THE SCOTSMAN REPORTS

Copying Kiwis' school of thought can help us make the grade

JOHN BEATTIE


IF WE are ever to beat the All Blacks it will take a major rethink in Scottish sporting policy as there are no systems in place to produce a team which can do it.

It is good having a professional tier, but my worry is that the dwindling crowd is, yes, to do with very expensive tickets, but it is also actually a symptom of a thin player base at grass roots and of rugby becoming more and more a minority sport, whereas in New Zealand it is the sport.


Not until every school in Scotland has a rugby team - which would be the ultimate copy of the "New Zealand model" - will we ever truly be able to believe that our substructure gives us the confidence to know that we are comparing like with like.

But to the game? I liked the double bluff and I felt like smiling at the end of a pulsating game that, although it surely has to be classed as another glorious defeat, nevertheless proved that this Scottish team has a fighting spirit.

We lack a midfield cutting edge, Sean Lamont is our principal strike threat, but apart from that this is a pretty useful side. Double bluff? Well, Frank Hadden had been telling everyone for weeks that his game plan strategy is based on width.

Yes, there might be other slight diversions, but principally the message has been about width.

And yet the much maligned Dan Parks, who played well, stuck bombs up in the air as if his middle name was Rutherford or Chalmers, Chris Cusiter and Mike Blair tried to snipe like Gary Armstrong or Roy Laidlaw.

In short, there was a mix of tactics like Scotland teams of old and Scotland tried to play to the conditions.

The ball went up in the air, the home pack tried to take the visitors on at their strength, up front, with rolling mauls and by driving close to the breakdown and a strong scrum, Jason White put in the odd thundering tackle, and for periods of the game Scotland enjoyed massive territorial advantage.

It's hard to play the All Blacks though. You grow up as little rugby-watching boys switching on the telly only to see the team in black winning games with massive power, and then the next minute you are playing against them and if it's for the first time, as it was for 11 of the Scots, then that's daunting.

When we say glibly that the All Blacks are human we mean it, but that observation applies equally to the Scots who, and I will be frank, stood off the All Blacks a bit in the first half and appeared to be overawed.

I couldn't put my finger on it but I just got the impression that some of the Scottish players just held off a bit in the opening half. If they had blasted the All Blacks at every opportunity at the start of the game perhaps things might have been different.

And that's what I want to talk about, the fact that we need more and more rugby watching, and rugby playing boys if we are to win more games and fill the stadium.

It might be impossible given Scotland's demographics where the number of under 16 boys are due to halve between 1976 and 2020, but I think the key to whether we can ever beat the All Blacks is our success or failure in producing rugby playing schools in the future.

Rugby players don't just appear as if by some kind of fluke, instead youngsters take up the game at school or at a great production line of talent like Stirling County, and then they stay with it. The match programme produces fascinating reading. Some of the Kiwi players were brought to New Zealand schools on rugby scholarships and the Kiwi game has its roots in school rugby. The Scottish players mostly went to rugby playing schools from Simon Taylor at Morrison's to Mike Blair at Edinburgh Academy, and Andrew Henderson at Lenzie Academy. The truth is that many of them went to fee paying schools where rugby is the game of choice.

We tinker at the edges in Scotland with school sport co-ordinators and all manner of outside agency help to produce sports stars in this country.

What it needs though, and I am hearing this more and more even from the experts, is more team sport in school. We need more rugby playing schoolboys, and I am afraid it's that elementary.

This article was posted on 28-Nov-2005, 12:23 by Hugh Barrow.