Loose Pass

This week we will be concerning ourselves with comebacks, statistics, migration patterns, decorum and getting out more…

This week we will mostly be concerning ourselves with comebacks, statistics, migration patterns, decorum and getting out more…

There's not going to be much we can write about Leinster and that half of rugby that has not been written already. But when the bunting does eventually come down and the open-top bus is parked for another year or so, observers might like to consider the other comeback that this Heineken Cup Final may create.

For Northampton Saints, this will go down as the anti-climactic season of all time. Flying high at the end of 2010, the Saints embarked on a Premiership-wrecking run of six defeats between Jan 1 and the end of March, costing them what looked like dead cert home advantage.

While the Heineken Cup provided relief, the defeats against Leicester last week and the heart-breaker against Leinster this week will see the Saints depart their best season since re-promotion to the Premiership empty-handed. Be it peaking at the wrong time, be it inexperience, be it lack of depth, a team doubtlessly talented enough to have claimed a trophy will not get one.

The hallmark of a great team is not only how you triumph – as Leinster proved – but how you bounce back from adversity. This season set a benchmark, but next season will truly test just how good this rising Northampton Saints team is.
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Not three years ago, many of us were still wallowing in the aimless headless chicken-fest created by the ELVs. We lamented the loss of the chess element from the game, the different options afforded to coaches with driving mauls, kicking tactics, running lines and so on and so on.

The north stood fast in the face of increased pressure from the south and refused to apply all but the most immaterial – in some cases already existing – ELVs, insisting the game needed simply to be more stringently and consistently refereed, and that the removal of tactical options that the ELVs created would dumb the game down and create a homogenous product.

Well, with regard to the tactical options being open to the coaches, there were some statistics from the Top 14 semi-finals last weekend that made for some fascinating reading.

Montpellier, in their 18-17 win over Castres, made just 32 passes all match, while conceding a staggering 17 penalties. Yet they won simply by kicking accurately, chasing efficiently and making sure that of those 17 penalties, only four were within the range of Romain Teulet while the others were all in Castres' half. Territory, plain and simple, won Montpellier the day. But it was winning ugly, with the ball in play for just 23 minutes and 47 seconds.

Meanwhile, Clermont made 99 more passes – 131 in all – than Montpellier in their win over Biarritz and forced the Biarrots into making a staggering 156 tackles in the match, conceding only five penalties and with the ball in play for nigh on twelve minutes longer.

Claiming Clermont's stats are flawed by the fact they had to come back does not wash, as Montpellier also had to bring back deficits during their game. What you have is extreme examples: one side exerting total territorial pressure, the other using possession and hammering at the door until it caved in, panel by panel – Clermont's tries all came in the final 20 minutes.

One tactic v another tactic. That's what we watch rugby for. We can only hope that the forthcoming World Cup will be judged on that rugby acumen alone and that the lawmaker think tanks leave well alone after this World Cup. For going on the evidence of the above, coupled with the thrilling rugby we've had all over the world this weekend, the pure game is in the rudest health.
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It's that time of year. That time when all the best players from the south decide which of the big leagues to go to up north to bolster their pension fund, while all the unions and teams down south have a good old moan about unfair monetary competition before unearthing a new generation of excellence ready to take it to the north and serve it with sauce.

Meanwhile, hordes of Brits and Irish are coming to the end of another Island 'spring' and wondering whether their agent might not be able to find them a rugby season culminating, say, in the sun of Languedoc-Roussillon rather than the mizzle of Reading.

Kiwis are particularly angry with the Irish, which seems a trifle odd being as most of the signatures being confirmed are to France.

But the glaring gap in the skies is that of the flock often seen with golden feathers and green tails. Matt Giteau, Luke Burgess and Mark Chisholm are the only three set to move north after the World Cup thus far and out of those three, only Giteau is really a current bona fide starter.

All others in the current Wallaby squad seem either to be staying, or getting ready to stay.

The effect of this? Well, in the short-term, nothing. But while New Zealand, South Africa and others will spend the two years after the World Cup rebuilding, it seems Robbie Deans – also set to stay by the way – will spend the four years heading towards 2015 with perhaps the most settled international squad of all time. Wallabies for the 2015 World Cup and avenging England's conquest on England's turf? Right now, we wouldn't dare bet against it…
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Coaches are squabbling in England this week about how to behave on the touchline or in their boxes in the stands, after Richard Cockerill apparently fired off a salvo of verbal bombs in the direction of the referee's assessors during Leicester's 11-3 win over Northampton – Cockerill has since gone to some lengths to deny the accusations.

Cockerill's counterpart that day, Jim Mallinder, scored a few moral points this week when he said: “To me, talking to the referee's assessor, shouting at the touch judge or gesturing to the referee actually won't make one little bit of difference.

“To me it's about the clear directions I can give my players and also the people giving messages onto the field. That is how I go about my business. It's no different to talking about players losing control on the field.

“Keeping your cool is part of sport – one of the wonderful things about it. The beauty of it is being able to control your aggression and emotion.”

A tough one. That's the challenge, control v emotion – coaches face it just as much as players, often more so as they are physically unable to do anything about it and get shot of the adrenaline. It's a rare coach indeed who can contain his emotions 100 per cent of the time. And whatever coaches do is peanuts compared to the blue mist hanging around the common or garden rugby stand during a match.

The real problem, and the common sense solution, might be to move the assessors – and the media, for that matter – away from the coaches at Welford Road, as we can't imagine there'd