I was at the Exeter Chiefs v Wasps game last Sunday. Good seat, pretty much on the halfway line, elevated position. Two of the more attack-minded sides in the league on view: both well coached, both blessed with some intelligent (not robotic) players. Firm pitch. Decent weather. A bit windy, but that’s par for the course at Sandy Park. Splendid atmosphere. Full house. Exeter ran out to a standing ovation, a reaction to their efforts this season. And, right up there with everything else, sensational hog-roast rolls (fresh, soft white baps; proper crackling, plenty of apple sauce) on offer.
So, what not to like? Well, two things actually, and they are related. Shouty coaches and obstruction. Rugby union is now a game that permits players from the same team to run screening or blocking patterns for their mates, preventing defenders from getting anywhere near the ball. It takes many forms, and is not confined to one element or area of the sport.
“Don’t let them kid you all this is just an illegal way of creating forward momentum in the car-crash chaos that is modern rugby
Check out when sides try attacking moves from scrummages. It helps to be at a live game because television rarely offers the bigger picture. On almost every occasion the transference of the ball will take place behind obstructing colleagues a few metres upfield. Defenders of this practice will say that the men ahead of the ball-carrier are decoys, or on dummy runs, trying to suggest that there is some artifice or subtlety to the practice. But don’t let them kid you. It’s just an illegal way of creating forward momentum in the car-crash chaos that is modern rugby.
Other examples? The high, hanging kick put up to land on an exposed defender at the same time as the kick-chasers arrive. Each time the chasers have to negotiate a passage through a minefield of defenders who basically get in their way while pretending to get out of their way.
It’s the same when re-starts are hit long. Attackers with a legitimate right to contest the ball are prevented from doing so by defenders who block them. There is no obligation on a defender to get out of the way to facilitate free passage for a chaser, but most push that permission to the limit.
Advertisement
By far the most egregious example, though, is the rolling/driving maul, which is deliberately set up with the ball-carrier at the back and a phalanx of obstructing players ahead of him. What’s that about? Where or how does that conform to rugby union’s basic tenet, which is that on all occasions, across every component of the game, there should be a fair contest for the ball?
Which brings us nicely on to shouty coaches and Ali Hepher. Hepher is Rob Baxter’s right-hand man at Exeter and has been linked with the England Saxons tour to South Africa this summer. Some say Hepher is the brains behind Exeter’s success. He does the technical stuff while Baxter does the people bits. I don’t know about that, but what I do know is that Hepher has a loud voice, which he exercised regularly last Sunday shouting at Matt Carley, the referee.
I never understand why coaches bellow at referees from the stands. The officials can’t possibly hear them and therefore can’t possibly be influenced by their comments.
I get that coaches get caught up in the emotion of the game, and I’m all for passion, but most of the time they come across as rather excitable, out-of-control spectators rather than the strategic, cerebral observers their role demands.
Hepher was particularly vexed by Carley’s refusal to penalise Wasps for collapsing Exeter’s driving maul, a vehicle that has brought Exeter plenty of tries in previous contests against Wasps. Hepher didn’t like much of Wasps’ scrummaging either, but it was their work in defending the maul that drew his loudest protests.
Advertisement
Now, Hepher may or may not have had a legitimate complaint, but the point here is that no one really knows because of the systemic obstruction that goes on there and everywhere else on the field and which obscures what’s right and what’s wrong.
As things stand, it is virtually impossible to defend a rolling maul because you are not allowed to collapse it, creep up the side of it, or “swim” through the middle of it. Provided the attacking side don’t trip over, they should score every time. Then again, as things stand, there is nothing in the laws to say that you can protect the ball behind a blockade of bodies.
That’s just madness, rather like the madness that was the shoving match between the scrum halves, neither of whom had control of the ball, when one scrum half impeded the progress of the other who was attempting to prevent the No 8 picking up and breaking away. Just like the madness that “allows” teams to station “posts”, invariably in an offside position, either side of the breakdown to prevent their scrum half’s clearance kick being charged down.
Today is a very important day for club rugby in England. Home play-off spots are up for grabs, as are European qualification places. Referees will be under huge pressure to make accurate calls, yet they will be doing so in an environment where cheating in the form of organised obstruction is now part of the game, and where, as a result, most of their decisions are not black and white but a zillion shades of grey.
Incidentally, this is not new. The All Blacks were one of the first teams to perfect the art of obstruction in the early 1990s with their “lazy runners”, players who returned from offside positions deliberately slowly to frustrate the attacking side. Over the years that innovation has spawned a host of copycat corrupt practices to the point where much of what goes on on a rugby field conforms neither to the spirit nor the letter of the law.
Advertisement
Still, it was a pretty good game last Sunday, and those hog-roast rolls were mighty fine.