Loose Pass: ‘Pressure will only grow’ for England ahead of World Cup and ‘unnecessary’ competition wars
England won the Women's Six Nations title over the weekend after a narrow victory.
This week we will mostly be concerning ourselves with England’s Grand Slamming ladies and their World Cup prospects, the stops and starts of the Premiership and the debate about tournament quality…
England’s ladies stand at the gates of glory
To say that England‘s ladies are on the verge of greatness is a little thin. If one defeat in 56 matches is not a metric of greatness then not one sports team of any shape of ball has managed it thus far.
The problem is, that one defeat, to New Zealand in the last World Cup Final, probably inflicted more pain on the team than the accumulated elation from the other 55 matches put together.
And the manner of the 43-42 Six Nations win over France this weekend past, thrilling though it may have been for the neutral, will have done nothing but encourage that same New Zealand team, not to mention a couple of others, to think that although this is the best team in the world in the everyday, it is not a team that is clinical enough to clinch the all-or-nothing games.
The pressure will only grow, not least because, with the tournament at home this time, they have even more on their side. But pressure is a funny thing. The ladies’ male counterparts were on a significant roll in 2003, having trounced Ireland 42-6 for a Grand Slam in Dublin and beaten the All Blacks 15-13 in New Zealand despite playing several minutes with only 13 men. Yet the ultimate prize was only clinched in the final minute of extra time. Pressure had become a great leveller.
New Zealand’s men also, clearly the best team in the world for most of the years leading up to the home-hosted 2011 World Cup, also found the pressure – and the loss of three fly-halves to injury – close to unbearable; in the end they triumphed by a single point against a French team that had rebelled against its coach and had a scrum-half at fly-half.
Anybody who watched Saturday’s win will know now that this is an England team unstoppable when on a roll, but prone to lethargy and possible complacency. To let a 31-7 lead almost slip has raised more than a few eyebrows, particularly Brian Moore’s; his caustic review of England’s second-half performance might need pinning on the dressing-room wall for the team’s next game.
Which is better – are any of them what they were?
The Premiership is almost run, but it is heading for an interesting finale. There are still eight teams mathematically in the running for the four play-off places with only three weeks to go. Of the two others, one of the coaches is serving a disciplinary suspension while the other side has sent two of its coaches to sort out their gardens, pending a season review.
Both the play-off race and the coaching soap opera, not to mention Exeter owner Tony Rowe’s dressing room dressing-down of his charges, could be the sort of themes that put a sport and a competition into the much-needed limelight, especially with the other game’s title race now run.
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But no, just when things are getting interesting, we stop, once again, for Europe and the Champions Cup, itself doing a good impression of a competition that was once great but has fallen on tough times.
The same stop applies to the United Rugby Championship, where any of the top 14 clubs of the 16 could qualify for the play-offs. Not because of the strength of them all though, but because it is the entire top half of the league that is in the play-offs: it’s possible that a team that wins only half of its regular season games could yet have a storming play-off run and win the championship. Unlikely. But possible. The same, theoretically, could happen in the Top 14. Again unlikely – it is hard to imagine a scenario in which those tournaments are not won by Leinster and Toulouse – but even the likelihood makes a mockery of it all a bit. Super Rugby Pacific is a bit more open when it comes to foreseeing a winner, but the same danger remains: a team finishing sixth, possibly with a negative win-loss record, could progress to win the championship. We know this because we sat through all 1m 10sec of the format explanation on YouTube. Lucky us – had someone actually tried to explain it, we’d be none the wiser.
Why all this? Well this week has seen a good deal of snipping and sniping between competitions. Which one is better, which one is not. Which players are benefitting from being where and playing against whom, what benefits and disadvantages there are from having to travel to South Africa and so on and so on and…
It’s been pretty unsightly. It’s unnecessary. But thinking about the above, and the staccato nature of the season, and the sheer quantity of rugby spread around a fairly thin base of players, and the ever-stretched resources, and the need for simple time outs every now and then, it’s sometimes a case of wondering whether all of the competitions aren’t a little damaged somehow by this current ink blot of a calendar.