Blaming the blazers
FRANK KEATING
Six Nations’ rugby resumes this weekend. Still all to play for. The first two rounds of the tournament, which ends on 18 March, produced a generally grey show of unforced errors and a glum lack of daring. Only the briefest shaft of sunlight has penetrated. BBC television’s overly enthusiastic blanket coverage, welcome in some ways, has been too desperately schizoid in its execution; the live play’s coherence interrupted by so many muttering ex-player experts dotted around all over, alongside comely, blandquestioning blondes. The refereeing has been as blinkered as much of the play. England have won both their matches, yet with neither flair nor all-court conviction. The outstanding team performance to raise rafters and cheer spirits was Scotland’s against France. Both the Welsh and Irish — each won one/lost one — have overdosed on anxiety and Celtic insecurities, and while Italy may be without a victory, the skilfully hearty brio which they put about in close-quarters hand-to-hand combat makes them appealingly watchable.
Today Italy are in Paris, England in Edinburgh. Surely the French cannot be as tame as in Edinburgh, or as slapstick as at home against the Irish, which was not so much France vs Ireland as Laurel vs Hardy. In spite of losing senior stalwart Murray (sent off by a too prim Kiwi ref), I fancy Scotland might even reprise their fabled smash-hit Murrayfield ambushes of the auld enemy in 1990 (13–7) and 2000 (19–13). It is six springtimes since I caught the flight home with the England team. Still white-faced with fury, they had to walk the length of Edinburgh airport departures lounge as, it seemed, every local bonnily brandished at them the bold frontpage Scotland on Sunday banner headline which bragged, simply, ‘’BATTLERS 19, BOTTLERS 13’.
The weekend’s tautest theatre will be in Dublin. Sure, by Sunday night knives could be cheerfully glinting at the strop if coach O’Sullivan’s Irish team has put in another butter-fingered comedy show, but the riveting downstage dramas will centre on how champions Wales react to the grievous assassination of their own estimable coach, Ruddock, last week. Details may take months to emerge, but in-house spies already tell of a shamelessly ego-driven coup by some senior old-lag players. ‘While bloody treason flourished’, (as they said on the way to the Forum) Ruddock’s successor, his deputy Johnson, an Australian, stepped up with, to my mind, unseemly haste. Next year the World Cup comes round again. So keen on their rugby and, correspondingly, so ruthless about it, Wales also contrived to drop their pilot in every season before the World Cups of 1991, 1995, 1999 and 2003. In each of them the team left early, eliminated without even competing in the closing stages. Always before, blame for Welsh rugby’s failings has centred on the blazered administrators and the notorious ‘Big Five’ selectors — ‘the Big-oted Five’ as Carwyn James would enunciate with venom. At least player power is a novelty. Then again, why not?
Wales were Six Nations champions last year, ambushing everyone with fast, footloose, fizzy stuff. By all accounts, Ruddock reckoned it could only work once, and for 2006 sought firmer foundations, more stability. Shamefaced or not, the rebels in red are on their own in Dublin’s maelstrom on Sunday. It cannot fail to be a compelling occasion; certainly for psychotherapists, amateur or professional.
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