The Scotsman reports

Hadden can be part-time coach

ALLAN MASSIE

THE question is not whether Frank Hadden should be appointed the Scotland coach. It would now be perverse to look for anyone else. As interim coach, he has guided the team to two convincing victories. Just as importantly, he seems to have transformed the spirit in the camp. The players are happy as they haven't been for some time.

Nevertheless, questions remain, concerning the make-up of the coaching team and their relation to our three pro teams. The first is: should Hadden be invited to continue as Edinburgh's chief coach, combining that with the Scotland job? The answer to this will go some way to determining the answer to the other questions.

I don't know whether he wants to remain in charge of Edinburgh, but I suspect he does because the players are comfortable with the style he has devised and, with luck, may be on the verge of their most successful season yet. As pro team success will feed through to the national squad, that's a good reason for asking Hadden to take on both jobs. This would be demanding, but there is a core of very experienced players at Edinburgh capable of taking a deal of responsibility themselves.

There's another reason, I'm not convinced that in a country with as few professional players as Scotland, the national coach's job is a full-time one. He can always make it that, if only on the basis of Parkinson's Law, which states that "work expands to fill the time available for completion" and one has the impression that this was the case with Matt Williams and his coaching team. But it is not clear that all this work is even desirable. It may result in too much coaching, lengthy meetings and minute analysis, leaving players confused, bored, or resentful.

So let's see how we get on with a part-time coach. It would then follow that Hadden's assistants would be the other pro team coaches, again on a part-time, and in some cases an ad hoc, basis. The results couldn't be worse than in the last two seasons.

It was disappointing not to have TV coverage of last Sunday's match in Bucharest, especially as the BBC provided this for matches there in 1984 and 1991. Listening to the radio commentary - and chat - it was hard to get a clear impression of the game. Evidently not everything went right. We conceded too many penalties in our own half. Romania had five kicks at goal, converting four. Such indiscipline would usually ensure defeat in a Six Nations match. One might have expected that more tries would have been scored as a result of flowing handling movements - I think only two of the six came in that category.

Someone sent a text to the commentators, expressing disappointment and saying that we ought to be beating a team like Romania by 20 or 30 points. In the end, the margin was actually 20, but his reaction was one many will have shared. That said, it must be a long time since Scotland fielded so many young and inexperienced players.

Discounting Alastair Kellock, who was on the field for only a minute or so, we used 11 of our 12 listed forwards. Five of them - Scott Murray, Jon Petrie, Bruce Douglas, Alan Jacobson and Allister Hogg - may be classed as experienced. But the others - Scott Lawson, Dougie Hall, Euan Murray, Craig Hamilton, Kelly Brown and Andrew Wilson - had fewer than that number of caps between them. Four were winning their first cap. This puts the match and the result in a better perspective.

Meanwhile, down there, the Lions haven't yet looked at all convincing. They may have done so against the Maoris before you read this but, despite some good individual performances, very little has happened to alarm the All Blacks.

Jonny Wilkinson hasn't played yet. He was on the bench on Wednesday, but Charlie Hodgson played so well it would have been perverse to take him off. If the Lions can put together a pack capable of taking control, Hodgson might be the best selection at No10. Out of the four fly-halves he has the widest repertoire of attacking skills.

Ronan O'Gara was castigated by the English press for his two missed tackles against Bay of Plenty. They were indeed bad misses, though not much worse than the two Wilkinson missed against Argentina, which went almost unremarked. Still I guess O'Gara is down to fourth place in the pecking order now.

It's perhaps prudent to wrap Wilkinson in cotton wool, but surely he must play on Wednesday against Wellington if he is to be the Test fly-half. Otherwise, he can scarcely be match-sharp.

It was good to see Chris Cusiter given almost the full 80 minutes. Despite that appalling pass which gave Taranaki the chance to score their first try, - a pass which will be etched on his memory - he had a rattling good game and is surely pushing Dwayne Peel and Matt Dawson hard. The plan will still be to have Peel starting and Dawson, with his vast experience, on the bench, but Cusiter has shown himself capable of doing the job.


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http://sport.scotsman.com/rugby.cfm?id=642162005

This article was posted on 11-Jun-2005, 10:04 by Hugh Barrow.