Rugby: Rugby players are about to step on to a veritable minefield

By Don Cameron

We have a tendency to take a patronising view of Northern Hemisphere rugby, and to have a rather condescending attitude towards English rugby.

There is the feeling that we have long ago cut the apron strings, and that English rugby promises much more (especially to its over-ambitious champions) than it usually delivers.

But as we put aside fond memories of that fabulous Halberg Awards dinner, sidestep rapacious Australian cricketers and untangle ourselves from Black Magic halyards, we might not be tactically ready for the onrush of Super 12 this weekend.

We have had the warm-up games, which provided erratic forecasting form, and suggested that the next piece of professional paraphernalia will be a mobile accident and emergency clinic for each team.

They did not promise a new age of expansive rugby.

Perhaps the strongest guide to how New Zealand and international rugby will develop over this coming long season has already been written by the first two series of the Six Nations championship.

That involves how England and the others in the north have handled the recent law changes, how the sinbin is working, how the flow of the game has been improved.

Doubtless the scoffers would have derided England's 15-9 win over the Tricolors at Stade de France last weekend as yet another sterile performance in which the English again failed to score a try.

However, anyone who wanted to dig below the surface (and one hopes the All Black and Super 12 selectors are in that percipient group) would have noticed that, at the moment, England are the strongest side, physically and tactically, in the Six Nations.

In their opening romp against Ireland, England had a refreshing eagerness to run and pass the ball, and the Irish that maddening capacity to follow one good piece of play with two bad ones.

This showed that an enterprising side - even if England still tend to try to do everything on attack at 100 miles an hour - will score heavily against a side who do not have a solid tactical approach.

England against France was quite another matter, and worth the closest study. It showed that for all the tinkering with the tackled-ball phase, it is still possible for teams with a strong pack, a powerful back row and clever defensive screen to frustrate a side eager to attack with an expansive style.

France started in defensive mode against England. After butting away in vain at clogged midfield defences, England shortened sail, and for the final two-thirds of the game the prospect of tries being organised faded from view.

England had the superior goalkicker in the remarkable Jonny Wilkinson, and won.

That was a hard fact of international rugby life, with which New Zealand is not unfamiliar.

But both England and France were unfamiliar with the manner in which Stuart Dickinson, the Australian referee, handled the last 15 minutes of the game.

Earlier, he looked as good a referee as we have available - relaxed, sometimes smiling, quietly in control even when the red-blooded French and England forwards were smashing into each other.

In the last quarter, however, he seemed to change character. The yellow card and sinbin replaced the smiles and the poise.

If the French had had a tactical clue they would have called for two attacking scrums five metres from the England line, with every chance of a matchwinning pushover try against six England forwards.

But the French were deep into what their flyhalf, Thomas Castaignede, later termed "a performance of disillusion," and justice would not have been done had England lost. So the way "justice" is delivered (with video referees and the sinbin operating at many levels) will be vitally important for all New Zealand rugby this year.

New Zealand espoused the sinbin as a means of cutting back rough and dangerous play.

Last weekend eight players were put in the bin, all for technical breaches (read "professional fouls"), none for rude or crude play. So we owe England something, for giving us such vivid evidence against France that we are approaching a minefield marked out with yellow and red flags.

And also that, given two strong teams with powerful and highly organised defences, the penalty goal remains the decisive winning weapon.