Brian Ashton and the art of creative rugby

For most of his roller-coaster career – one that included being part of an England set-up that reached consecutive World Cup finals – Brian Ashton has been held up as the embodiment of the enlightened rugby coach.

Say what you like about the mild-mannered Lancastrian or his management of the 2007 Webb Ellis campaign but he could never be accused of asking his teams to play anything other than intelligent, heads-up rugby.

Typically that would mean his sides would go out with the intention of moving the ball with ambition and flair and with an emphasis on imaginative threequarter play.

But similarly they might also be required to kick the corners or pick and drive. In short, Plan A would be complemented by Plans B and C and probably D, E and F as well.

And – here comes the revolutionary bit – under Ashton, the decision to switch between strategies is not the preserve of any one individual, least of all an ageing balding bloke sat on the sidelines.

Indeed, the 63-year-old has long spoken of empowering players to make calls on a situational basis and to that degree he is viewed as the arch-moderniser – and has been for the past 30 years.

The former England, Ireland and Bath mastermind was due to explain some of his principles at a coaching conference in Kidderminster on Sunday, but that has now been postponed due to the weather.

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Andy Robinson hints at bright future after Frank Hadden era peters out

SCOTTISH rugby is moving into 2010 with renewed heart … but wait, we said that of 2009.

Scottish rugby was in a positive frame of mind a year ago after scrummaging New Zealand off the park and running South Africa close, so developing a pack confident it could stand tall with the best in the world. They did not win those Test matches ultimately, and that kept one foot on the ground at least, but with England and France struggling, Wales not the Grand Slammists they were and Ireland looking aged, surely it was time for Scotland to banish the blues?

The short answer was 'no, think again, Scotland'. Just as a rugby team evolves around more than merely the stand-off, but the controller wearing the No10 jersey invariably attracts most scrutiny, so the head coach is far from alone in determining how his side performs yet is the man to take the greatest flak when it all goes pear-shaped.

It comes with the position and so the sight of Frank Hadden shuffling more uncomfortably than ever with the attention and criticism began to reveal in the former Edinburgh and Scotland age-grade coach a naivety in international rugby that was to haunt him in his final months as he ran out of avenues to turn and agreed to step down in May.

In terms of results, Hadden finished with 16 wins from 41 Test matches, a success ratio of 39 percent, and with Scotland one place further down the rankings from when he took over. It was not a whole lot worse than some might have predicted of a Scotland side, but he joined Ian McGeechan and Matt Williams nonetheless in completing the worst decade of achievement by a Scotland team since international rugby began.

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Irish rugby revels in season in the sun

“Honesty, trust, hard work, the willingness to go the extra little bit. It’s like what I said earlier, nobody was blaming anybody. We had none of that, no cliques, no nothing. We gave it a go in the best way possible. You cannot overestimate honesty.” – Declan Kidney, March 21st, in the corridors of the Millennium Stadium

REWIND 12 months and it’s easy to forget where Irish rugby was. Ireland had just grimly held on to eighth place in the world rankings to secure the last of the second-tier seedings for the World Cup draw courtesy of a forgettable 17-3 wins over an Argentina team further depleted by losing Juan Martin Hernandez in the warm-up.

This had followed New Zealand’s bloodless coup at Croke Park a week before, which had left players and management alike stunned by the lack of confidence within the group as the hangover from the last 12 months of the Eddie O’Sullivan era lingered on.

Entering 2009, Ireland had won just four of its 10 matches in 2008, all at home against the combined might of Italy, Scotland, Canada and the understrength Pumas. All told, in Ireland’s previous 18 matches, there had been 11 defeats, while the other three wins had been a fortunate victory over Italy at Ravenhill and those taut World Cup wins over Namibia and Georgia. Notions of winning a Grand Slam would have had you in a straitjacket.


On the provincial front, admittedly, Munster and Leinster had been restoring pride and self-belief, the former having regained the Heineken Cup and Leinster having won the Magners League, although Michael Cheika’s detractors were still lurking in the long grass.

Munster duly ensured a home quarter-final against the Ospreys by dint of handsome wins over Sale and Montauban, whereas Leinster couldn’t buy a try in the 19-12 defeat to Wasps and 12-3 win over Edinburgh which earned an away quarter-final at Harlequins.

And the big days kept coming. Perhaps, in hindsight, Munster were too good for their own good in their Euro quarter-final rout of the Ospreys, in contrast to the grit Leinster showed in withstanding Harlequins’ best and worst intentions.

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Rob Moffat buoyed as Rory Hutton muscles into contention

ROB Moffat may have finally broken the glass ceiling for the next group of emerging stand-offs by handing Rory Hutton his Magners League debut, but, having done so, the experienced Edinburgh coach could have given himself a real selection headache for the team's Heineken Cup matches over the next fortnight.

Had Edinburgh beaten Bath, as they probably should have done, at the Recreation Ground in early December, they would be staring at a great opportunity to qualify for the Heineken Cup quarter- finals. It is now slim, but the chance is not gone. Edinburgh need to win their remaining games, beating Ulster at Ravenhill for the second time this season and then Stade Francais at Murrayfield, preferably with bonus points. They may not even need Bath to win in Paris this weekend, though that would help.

It is not impossible as Stade have endured a tough time in recent weeks and are looking at a very French solution to the problem of running out of scrum-halves – playing the hooker there this week. Countless French sides have also shown an aversion to playing in Scotland, with Pau, Colomiers, Grenoble, Toulouse, Agen, Clermont Auvergne, Perpignan, Bourgoin, Castres and Biarritz all returning home winless. Stade also lost at Ulster this season for a third time.

