Loose Pass: Saints, George North and Eddie Jones

Editor

This week we will be mostly concerning ourselves with Northampton, George North, the Six Nations and that footage of Eddie Jones.

Northampton minus North

To the list of thorny problems taking root at Franklin’s Gardens, we can add another: communication issues.

This comes following a terse exchange between Northampton interim boss Alan Gaffney and a BBC reporter who asked why Wales star George North had not figured in the weekend’s home defeat to Sale.

“It’s probably best to ask George,” said Gaffney. “We picked a side that actually wanted to be out on the pitch.”

Ouch!

Bizarrely, that remains the total sum of official lines on the subject. The Saints, North and North’s agent have remained absolutely schtum, leaving the door open for speculation and rumour. Had the big wing already left for the Scarlets? Has he taken another knock to the noggin? Did he just not fancy exposing his knees to the Beast from the East?

As always with our sport, the truth is never black and white: and it comes entwined in red tape.

Wales are obliged to release foreign-based players from camp during the two so-called ‘rest weeks’ that trisect the Six Nations. This accounts for North’s presence in Northampton over the weekend.

But then it gets a bit murky.

According to ‘sources’ (and that’s all we have to go on), North’s club contract allows for full release to country, including even those games played outside official Test windows. What’s not so clear is what happens when there are no Tests taking place within those Test windows.

It is understood that Jim Mallinder, the previous boss at Northampton, had agreed that North could sit out club games played during breaks to the Six Nations; Gaffney, it would seem, is of a different school of thought.

Quite how no one had the gumption to put it all down in writing is beyond us. Then again, perhaps it is in writing, and it’s just the brilliance of the legalese that is allowing wholly divergent inferences to be drawn.

What we do know is that North is not the only player to be serving two masters at present. France’s constant battle to keep their key performers isolated from club travailles is well documented, and Italy also suffer by dint of Top 14 representation.

Indeed, the Azzurri could have done with spending a fortnight in the company of the talismanic Sergio Parisse ahead of their crunch encounters with Wales and Scotland. Instead their leader was away doing the bidding of Stade Français in Oyonnax.

We’d argue that this set-up goes a fair way to explain why France and Italy have performed so poorly in recent edition of the Six Nations. Players need complete focus, and so do the fans.

So here’s an idea: why not do away with these ‘rest weekends’. Is reeling off five Tests in five weeks really too much to ask? If we must run concurrent competitions, surely at least try and limit the disruption.

And our concerns don’t rest exclusively on those players torn between commitments. Clubs that see neither hair nor hide of their top players for seven prime weeks of the season (not counting the four weeks of November) suffer immeasurably. Look at the some of the ‘shock’ league results notched up in the last month and tells us which were not triggered by staff shortages.

It’s shocking that whole championships will, inevitably, be decided on periods of skewed results; but what’s truly scandalous is that no one is complaining.

Well, no one except Gaffney.

We’d love him to expand on his views, but we’re not holding our breath. He’s been around long enough to understand rule one of the club/provincial game as played across the home nations: there’s more revenue to be had in producing Test stars than there is in winning titles.

But quite where that leaves fans of the club/provincial game remains to be seen. What exactly are we supporting?

Sowing and reaping

It’s been a week since we were forced to endure footage of Eddie Jones being verbally abused in Manchester following Scotland’s win over England in Edinburgh, but the images still make us feel decidedly nauseous.

Kudos goes to the Scottish Rugby Union for immediately issuing a statement denouncing the “disgusting behaviour” and for pointing out that it did not “represent the values of our sport or its fans”.

Quite right, too. Rugby has long been accused of harbouring a holier-than-thou attitude, but Loose Pass feels confident enough to suggest that Jones’s aggressors had little to no interest in the sport of rugby. Our evidence for this is weak. In fact, it rests entirely on the skin-tight, electric blue trousers worn by the lead idiot – but it’s a call we are happy to make.

Be that as it may, rugby is by no means immune to the growing trend for ‘verbals’. As has been noted here before, good-natured banter is increasingly playing second-fiddle to straight-forward invectiveness, on the pitch, in the stands and bars, and, of course, in its natural habitat: cyberspace.

Jones is not above a verbal outburst or two. He has been known to weaponise his words, like when he publicly pondered whether Mr & Mrs Sexton experienced “anxiety” over Jonathan’s head injuries, or when he referred to Stuart Lancaster as a “rookie coach” during RWC 2015, or when he labelled Rhys Patchell as Wales’s “third-choice 10” and questioned whether he had the bottle to face England, or when he turned on the whole of the media – Donald Trump style – after Mike Brown turned in a good performance.

You could argue that this is all well and good. We’d probably agree: it adds to the hoopla surrounding Test rugby and is manna from heaven for the headline writers.

But please don’t claim – as Jones has done – that skin-tight’s attack was somehow prompted by pre-match comments made by Gavin Hastings and his desire to see Scotland “rub Jones’s face in the dirt”.

“If you talk about all those sorts of things, it incites certain behaviours,” Jones protested. “Are they the behaviours we want to see?”

No, Eddie, of course they are not. But if you can’t differentiate between literal and figurative language, how are we supposed to process your own musings?

And let’s not forget that it wasn’t Hastings who said: “Sir Clive Woodward summed it up best when he said everyone hates England. And it’s true. Because of the history that is involved, the surrounding countries with the social and historical context, that long-seated rivalry – you can feel that hatred of England.”

No prizes for guessing who did!

Loose Pass is compiled by former Planet Rugby editor Andy Jackson