Peter Bills: Kidney's ethos a beacon in fog of dismay
Perhaps it is the sense of optimism that arises naturally in rugby at this time of the year.
The weather may be dire in the northern hemisphere but look what's just around the corner in a few weeks time -- the Six Nations. In the southern hemisphere, they're gearing up for the start of the Super 14 next month.
Besides, eras of austerity have frequently heralded years of promise, of propitious times at hand. We should remain optimistic that rugby union, in the year 2010, will provide evidence to reassert such beliefs.
For all the dire, dreary rugby which littered the game in 2009, we must remain hopeful that a new year may ignite fresh, bolder approaches by the world's coaches. For it is this small, exclusive and privileged group which holds in its hands, the key to the future game.
It is easy to be filled with doom when one watches so many games in competitions like the Guinness Premiership, which is often as dark and heavy as its promoting beverage. Nor was much of the fare served up in the southern hemisphere in 2009 that much better. The South Africans offered little or no example of the type of inspired play to be expected from a world champion nation.
Others, like Australia and Argentina, were just poor, the poverty of their approach mirrored by the likes of England, Scotland, Wales and Italy.
Yet if you look, it is perfectly possible to discern burning beacons of hope and optimism amid this fog of dismay. As so often in their history, New Zealand are increasingly developing a template for a proper, 15-man game which espouses back-line movement, individual decision-making and qualities of attrition up front.
To his eternal credit, Graham Henry has always sought a total-rugby philosophy, one in which entertainment for the spectator and pleasure for the participant are fundamental aspects of his approach. Too many New Zealanders overlooked these qualities in their public outpourings of grief and angst when the All Blacks failed to win the Tri-Nations last year for the first time since 2005.
Henry has stuck by his beliefs that he'd rather lose games than win them by playing a boring 10-man game based on bullying forwards and kicking-obsessed half-backs. Oh that coaches like the South African Brendan Venter at Saracens would adopt such a creed.
You only have to watch his team play to see the truth. This guy has banished the pleasure from the game. So for him to say, as he did last weekend, the "lottery of referees' decision making" is killing the game, is at best disingenuous; at worst, a complete abrogation of the truth.
The northern hemisphere does not need to look as far as New Zealand for an illustration of the point.
The rugby being played in Ireland, by the national side under Declan Kidney, a man who, it seems to me, prefers to offer just a light hand on the tiller; by Leinster under the Australian Michael Cheika and also by Munster under another Aussie, Tony McGahan, demonstrates conclusively that entertaining rugby can also be winning rugby.
We have to hope that these and a few other sides here and there are offering a sufficiently attractive product for others to ape their approach.
Smile
Rugby worth watching has to be a game played with a smile on the face of its participants, at least for some of the time. Sure, as a professional sport, it is altogether more serious than in its amateur days. But playing rugby for a living is like any other job -- if you're enjoying it, chances are you'll do it well. If you dread it most days, what chance is there you'll produce top-rate work?
The French always have the potential to play cracking stuff. But their problem has been that they've been too hidebound under certain coaches. Getting players to perform like robots just isn't in the nature of this sport.
No one wants to see a game of rugby masquerading as Sevens. But there is surely a happy medium between that and the dross that was served up far too often, in too many places around the world, in 2009. And to those who weakly blame the IRB for the current laws, I'd suggest they open their eyes. How come New Zealand played such magnificent rugby in beating France 39-12 in Marseille just before Christmas? Was that achieved under a different set of laws?
You can't play rugby under these laws, according to people like England's Rob Andrew. Well, England might not be able to, but quality sides can. Just check the tape of that Marseille match if you don't believe me. So let's have no more of these lame excuses for poor rugby by inferior teams.
- Peter Bills
Irish Independent
