ensuring I missed out. Just as well.
With my lack of height and spindly legs, I’d never have survived to take my O
levels had I been sent into the fray! But there was always the telly.
As a youngster, I found it difficult getting my head around
rugby’s contrasting terminology. Having the backs, not forwards, scoring most
of the points seemed particularly perverse. And why does the number 10 answer
to stand-off, outside half and fly-half? One of many questions posed by an inquisitive boy and - let's be honest - a baffled 50-something.
Rugby League may have been on Grandstand every week but it
was the short burst of Five Nations activity every fortnight between January
and March which lent Union greater lustre. It was a very different sport in the
early Seventies. Still strictly amateur, there were no organised leagues – the
first attempt at a national ‘pyramid’ structure within England wasn’t
introduced until 1987 - and the Final Score results section comprised a lengthy
stream of seemingly random fixtures featuring places I’d never heard of. Where
the hell were Rosslyn Park, Abertillery, Orrell or Heriots FP? (Actually I
answered the final question when by chance in ’92 I stayed in an Edinburgh
B&B directly opposite the ground!).
When I first started watching the BBC’s live coverage on
Saturday afternoons, points totals were much lower than they are today and –
let’s set my rose-tinted specs of nostalgia to one side – the play was more
boring. That’s largely because a try earned only three points. As it was the
same reward as a penalty, Rugby Union was much more of a kicking game. A
free-running try was worth little on the scoreboard but its weight in gold for
young spectators like me, especially when executed by France or Wales. And such creativity was carried out without spin
passes which have so improved distance and accuracy
The 1971 Five Nations tournament was the last one before the
try gained a point and it was a further two decades before its premium was
raised again to its current five. I doubt very much that Wales’ Paul Thorburn
would have been tempted to attempt this record-breaking ‘monster’ penalty from 1986 against the
Scots in today’s game. His captain would have told him to kick for touch, take
a lineout and fashion some kind of break for the posts.
The set-pieces have changed considerably since that time,
too. The kickers had no benefit of those poncey plastic tees which some lackey
has to bring on to the pitch these days. Instead, they had to mould a mud pie
from the turf on which to place the ball. Watch the exemplary French full-back
Pierre Villepreux go through the motions in ’72 for an idea of how ‘twas
done.
The lineout has undergone more refinements than most. Five
decades ago, it resembled a crowd of desperate refugees clamouring for food
parcels, with only the tallest lock forward able to leap high enough to ‘palm’
it back to his scrum-half who could then launch an attack through the back
line. Crucially, ‘lifting’ was outlawed. Only in the Nineties did the
law-makers relent and make the illegal ‘hoist’ part of modern rugby. In my view, they have
made it far more boring. Cleaner, perhaps, but the practice of catching and
starting a slow-moving maul of meat is dull for those of us untrained in the
dark arts of forward play.
Which brings me onto the scrum. Like many TV viewers, I’ve
had to depend upon commentator Brian Moore for explaining infringements, for
what the whistle had been blown and what the forwards were getting away with. Back
in the day, scrums were probably more frequent but mercifully brief. The
twenty-first century version is borne of our health and safety obsession but,
with umpteen iterations of “Crouch, touch, set”, they can drag on for ages.
Watch these Ireland-All Blacks set-pieces from 1973 for an amusing
retrospective! And they are reminders of an age when the put-in had to go
straight into the channel so that the hooker actually had a ball to hook. No
matter how much rule-tinkering goes on, sides will always infringe to gain
advantage, keeping one step ahead of the authorities. It would appear that
sorting out the scrums is as intractable as Brexit.
Baggy shirts condemned once England sneakily discovered that
by donning tightly-fitting shirts and shorts it made it much harder for
opponents to stop them in full flight. Prior to the Nineties, a lot of
ball-carriers were dragged back by handfuls of baggy material instead of
text-book tackles. The highly successful national set-up under Will Carling’s
captaincy owed almost as much to pushing refs to the limit as fine rugby. I’ll
never forget Richard Hill’s penchant for dummy passes behind the scrum with the
sole intention of fooling opposing players into moving offside, thus conceding
a penalty. It was borderline cheating but within the laws of the game at the
time. Consequently they had to be rewritten to halt this reprehensible practice.
The new body-hugging kit must be a lot lighter and less likely to become
weighed down with mud. Poor Gareth Edwards looks the worse for wear after this
famous try for Wales in 1972 but for the forwards it
was part and parcel of winter afternoons. For club players around the world, it
still is.
Watching in black and white, it was necessary to
identify teams by means other than kit colour. Wales v Ireland was the worst,
their red and green shirts sharing an almost identical shade of grey. When
stained with slime, even the English lilywhites were problematic. Fortunately
the Irish shirtback numbers were larger than anybody else’s, while the French
were distinguishable by the unique continental ‘font’.
In more recent times, the autumn internationals have become
another major bookmark in the sporting calendar. In my schooldays, I would take
mild interest in the All Blacks when they toured these shores every four years
or so. I think this owed everything to the media focus on whether anybody could actually beat the
all-conquering New Zealanders. The first I remember was at the age of 11, and
their visit ran from October to February. Some tour! Hardly any games were
televised but in the few I did see, the most memorable ingredient was the visitors’
rendition of the intimidating ‘Haka’ before the start. It’s
still supreme theatre but has lost some of its attraction through
over-exposure. With other South Pacific nations like Fiji and Samoa also
performing their own choreographed tongue-waggling war dances, they are more
likely to induce shrugs of shoulders rather than knee-trembling fear.
In 2018, Rugby Union appears to be thriving. It’s no longer
a sport of fifteen-a-side (how I hate the haphazard rabble of multiple 'replacements' sullying the final quarter!) and the players are faster, fitter
and stronger than ever before. Professionalism has lured major league sponsors,
the Six Nations generates large TV audiences and matchday revenues, while most
leading club competitions around the world are holding their own. But it’s not
a level playing field. The Welsh heartland is struggling to support just four
pro regional clubs and these are dependent on the WRU and autumn internationals
for funds to retain the best homegrown talent. I can’t comment upon what’s
happening in the southern hemisphere but as long as the Six Nations dishes up appetising
fare each winter, hopefully the sport will continue to preserve my own trifling
interest for years to come. And it would help if Wales didn't wait to go 0-16 down before remembering how to play....
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