WHY ARE the three southern hemisphere giants always so much better than our teams in Britain and Ireland? The answer is simple — they are not. Everyone in our rugby world has spent so many years in fear of the All Blacks, the Springbok and the Wallabies that nobody is setting out a clear strategy to go down there and beat them.
And I do mean beat them.
Let’s change history. Let’s work hard on getting rid of our complexes. First, it drives me nuts when I hear coaches telling us that everything depends on the World Cup.
Nonsense. Our goal when I was head coach of England was not only to win the World Cup, it was also to be ranked No 1 in the world and to tell the world this was our goal.
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It sounds pretty audacious but Ireland or Wales or England could adopt that goal today. Based on their playing and financial resources they could all make it. If you reach No 1, you have a far better chance at the World Cup than teams going into it ranked fifth or sixth. Your goal is to be the team to beat going into a World Cup — being ranked one achieves that.
More about the mindset. You have to look people in the eye and make them realise you are not making outlandish statements for the sake of it. Get everyone on board, including the old guard. Many of the older people in the home unions look back in awe when they talk of playing the All Blacks and Springboks especially. Respect for opposition is one thing but you can have too much reverence. Maybe we were behind those countries in the amateur days but there is no longer any excuse for our terrible historical record: professionalism levelled the playing field.
Everything is possible if you have quality athletes, quality coaches and a decent budget. Of course England can win in South Africa this summer, Ireland can win in New Zealand and Wales in Australia. But I don’t want “once in a while and let’s all celebrate”, I mean more often than not. Our teams should look at British cycling, sailing and rowing. These sports decided that they wanted to be the best in the world and they made it happen.
English rugby has done this before — we coined the term “Beyond No 1” and even devised a logo around this. The idea was that once we had reached the top of the rankings or won the World Cup, we should strive for more. We should be benchmarking ourselves against the best teams in any sport and learning from them. For this England side to start thinking like that might be a bit premature, but the aim always needs to be in the back of their minds.
We can start by exploding some myths. I always tried not to call the All Blacks the All Blacks. I always called them New Zealand. Perhaps my mindset was helped by the five years I spent in Australia, where there is no fear of their neighbours.
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We are ahead of the Australians in sport in many senses. They have only a relatively small number of rugby players compared with England and when you look at them closely you realise they have nothing different from us. Except that they always believe they are going to win.
We also need to be less gentlemanly in our public utterances. The teams cannot go Down Under and be nicey-nicey and then expect suddenly to switch on for a game. Our teams should put themselves under pressure; the English should be un-English. Say they have arrived to take on South Africa and that they think they can win — they have to start strutting about a bit. It may seem arrogant. That is how England were labelled around 2003 but we did earn respect. I suspect that an England team who consistently win would always be viewed as arrogant even if they weren’t.
Then we move on to the team. You build a team to win Down Under by writing down your best XV and then their best XV. Take a close look and in the cold light of day you often cannot find a reason they should usually beat you. Then you find the holes in your team.
For example, as the England team developed when I was head coach, we lacked a world-class hooker. We found Steve Thompson, who had played flanker. With England he became one of the country’s greatest ever hookers. We were short of a No 6 and Richard Hill told us he wanted to play at No 7. But we had Neil Back there. We encouraged Richard to play on the blindside. The Hill/Dallaglio/Back back row became one of our finest. Gradually you find the players are becoming excited, no longer worrying about the guys in the black jersey or the green jersey. They look forward with relish to playing them. Then you establish your world beaters, the “go-to” players, three or four who are the best in the world.
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Let’s look at Wales. They could put forward George North and Sam Warburton. Ireland could put forward Brian O’Driscoll and, say, Sean O’Brien. England? Chris Robshaw was unbelievable for Harlequins against Leicester in the Aviva Premiership final last weekend. He often played in the fly-half position, took the ball up, took people out, passed the ball. We have players in Britain and Ireland who are every bit as good as, if not better than, those who compete in the southern hemisphere.
You must have special coaches. The team have to believe their coaches could go head to head and win against any other in the world. It’s a good exercise to compare coaching teams in the same way as players. If players trust in the coaching and believe they have the best in the world, that can make an enormous difference to their game and self-belief as well as stating the obvious in terms of their coaching quality.
What do our teams need to do on the field? If you are going to be No 1 you have to go down there and take on those teams in the scrum and lineout. It is a brutal environment but if you cannot match them up front and physically, you are dead. Dallaglio was big on ensuring our team understood that we must not get bullied when we were on tour. This month, England, Ireland and Wales have to show immediately that they are not going to be intimidated.
Once you have that attitude in place and a solid scrum you have to get your team to play faster. Again, this may be a very un-English way but England in South Africa need to put maximum pressure on the opposition, challenge them at all points and never let them settle.
There is no way our teams can allow the ball to be stationary in the rucks. If they try to drive slow ball around the fringes they will be smashed. I want to see an excellent young player such as Ben Foden taking a quick lineout to himself, rather like Jason Robinson would do, knowing that the whole team were expecting him to do this and that they knew what to do with the ball. Attack , attack , attack.
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This summer is as good a time as any for our teams to begin a fervent hunt to be No 1. We have been too admiring of the southern hemisphere, we have given the teams too much respect and they have run all over us. Let’s change history.
See next page for a video interview with England fullback Ben Foden
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