Loose Pass: Some rare Welsh cheer amidst financial woes, a lacklustre competition and silly jargon

Lawrence Nolan
This week Loose Pass will mostly be concerning ourselves with Wales' finances and performances, the Champions Cup's decline and jargon…

This week we will mostly be concerning ourselves with Wales, Europe and jargon…

Tough times in the valleys

Salary caps, wage reductions of up to 50 per cent, contract offer freezes, squad size trims leading to losses of livelihoods… it’s not a wonderful time to be a professional Welsh player.

Whether it’s the outlay on bringing back Warren Gatland or whether it is simple economics during tough economic times – most likely a mixture of both – Wales has lurched into a new financial crisis just at a time when on the field there is little going well. WRU chief executive Steve Phillips has openly confessed that not all four regions are guaranteed survival after a review at the end of this season and even if they do, a likely reduction in the number of the 60-cap rule, whereby an international can only play beyond the Welsh border and still gain international selection, could well mean an exodus of crucial players.

A six-year funding framework has at least now been verbally agreed, but with the UK economy in a brittle mess and Welsh rugby hardly drawing the glamour money, Mr. Phillips still thinks a lot can change.

“I can’t guarantee (four sides) because I can’t control the economics of the country,” said Mr. Phillips, when asked if he could give assurances. “We’ve always stated that the ambition is to have four but we’d be naive not to look at what’s happened across the Bridge. That was a wake-up call for everybody.”

This weekend was thus a rare moment of happiness for the beleaguered regions and their players to cheer, not least the Ospreys. Some teams, French sides among them, appear to be taking an almost Buddhist approach to competition in the European Cup (more on that in a moment), but Montpellier’s named squad did not indicate they were one of them. The Ospreys’ triumph was a rare moment of impressive success in a barren season.

There were impressive wins for the Scarlets and Cardiff in the Challenge Cup too, even if their opposition squads were perhaps weaker than might have been hoped for by tournament organisers. Some scribes have opined that Mr. Gatland’s return as national team coach has given a motivational boost to a number of players; the weekend’s action bears that out.

Mr. Gatland only has an initial contract for the coming World Cup year, but he does have a history of being a belligerent negotiator and being able to get a good deal out of the fractious Welsh rugby governance landscape. Significant was the mention by Mr. Phillips that there is also an option on the table for Mr. Gatland to continue in an upstairs role until 2027 – surely the time at which renegotiations for a new funding framework would start.

So perhaps Wales do have their right man this time, for both the tracksuit and the boardroom table side of the operation. Either way, if the teams carry on as they did this weekend past, things are not all doom and gloom.

The loss of Europe’s sheen

It’s not been definitively proven that Joe Marler’s caustic tweet about a competition that is ‘awful’ and has ‘lost its magic’ was aimed at the European Cup; he did after all, write it during the soccer World Cup Final.

But this weekend was not a good advertisement for European rugby and its jeopardy-free first-round format. Weakened squads played by teams prioritising other competitions, the chances for all the teams who have hitherto lost twice to still qualify, and a total farce regarding the pitch and fans in Ulster underscored just how drab the sheen on the new bodywork is.

Marler also took a jab in an interview about South African teams’ participations, saying on live TV: “You want to talk about Europe, and we’re going to Natal Sharks next week. Which is where?”

A fair statement, but it was also thought that South African teams would present a fresh new challenge on the field at least. Ask that question of Exeter fans, whose team played a Blue Bulls side missing up to 21 squad members, many of whom were rested ahead of a URC clash against the Stormers this coming Friday. Ask a similar question about challenges of Leinster fans too, whose team barely got out of second gear to put 57 past a shadow Gloucester side. Or even ask Saracens fans, who travelled all the way to Lyon only to see their side take on a host team shorn of many a first-team regular, with an eye to a looming Top 14 clash with Toulon. Some of the matchday 23 team sheets in the Challenge Cup were a joke.

Europe used to be the pinnacle of the club game. It is not a good look to have so many weakened sides so early on, to have teams so complacent about being able to qualify, or to have such a bizarre qualifying system that onlookers from other sports still fail to understand it.

Given that the soccer on Sunday conjured up a finale for the ages, there’s surely only one competition that Marler could consider had ‘lost its magic’. Loose Pass also thinks it has, and that its dulling is a tremendous loss to the European landscape.

Keep it simple please

Rugby is not an easy sport to learn for the uninitiated. It has one of the longest rule books of any sport, one of the largest spectrums of scoring possibilities and one of the most chaotic, fluid in-play dynamics.

The latter is why people are drawn to it, the former its greatest barrier to entry. Ref mics and commentators help immensely for newcomers to get a handle on decisions, but only if they are accurately explained for low common denominators.

So Christophe Ridley’s assertion of “SWIMMING” when penalising a Bordeaux player during a maul on Friday was not, perhaps, what we need to involve all onlookers (This is the act of breaking the bind in defence in a maul, and reaching over with the arm a la front crawl action to bind onto an opponent further into the maul/nearer the ball, and is nothing to do with moving through water, no matter what the weather).

Even the initiated struggled. Loose Pass’s father, a former international of impressively advanced years, was moved to comment: “what the hell’s he talking about there?” The explanation, delivered at a fair volume, also elicited comment from Loose Pass’s partner: “so why doesn’t he just say ‘breaking the bind’?”

Why indeed. There is a lot that is extremely technical in rugby which goes on in an extremely confusing play-action scenario, and it does need to be simply broken down into as few words as possible to ensure both comprehension and game-flow. But jargonising it with obscure words will not improve understanding for onlookers, old or new.

All the best to you all and your families for the festive season! Regards, Loose Pass.

READ MORE: Planet Rugby’s Team of the Year for 2022