Loose Pass: New foot-first tactic and Canada’s slide

Adam Kyriacou

This week we will mostly be concerning ourselves with a new tactic that should be quashed before it gets going, and an old member of rugby’s fraternity that needs to get going before it is squashed… 

The Italian Ruck and the Samoan Intercept

Remember that 40 minutes of fun at Twickenham? That tactical bout of derring-do which exploited a loophole in the laws and made for an unrecognizable, yet hugely enjoyable half of rugby where England’s players didn’t seem to even know the laws, let alone understand them?

It didn’t take long for World Rugby to react to Italy’s tactical refusal to create a ruck – and therefore to create an offside line – by deeming that only one player from either team had to be over the tackled player for a ruck to be formed rather than one from both. Bye bye tactic. It was fun, but it wasn’t really rugby as we know and recognise it, nor did it make for the aesthetically-pleasing tryfest that we all want to see. Most of the time anyway.

It will be interesting to see whether such a reaction is forthcoming to Johnny Vaili’s studs-up, leg outstretched ‘interception’ last Saturday.

It wasn’t illegal. It certainly was clever. And it certainly should have been a try. But for this to become a tactic etched in consciousness that people might consider trying on a regular basis… no thanks. How long before a studs-up lunge gets mistimed or misplaced and does someone an injury? How positive is it really to watch? How much of the spirit of the game and the manner in which it should be played is it?

A fly-hack of a dropped ball is perfectly acceptable: it’s a punishment of an error if it leads to a try as it might well do. But the foot-first interception as Vaili tried it isn’t this at all, it’s a pretty cynical tactic which has the same effect as a deliberate bat-down with one hand (a penalisable offence) and could easily become dangerous if not addressed.

Oh Canada…

We’ve focused a fair bit in the past few weeks on the World Cup’s dark horses, with Japan and Fiji particularly prominent. In years gone by you could have often put Canada in that category too, but it’s been some time since Canada were even number one in North America, never mind a part of the world’s top 10. But as recently as 2011 Canada sat at number 13. Now they are at 20 – and even that position is tenuous.

It’s 28 years since they gave the All Blacks a hell of a game in the World Cup quarter-finals in England, 24 years since the infamous ‘Battle of Boet Erasmus’ where Canada would frustrate the eventual winners of South Africa for quite a while before losing 20-0.

Those early 90s saw them beat Wales, Scotland and France, and draw with Ireland. Then professionalism came in, and so began a slow and painful fall from grace. Players such as Mike James, Dan Baugh, Colin Yukes and the infamous Jamie Cudmore were contracted elsewhere and frequently unavailable for internationals. Continuity stuttered. World Cup performances did too. In 2007 they exited a World Cup without a single win for the first time. That was repeated in 2015.

But while the difficulties of professionalism can be squarely blamed for the fall away of Canada from the mid-90s to 2007, since then many of the problems have been self-made. 2008 seemed like the start of a new era. Kieran Crowley, a vastly-experienced professional coach, was installed with the mandate of taking Canada into a new and more professionally-structured climate. His staff was expanded. And most within rugby Canada reckon he did a good job. The national team was playing in front of bigger crowds. It was playing good rugby and developing many good players. Games against tier one countries remained respectably close.

Yet time and again, Crowley insisted he was doing the best he could in limited circumstances. Results didn’t quite come, but they were so close, and Crowley was still working with a part-time set-up at best. Rugby Canada simply could not, or would not, give him or find the funding for a full-time structure for the national team. An ignominious exit from 2015 World Cup followed. At the start of 2016, Crowley made an exit of his own.

“We haven’t made enough changes to keep up,” he said during his exit interview. “We’ve made a lot of progress, like the CRC [a national provincial championship], that’s been a massive improvement for player preparation.

“But Georgia and Romania have gone past us. They set up structures to push their top players, to get them together as full timers.”

And off Crowley went to Treviso, whence things in Canada really started to slide, up to the point where at the start of 2018, they lost to Uruguay, meaning they had to qualify through the repechage tournament. The wins there which ultimately sealed their qualification for Japan were pleasing, but harder work than many would have expected.

The union has struggled for one reason or another – and the mud-slinging within has made accurate definition of these reasons near-impossible. But there has been a constant lack of funding for a fully professional programme, while the development of sevens diverted enough funding away from the 15s game that it was seen as the overriding priority by some. The union reacted by joining the sevens and 15s programmes together, prompting a strike by a number of players sick and tired of the inconsistency and what they saw as marginalisation of their efforts – which yielded some considerable achievement.

With qualification achieved and the sevens programme still running strong – although the recent sacking of coach Damian McGrath has threatened that stability – current 15s coach Kingsley Jones, formerly of Russia and the Dragons, probably has his most settled squad and climate in a long time. That also includes the inclusion of the Toronto Arrows in the fledgling professional USA Major League Rugby.

Whether that will be enough to take Canada back up the rankings is a moot point, but the opening game against an equally faltering Italy team will be indicative of just where they sit, while winning the final pool match against Namibia on October 13 will be Canada’s minimum requirement.

Loose Pass compiled by Lawrence Nolan

Features