If winning the pool and grasping one of the two best runners-up spots fails to materialise, two wins could still hand Edinburgh a place in the last eight of the Amlin Challenge Cup, and seal European rugby and more income in the latter stages of the season. So these games are important. There were many plus points in Saturday's team performance, notably up front, but after finding a stand-off with the ability to surprise a defence like Cardiff's and energise players around him the way Hutton did, the coach might have been tempted to stick with the same team.

However, he cannot. Hutton was not registered for the Heineken Cup as he was not in the frame for selection at the last stage of squad changes. That has eased Moffat's week somewhat, as the coach has the Scotland stand-off Phil Godman champing at the bit to return after a week off to rest a hip injury.

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Celtic League ready to compensate Glasgow for late postponement in Leinster

After the late cancellation of their Magners League match against Leinster at the Royal Dublin Society on Friday, Glasgow officials are set to file a claim for compensation to the board of Celtic Rugby to recover the costs they incurred on their fruitless trip to Ireland.

Speaking after Friday's fiasco – Glasgow had received a number of assurances that the pitch would be playable before they set off from Scotland on Thursday evening – Celtic Rugby director David Jordan dismissed suggestions that a claim could be made against Leinster.

However, Jordan said that central funds were available to ensure that clubs were not left out of pocket after such abortive journeys.

"These things have happened in the past and we have always applied the same principle," said Jordan.

"The point is that the away team should not be financially penalised when a match is called off, so we have covered their costs on previous occasions when these situations have arisen.

"We actually anticipate having to do this from time to time and we have made contingencies in our budget. I've told Kenny Baillie that he should submit a claim to us to cover the costs Glasgow have incurred."

Asked if Celtic Rugby might be able to recover their own costs from Leinster, Jordan agreed that the possibility existed but suggested that the difficulty of proving any negligence on the part of the Irish side made that course of action highly unlikely.

"We have told teams that they should make every effort to get games on," Jordan explained. "Obviously, we will be reviewing what Leinster did to protect their pitch, but we have to accept that these things happen from time to time and sides have to make a judgment call."

Privately, some Glasgow officials have suggested that they may support a claim for compensation from their travelling supporters who were also hugely inconvenienced by the late cancellation of Friday's game.

In reality, however, Celtic Rugby would almost certainly stand firm against setting any precedent of that sort.

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Scotland boss Andy Robinson wants England to be intimidated when his new team sing national anthem

High in the Murrayfield stands, a proud, patriotic Englishman sat during the Calcutta Cup rugby match between Scotland and England and marvelled at the passion of the Scots. Not just on the pitch, where the men in blue would prevail for the second successive time in Edinburgh, but also from all those in the seats around him.

He looked at the lone piper standing high on the roof of the stand, kilt swirling in the wind as his pipes bellowed. He took in the smoke from the guns that had fired on the pitch seconds before kick-off. And he absorbed the rush of nationalism that flowed from every proud Scot who had come to see the auld enemy sent packing again.

That was two years ago and, back then, Andy Robinson, the former England flanker who helped Sir Clive Woodward’s team to World Cup glory in 2003 before taking over the top job himself, would never have dreamed he would become Scotland’s head coach — with a remit to inflict another sapping defeat on his beloved England.

But that is what Robinson is planning to do in the forthcoming Six Nations’ campaign.

And, should he succeed in coaching the Scots to victory at Murrayfield on March 13, he will inflict another crushing blow on the management regime headed, ironically enough, by Martin Johnson — the colossus who captained England to the biggest prize in world rugby six years ago.

Robinson, 45 and always fiercely proud to wear the red rose of England, will not flinch from his task. He plans to use the passion he witnessed while sitting in the Murrayfield stands to achieve his goal.

The emotions of his team will be stirred from the moment they step onto the Edinburgh turf — where the Scots have won the last three Calcutta Cups played there — and line up to sing the anthem that never fails to stir every red-blooded Scot.

It is not that Robinson has suddenly turned his back on all things English. ‘I’m a fan of England rugby and I always want them to do well,’ he insists. ‘Just not in the Calcutta Cup while I’m in charge of Scotland.

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Italian rugby turning the tide on football.

For so long rugby in Italy has lived in the shadow of football but there is increasing evidence that the 15-man sport is turning the tide on the national game.

The Azzurri's 6-20 defeat against the All Blacks in San Siro on November 14th drew an unprecedented 80,018 spectators, on top of which over two million viewers tuned in at home on Sky and La7.

That crowd broke the record for people attending a rugby match in Italy and to put that figure in context the last four Italian national football home games attracted a combined attendance of just over 60,000.

Nor is that growth confined to the national team with Viadana's recent Heineken Cup match against the Ospreys attracting 20,563 - which not only ranked as one of the best European rugby attendances of that weekend but was greater than half of the Serie A crowds.

Viadana general manager Franco Tonni said: "People are tired of football, with its recent corruption scandals and with the diving that goes on.

"I would say absolutely that the time is ripe for Italy to be converted to rugby."

It is not just the crowds that want a piece of the Italian rugby team, advertisers are jumping on that bandwagon as well.

Leading fashion brand Dolce and Gabbana signed up the Italian national team for a major advertising campaign that thrust them further into the public's consciousness.

A Dolce and Gabbana spokesman said: "The impressive bodies sculpted through dedication, discipline and physically strenuous trainings, make them the perfect models for a new ideal of beauty that is healthy, clean and masculine.

"Because it's the fight, but also the utter sportsmanship with which it is carried on, that makes Rugby one of the most fascinating and captivating disciplines out there."

Crowds of this size would be in the top three of all Welsh, Scottish and Irish teams.

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