Loose Pass

This week we will mostly be concerning ourselves with innovations, the importance of winners, sleeping giants and stupid interviews.

This week we will be concerning ourselves with innovations, the importance of winners, sleeping giants and really really stupid interviews.

A missive from South Africa came to us this week, with a little video clip of the Varsity Cup attached.

The Varsity Cup is South Africa's latest attempt at developing and retaining more local young talent/bolstering the appallingly disparate Currie Cup/pandering to attention whores (watch the television coverage)/ensuring what should be a thriving club scene goes under/and it's producing some excellent rugby at times, although at other times the gulf between the haves and have-nots is still evident.

It's also been a proving ground of sorts for those rugby doctors in Stellenbosch who came up with the ridiculous ELVs to experiment further with bits and bobs regarding officiating and in-game admin. We have had the white card (where the captain of the team could challenge a call mid-match, thoroughly confusing all concerned), we have had the ELVs and now we have the 'strategy break'.

Seriously? Strategy break? Isn't that against the spirit of the game somewhat, that spirit that says you prepare as thoroughly as possible as a coach, then hope that if it's going wrong the players take accountability to put it right and/or put into action the plan B you so meticulously prepared? Don't the ubiquitous waterboys pass on enough coaching messages enough as it is during injury-breaks that aren't really?

Perhaps not, but there is one other theory: that it is little more than a poorly-disguised attempt at milking the Varsity Cup's commercial success by slotting in a couple of extra ad breaks, anodyne branded interviews from ill-educated floosies and branded presentations, all created by those who know that they'll get more pairs of eyes on the screen if they do their thing mid-match.

Well, I tell you one thing, for each one who notices the brands on display during the strategy breaks, there will be hundreds of others reacting with fury to the fact that we now have rugby played in four quarters, interrupted by too many advertisements and dumbed down by interviews with the intellectual capacity and value of a shrew's scrotum.

A huge shame too, for in amongst it all, the rugby really is top-notch.
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Continuing on the theme of top-notch, any rugby person in the world would have been impressed by the clinicality with which England saw off Italy this weekend.

After weathering an initial storm and conceding a few penalties to over-enthusiasm, England were devastating, running better lines from better depths than their opposition, supporting better, kicking better, lasting better and tackling better. There wasn't much sublime skill involved, but it was hardly dull to watch such was the speed and efficiency of their play.

Afterwards Martin Johnson, pragmatic as ever, talked mostly about the importance of executing correctly all those things that had been worked on in training. Little else. No frills, no flannel talk or pre-meditated press sentence. Just about the work and the execution.

Assuming that England continue in the vein of the last twelve months – can anybody see the wheels coming off at the moment – Johnno will be the bloke who not only steered a rolling ship safely to harbour as a player, but then went back to sea (however reluctantly) and did the same as a manager.

During his rugby career, he has never been anything other than leader and winner. With most of the players he is now managing having spent early career years aspiring to be a part of, or emulate those on, Johnno's team as he went to Oz and brought home Bill, it seems likely that the aura he commanded as the leader of that team is rubbing off on the new lot. Toby Flood looks sure and settled, something no other England coach has managed to achieve. Mike Tindall looks rejuvenated. Newbies like Ben Youngs are taking their place with maturity to their play. The personalities are flourishing – witness Chris Ashton's swallow-dives – but all within the far stronger framework of togetherness. The whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

Johnson has a good back-up team, but the imprint of his personality and understated work ethic, the stuff which helped him take his team to a World Cup, is stamped all over it. It's brought England back from oblivion. When it comes to the World Cup again later this year, back England, led and inspired by Johnno's leadership and knowledge of how to win, to be an integral part. Other countries should take note: having a proven winner as your coach is paramount.
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Sevens fever hit Las Vegas this weekend, but it's beginning to grab the whole of the USA. For the first time, the networks across the country are broadcasting rugby on a regular basis.

Inspired by not only the accession of sevens to the Olympics but also the all-action nature of the game (and possibly by the increasing common knowledge of the fact that the USA are still the Olympic champions), viewership, playing membership is all significantly on the up, which is something that should have the rest of the world looking on with at least one raised eyebrow.

A population of c.309m, many raised on action sports such as American football and ice hockey, plenty of handsome, strapping, athletic chaps and an acumen for getting sports business awfully right… the USA is a sleeping giant in terms of rugby potential. Is the proliferation of the sport across the US screens and the increase in playing numbers the first twitches of this giant awakening?
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Close examination of an interview with Max Evans this week revealed that some interviewer had asked Evans whether he'd be taking the field against Wales with thoughts of revenge for the injury suffered against the Welsh by his brother Thom last year.

Seriously? Has the media stooped this low that they believe a rugby player might go and deliberately avenge what was an unfortunate accident running true to the nature of the game? Do they really need to create a scandal the whole time at the expense of any sensitivity whatsoever? What kind of a question was that?

Loose Pass compiled by Richard Anderson