Loose Pass

This week we will be concerning ourselves with misfortune, experiments, practical jokes, relegation and strange decisions in France…

This week we will mostly be concerning ourselves with misfortune, experiments, practical jokes, relegation and strange decisions…
He's found it tough to stay out of the headlines since retirement, but there was little sadder news in rugby this week than that of the illness that has befallen Joost van der Westhuizen.
Van der Westhuizen has been diagnosed with a life-threatening motor-neural disease, one of those insidious ones which simply eat away the body's muscle mass until the patient finds it tough to breathe.
Whatever happened after his career, Joost is still perhaps the best scrum-half ever, certainly the most intuitive and exciting. He still holds the record for the most tries for a Springbok with 38, a remarkable achievement for a scrum-half.
Away from the media spotlight, it should also not be forgotten that he is also a terrific coach for scrum-halves at the International Rugby Academy in South Africa, an inspiring character whose ability to pass balls off either hand and hit the same spot on a post 15 metres away made sure that every scrum-half who came under his tutelage had a benchmark to aim for.
So his imminent withdrawal from that, and from the rugby sphere generally as he fights the disease is a great shame and a great loss. We wish him well on the road ahead.
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Since John O'Neill's arrival back on the scene Australia has not been short of ideas to make rugby a little more high profile, as the sport struggles gamely on in the shadow of rugby league, but this week came a full-on practical experiment mixing the two codes together.
With a trio of Australian rugby greats: Mark Ella, Bob Dwyer and Bob Fulton in attendance, local union-playing St Augustine's College turned out in the gold of the Wallabies, while Keebra Park State High School from Queensland's Gold Coast, the alma mater of New Zealand league skipper and Benji Marshall, played in the green of the Kangaroos.
Tackled players on the attacking team used league's tap back restart in their own half but in the opponents' half possession was contested rucks and mauls as in union, an advantage to the union players. Both teams played under the pressure of the 60 second “shot clock”, in lieu of league's six tackles. When the 60 seconds expire the attacking team must score, kick or hand over possession.
“I really enjoyed it,” said one spectator to Reuters. “The kids have clearly practised it and it worked well. In fact, even though I'm a league-er, I think I enjoyed the rugby bits more.”
“It was a very interesting game, a bit confusing at times,” said winger Conor Firth of St Augustine's, who won 16-12.
“We found it pretty easy to get to halfway and once we got over halfway, we dominated most of the ball … it was easy once we played union.”
The league players did, however, manage to snaffle a few lineouts and wins some of the six-man scrums but often struggled at rucks and were penalised more often for offside by the two referees.
“I think it's a game the public would love to see, it would be a fantastic game,” said Waratahs coach Chris Hickey, who was in the crowd.
“But the calendar is already pretty busy.”
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Most people know the gag about finding somebody's facebook home page open and sticking on a status update about coming out of the closet or announcing an affinity for cuddly toys or something, but it was taken to new levels this week for Irish rugby pundit Neil Francis.
Francis' Wikipedia page was hacked and updated to include details of his role in the shooting of Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, as the chief eulogiser at the funeral of Pope John Paul II, as the former President of the World Bank, and as a key figure in the first ever moon landing, and all this while indulging in his hobby of dwarf-juggling in his spare time!
He was accredited with designing Apollo 11's moon landing patterns, while it was also told that Neil Armstrong's first words were actually 'One small step for Fran'.
One thing's for sure: people might be taking his Sunday Independent columns a little more seriously this week…
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Facebook is often a good medium for measuring how a piece of news affects the opinions of the public, so gauging the reaction of the French rugby fraternity to the announcement of Marc Lievremont's World Cup squad this week was not difficult.
There are selections and justifications and debate will always rage over things like this, but the general reaction to the omission of Yannick Jauzion was unanimous: 'Incroyable'!
As one French friend of mine put it: “This team is a good one, but there are lots of players there who make mistakes. Jauzion is your guy you put in the team because he makes no mistakes. You have to have someone like that there. To leave him out means we will make all our mistakes and nobody will hold the team together. I cannot believe he is not there.”
Agreed. It's Lievremont's boldest move yet in a national coaching career pock-marked with puzzling selections and chops and changes. He now has the fans nervous and agitated. It will not take much more for them to turn.
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And finally, Ian McGeechan is the latest in a long line of voices to call for a relegation freeze for England's Premiership, as well as increasing the number of teams to fourteen.
Hmmm… fourteen? Have we forgotten both the principles of ensuring that players do not play too much rugby and the fact that we are already struggling to squeeze Premiership, Heineken Cup and international calendar into the nine months of the season already? And now we would add four more matches to the Premiership?
The freeze on relegation is a more thorny issue with arguments on both sides. But from our viewpoint, the current system works. Weak teams or financially stricken teams like Bourgoin this year need to drop down a division to either regroup or readjust. Strong teams from below need the opportunity to jump up a level, and need to know they can aspire to that goal. You take that away from competition and you take away the dreams of clubs outside of the ring-fence.
Freezing relegation would serve the few inside it of course – guaranteed income, freedom to play without being desperate not to lose, things like that, but do you really want to take away from the majority to serve the few? We don't. Relegation should stay. And if we're honest: if teams really want to play running rugby, they will.

Loose Pass compiled by Richard Anderson