Loose Pass

This week we will mostly be concerning ourselves with loyalties, differences with the past, the usual suspects and the World Cup…

This week we will mostly be concerning ourselves with loyalties, the differences between then and now, the usual suspects and the World Cup…

Both Leeds and Newcastle head south this weekend for do-or-die matches in the Aviva Premiership, with both needing a win to ensure survival – and even if Leeds win, they have to hope Newcastle come a cropper in Bath.
It's going to be a gripping weekend of action, as both opponents need a win to nail down that final spot in the Aviva Premiership semi-finals – and even if Bath win, they have to hope Northampton go down at home to Leeds.
Regardless of what's to be expected, it's a time for the teams and squads to pull together, cite Athos, Porthos and Aramis' 'one for all!' call and give it their best shot. Miracles can still happen, upsets are still possible.
So it's a strange time to announce you are quitting shortly afterwards, as Steve Thompson did this week. Newcastle have not had the easiest of rides over the past month, but at least their players are either re-signing or staying very schtum about where and whether they might be going elsewhere.
Not so Thompson, one of Leeds' more important players, who helped Neil Back rally the troops in Leeds' most important week of the season by… announcing he was off to Wasps next season.
Now when it comes to Saturday's game in Northampton, Thompson will fight against relegation full in the knowledge that his own Premiership future is guaranteed. It's probably not exactly the siege mentality, fight-to-the-death, existence-on-the-line mentality the coaching staff was looking for from leadership in this most important week. Could Thompson not have kept a lid on it all until next week when the dust had settled?
One for all? And each man for himself!
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John Smit has once again been selected to lead South Africa for the World Cup, but while Smit himself retains his usual air of calm intensity and coolness under media pressure, he must internally be reflecting on just how different things are between now and four years ago.
Back then he had a settled team that was tactically on a unified path, a coaching staff united in purpose and internal communication and respected by most, and the cushion of knowing he was the outstanding player in his position.
This time, he inherits a team where most of the top players are horribly out of form – including his own vice-captain – and the team seems still undecided on whether to be opening the game up or keeping it based upon kicking well and chasing hard. He inherits a team coached by a man most still consider a bit of a buffoon and still looking only tenuously connected at best to his assistant coaches at times.
Most of all though, he must know deep within that well though he has played the past couple of weeks, Bismarck du Plessis is still clearly the more in-form player at the moment. Being Springbok captain is not an easy job at the best of times (and lest we forget, Smit was last week captain to a 51-strong squad as opposed to the usual 30-odd) but Smit is on a hiding to nothing this time.
It's a shame he released his autobiography in the aftermath of the last World Cup. This one is set to be far more interesting.
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Names in the news this week and the reasons therefore:
Henson: Off-field issues
Cipriani: breach of team protocols
Roncero: cited for on-field violence
Azam: suspended for on-field violence
Plus ça change…
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And finally, we now have the definitive list of referees for the World Cup pool matches, enabling coaches to get their pressures on referees to play 'the right way' on now and for fans to get all the moaning out of their system long before the tournament starts in earnest.
top of the 'Oh god, not that bloke' list among opinions we've coined this week was Bryce Lawrence, who has a pair of plum games in Australia v Ireland and England v Argentina, both pivotal to their respective pools. Some English fans this week were spotted with chins resting on the heels of their hands as a result of that one, while the Irish, although placated by Lawrence's officiating in this year's England-Ireland clash, have not forgotten Lawrence's 'at least a yellow card' chickening out of having Schalk Burger sent off for that gouge on the Lions tour – and nobody British or Irish has forgotten Lawrence's whistling of the scrum in the first 2009 B&I Lions Test, nor have the French forgotten the same from the Six Nations.
Alain Rolland's appointment to the New Zealand v France game is an act of common sense by the panel, possibly chucking New Zealand's bêtes noires the tiny bone of having someone explain to them in decent French what they are doing wrong at rucks above the noise of 60,000 hysterical Kiwis.
it will also be interesting to see how Romain Poite's heavily-accented English goes down in a South Africa v Fiji clash, while the Boks will also be keen not to get on Wayne Barnes' wrong side when they face Wales.
Lawrence will not be out of the spotlight for his third match either, the feisty-looking tussle between Fiji and Samoa, where chickening out of giving a suitable disciplinary sanction may result in all-out warfare.
But perhaps the best draw of all comes for the Russia-USA game, the big one for the two teams, neither of whom display a particularly sophisticated style of rugby, both of whom are not shy of recalling a little historic rivalry between the two.
Who better then than mister no-nonsense himself: Dave Pearson. Nothing like a Geordie accent to silence two squabbling superpowers…
Loose Pass com,piled by Richard Anderson