Ireland great accuses Andy Farrell’s Lions and the All Blacks of playing ‘awful’ rugby, claiming ‘it’s a bit sad’
Tadhg Beirne of the Lions scuffles with Nic White of Australia
Former Ireland skipper Willie Anderson has outlined his dismay with the modern game, accusing teams such as Andy Farrell’s British and Irish Lions of being ‘unbelievably patterned’ and playing robotic rugby.
The 70-year-old, who infamously led the Irish team into eyeballing the 1989 All Blacks as they did their haka in Dublin, went on to coach professionally at London Irish, Leinster and Scotland but he despairs with the style of “awful” play he has recently seen.
Not only were Farrell’s Lions in the crosshairs, but he criticised the All Blacks for the way they go about their business and also relayed a deflating story he was told by the father of a player who attended a fee-paying school in Leinster.
Appearing on the latest episode of The Business End, the podcast hosted by ex-London Irish forwards Justin Fitzpatrick and Liam Mooney, Anderson feared that the pressure on coaches to produce winning results has turned them into organisers rather than innovators who are willing to take a chance and entertain people with a more creative style of play.
‘It’s all about running away from the ball…’
“Even though I have stopped coaching, I am still trying to mentor a few guys to change the way they are thinking in terms of the game,” said Anderson, about 30 minutes into a near two-hour interview. “At the moment, the game is awful.
“I mean, if I heard the word pattern or shape through the Lions series once, I must have heard it a thousand times. ‘They didn’t get into their shape quickly enough. They didn’t get into their pattern quickly enough’. I’m saying: ‘What has the game come to?’
“It’s about people organising rather than coaching. Where is the coaching of, jeepers, the game management, where the space is, the speed of the ball, where are the big fellas? It is all about running away from the ball to get into a pattern and that’s all they do now, it’s just about organisation.
“I’m saying the game of rugby, ‘Is it on from your 22? Oh no, we have to do an exit strategy. The exit strategy is fantastic’. Well, I’m saying: ‘There is one player out there who could have actually gone. Did you not look up and see where the space is?’ The ability of being allowed to play (is missing).
Wallabies star: ‘A lot of teams envy what the Springboks have’
“The team for me that do it is Toulouse, and they are one of the best sides in the world. France, one of the best sides in the world. Italy to a point, and Argentina. But the rest of them are so patterned. Even the All Blacks are so patterned even though they have got tremendous skill and they are fantastic.
“The Lions? Unbelievably patterned. Australia? Totally patterned. I’m saying: ‘Where is the creativity, where is the joy of making a decision?’ Because when you see a fat boy in the middle of the park or there is a gap there and there is space, let’s go for it.
“I’m still trying to learn that, that general movement. I’m saying: ‘Jeepers, guys, there’s another way. You don’t want to be robots’,” continued Anderson, who last year published his Crossing the Line autobiography.
“A guy told me, one of the top schools in Leinster, his kid went to school there, and I asked how did he get on with the coach? He was a right big boy, was going to be second row or back row. He said at U13 he got a video or a text saying: ‘You will be getting the ball in the second ruck. Now that will be what you are doing for the rest of your time in this school’.
“And I’m saying: ‘Oh my word, if that is the way we are coaching our kids’. I want coaches to take a chance… a lot of people can’t afford to lose but a lot of times you have to lose to go forward, and players have to learn by their mistakes to go forward… you have to go through that tough process.
“But nowadays there are jobs on the line, winning is very, very important, it is all measured and it’s a bit sad. Even at schoolboy level, it’s a bit sad.”