Martyn W
2006-02-22 09:31:33 UTC
When that sad day comes that Ruddock is promoted to glory, ready to
coach a heavenly team, I imagine that Carwyn James will be waiting with
a friendly handshake and a word of symapathetic encouragement.
They will be able to sit, sipping nectar, and shake their heads at the
folly of a WRU who think that god sits on their right hand.
For myself I will be finding it difficult indeed to bring myself to
watch Wales in the immediate future.
Since Mike Ruddock coached Swansea, I have been promoting him as acoach a heavenly team, I imagine that Carwyn James will be waiting with
a friendly handshake and a word of symapathetic encouragement.
They will be able to sit, sipping nectar, and shake their heads at the
folly of a WRU who think that god sits on their right hand.
For myself I will be finding it difficult indeed to bring myself to
watch Wales in the immediate future.
potential National Coach. Under Ruddock, Swansea played some sublime
attacking rugby, but with a steel that was missing from the fancy
frippery coming from the likes of Llanelli. When Hansen's number was
up, I went around telling everyone I could that Ruddock should be the
man and when he was appointed, I knew he would build on the firm
foundations laid by Hansen and add some forward adventure to Wales's
undoubted qualities in the backline.
In my view, that is why we won a Grand Slam in 2005 - because our
forwards were able to front up and move the ball quickly. No other team
worked with the ball the way Wales moved it amongst the forwards - it
was like facing fifteen backs. This IMO, was Ruddock's influence.
Now, instead of Ruddock, we have Scott Johnson, who is a backs coach
and David Young, who favours the old fashioned - dare I say "England
style" of forward play. This is a style Wales can't hope to compete
with - England and Ireland are both much better at it than Wales.
Now, it takes a special kind of forward to carry out this strategy and
unfortunately, Wales are lacking key elements - Ryan Jones and Brent
Cockbain due to injury and Gethin Jenkins' lack of fitness. The other
three players who are essential to the style of play - Martyn Williams,
Robert Sidoli and Michael Owen can't carry it out on their own, and I'm
not sure Duncan Jones, Ian Gough and Colin Charvis have the skill set
to substitute adequately - although Rhys Thomas appears to be getting
there. So, perhaps temporarily, Wales have to revert to old style rugby
- at least that's what we appear to be doing anyway - certainly against
England and Scotland, we played a much more traditional style, one that
ill suits us in my view. So maybe Dai Young, who is more expert in the
grunt and grind style of forward play will not be such a bad prospect
in the short term anyway.
One thing I would caution; we should not throw out the adventurous
style of forward play which Hansen and Ruddock developed. It served
Wales well and is now serving New Zealand, but even more so. We will
never be in the same class as England or France when it comes to big,
powerful packs who bludgeon the opposition, so there's no point in
trying to play like them except when needs must. Our path lies down the
NZ route. It's a long path, one that will take us quite some time and
quite a lot of investment in player development to complete. But it IS
achievable.
Oddly, one of the things that gives me hope that Wales are on the right
path is an email I got from David Pickering about Wales's financial
achievments over the last 18 months. He tells me that our debt of £70
million has been reduced by no less than £30 million and the WRU has
had record turnover figures. Another two or three years and the Union
could be in surplus, and in a position to invest upwards of twenty
million a year EXTRA in rugby. This is a stunning amount of money for a
small country like Wales, and potentially puts us on a similar footing,
in terms of investment as New Zealand, and in per capita terms, way
ahead of England or France.
The future is bright, and it's Scarlet.