The European international rugby season kicked off this weekend. The result was that we have learnt nothing about the state of world rugby. The good is the emergence of Italian rugby with 80 000 people attending a rugby match at the San Siro Stadium, Milan. Why is this good? Milan is th heart of Italian football, with two great teams Inter and AC based there. Eighty thousand Milanistas are now attending a rugby match this is exciting for the game.
The bad is the game of kick tennis taking place in highest level of rugby at the moment. Why? Games mean so much that people are scared to run the ball as it is risky. My personal hope is that the French can save us from this banal aspect of a great game. The French do not have the Anglo Saxon caution and hopefully the cultural stereotype will prevail and the French cut loose.
The ugly is the state of the England rugby team. The problem is that they look rudder less. Injuries can be blamed and their is no doubt that that the front row crisis is causing England problems. The most worrying problem is that England have not got an established pattern of play.
The England team under Will Carling played hard forward based rugby. The team under Martin Johnson the same but with backs intelligent enough to know how to straighten the line and use the kick as an offensive weapon. This current England team is neither hard enough in the forwards or intelligent enough in the backs to know how to play. Can blame be placed? Yes, Martin Johnson and his staff have to take responsibility. The players have to be given a pattern of play dictated to by the coaching staff. This is probably alien to Johnson because his teams were full of leaders that, when the game was drifting could take the game and make things happen. At the moment England do not have that and nobody is quite sure whether the current crop- of England players have it in them.
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