Loose Pass: Rugby’s search for ‘perfection’ continues as relentless negativity mooching rages on
Clermont supporters cheering on their team against Saracens.
This week we will mostly be concerning ourselves with weak teams and the endless desperation to find perfection…
Europe (and Africa) starts slowly
By rights, it ought to have been one of the match-ups of the weekend. A rematch of the 2017 Final, not to mention a couple of benchmark knock-out ties from history. Two of their respective countries’ heavyweights head-to-head in a mouthwatering European opener with a decisive advantage over the other on the line.
In the event, Saracens beat Clermont 47-10. Which can happen between two top teams, but on the day, the Clermont team sent out to face Sarries bore little resemblance to the one that dispatched Stade Francais in the Top 14 the week before. Lambs to the slaughter it wasn’t, but full-strength it wasn’t either. The same applied, to an extent, to the hosts, for whom Maro Itoje and Ben Earl were rested.
The Sharks rocked up to Toulouse without their Springboks (that’s the South Africa international team that played five matches in the three-match Test window); likewise the Stormers to Bayonne, whose line-up was also in places far removed from some of those for important home games earlier in the season. The Leicester team that came a cropper at La Rochelle was also a few notable names short.
It’s fair enough from the clubs, who have to manage their players. But what function is this competition now serving if on the opening weekend, a significant proportion of teams are fielding weakened teams? The pinnacle of Europe (and Africa)? Hardly – not when you only need to win two out of four pool matches to get through to the next round, or when picking and choosing which games to field full-strength teams for is an integral part of the clubs’ tournament strategies.
Loose Pass is an ardent and long-time fan of European competition. Almost all of the games that will be retained in the consciousness even when the marbles start diminishing in number are European matches. But the current version of Europe (and Africa’s) elite competition is not helping to sustain that legend.
With the international season next year adding even more quantity into a calendar whose seams do not have infinite strength, European competition is the seam under the most pressure. Extraordinary travel demands, an ungainly format and a lack of jeopardy are all contributing to devalue it, and if teams are opting to treat it as a lower priority, the future does not look bright.
That said…
The other side of that coin is, naturally, the games that were not played by rotated teams and that did deliver in the manner such a competition should. Bordeaux were scintillating in Pretoria, Bath’s dismantling of Munster was highly impressive, the Scarlets v Bristol was a classic rugged affair, Northampton’s win in Pau and Edinburgh’s triumph over Toulon were both excellent matches.
Yet the constant calls to tinker with laws, even more constant criticisms of law-tinkering consequences and bemoanings of tournament format decisions have been at a crescendo this week.
The World Cup format was dismissed as ‘absolute dog-(doo)’ by Donncha O’Callaghan, who noted that – similar to the criticism of the European tournament format – teams don’t really need to take it seriously until the latter stages and can qualify from the pool with one win from three games.
Gloucester fly-half Ross Byrne reckons that the new kick-chase rules that require defenders to get out of the way of kick chasers has not only bestowed too much advantage on the kicking team but also will mean the game becomes much less one for all shapes and sizes (that bus sailed a while ago – Ed.). Ben Youngs wants the goal-line drop-out law binned because it doesn’t reward the defence enough and means teams use the pick and go more.
The disciplinary process that saw Eben Etzebeth has been under constant fire since the big lock’s 12-week ban was announced. Mitigation was denounced as a factor by Youngs. Brian Moore – himself no stranger to a legal wrangle on both sides of the dock – urged the beaks for more clarification and suggested that suspensions are just as influenced by the quality of the legal representation you can afford as by the nature of the offence itself.
Hands up, it does verge on the hypocritical to pester clubs about playing full-strength teams and blame the tournament for having a smashed pavlova of a format, then go on to harangue all the other haranguers.
Yet there is so much negativity mooching around all corners of the game at the moment. Too many scrums and resets. Too many kicks. Not enough tries. Then you get a 90-point thriller between two teams intent on attacking to the very limits of their athletic capability and the reaction will be just as much approval as tut-tutting and shaking of heads at the poor quality of defending these days. Too many TMO interruptions, not to mention, of course, the lack of TMO input when they get it wrong.
The search for perfection goes on, but all the while we’re left with an unfinished product being constantly adjusted, tweaked and polished, with calendars that don’t fit and tournaments that are operating under restraints before they even begin. If it all feels too unsatisfactory, have a good long look at Matthieu Jalibert’s performance for Bordeaux against the Bulls. Sometimes it is just better to let things go for a while and wait for the game to produce its own responses.
READ MORE: Matt Williams: World Rugby vindicated as Eben Etzebeth’s ‘dog act’ ends ‘ridiculous arguments’