The Sunday Times - UK (2022-04-24)

18 April 24, 2022The Sunday Times 2GS

Rugby Union

delights — the outrageous joy of the

magnificent Fijians when they won

the Olympic Sevens in Rio de Janeiro

in 2016 — under the master coach Ben

Ryan; the outrageous fortune to be

invited as a junior hack to the Hong

Kong Sevens, which created such an

impression that I still regard that

event as close to the Six Nations in

significance for the sport.

And of course, sevens as a fan is

magnificent fun — although you

do notice at the main tournaments

a total lack of correlation

between great play on the field

and crowd reaction.

Then you work out that the sudden

outpourings of ranting and cheering

from the stands and terraces is

related more to the arrival of the

latest becostumed businessman

turned fancy-dress loony than the

The sevens game is a fabulous

pop-gun party but something

is seriously awry when it takes

precedence over Six Nations

staggering. Ah, sevens. Probably you

still think of happy days in the late

season, with spring sprung, sinking a

few on the sidelines as the action —

uncomplicated, rapid and off the

cuff, whizzes along in front of you.

There are now summer events and

academies that are well worthwhile.

But off the cuff? No longer. You

watch the elite sevens game now and

you will find it as formulaic and

regimented as the main game.

Furthermore, I would estimate that

eight in ten games are decided by

referee interpretation at the

breakdown.

Yet the lofty way in which some

players are tagged “sevens

specialists” by other “sevens

specialists” means that they have

expended copious amounts of sweat

and energy in the cause, particularly

in the HSBC World Sevens Series.

But that is all it means. The notion

that sevens is some kind of valid

development vehicle for the top

professional ranks, even — God

help us — for international rugby,

is quite ludicrous. A nonsense of

the era.

It is definitively true that most

men’s squads for these events are

drawn chiefly from the ranks of

players who have not been offered

professional contracts in the main

game. Occasionally you hear of a

player turning down a lucrative pro

L

ast week brought a

powerhouse new entry for

the Utter Twaddle of the

Decade Award, a category

always contested hotly by

rugby officialdom.

Greg McWilliams, the head

coach of Ireland’s women’s

team, was quoted thus: “In the bigger

picture, you want to be known

for the rugby you played, not the

results you get.”

It is the sort of garbage trotted out

by professional coaches who rarely

win and are not confident of doing so

in the future. As I always say when

this stuff appears, if you’re not

bothered about the results, take

down the scoreboard at your ground

and we will all stop counting.

However, McWilliams possibly has

an excuse. Ireland play England

today in Leicester with less than half

of their first-choice XV, in front of

what could be could be one of the

biggest crowds to watch a standalone

women’s Test, and live on terrestrial

TV. Not the day to be embarrassed.

Rugby in Ireland — so we thought —

was transformed by the brave actions

of members of their playing squad

and retired greats. They were so

incensed by shocking treatment at

the hands of the Irish Rugby Union

(IRU) — always the most blithering of

unions — that they took their

complaints to the Irish government.

They detailed all the abuses of

proper preparation, that some had to

change outside by rat-infested

dustbins, about the day when all the

lavatories were locked, and so on.

They won hands down, and have set

out to start their new life — as

impecunious as before, perhaps, but

no longer treated like stray dogs.

Then last week we found out that

seven Irish players, including the

whole back three and both centres,

would not be playing today. They

have all opted to play sevens in

Langford, Canada; or been told to opt

to by the IRU — reports differ. And this

against an England team who have

won their TikTok Six Nations games

this season by an average of 63-3.

For either the IRU or the players to

have opted for a relative frippery in

the very weeks when the Six Nations

is desperate for close games to

validate the whole event is

Cheering in the

stands is related

more to the arrival

of a becostumed

loony than the

play on the

sevens field

Stephen Jones

The voice of rugby

contract to play sevens. But very,

very rarely.

Even the television commentators

on the shorter game clearly wish it to

be deemed that they have discovered

a whole new sport — they have

invented a new English-gibberish,

gibberish-English dictionary of

painful, mangled right-on tripe to

accompany the pictures.

The sevens at the Olympics is

clearly massive and, to its credit,

World Rugby has fought a long and

successful campaign to bring sevens

into the Olympic movement,

something that releases considerable

funding for the sport in countries

where the Olympic Games are

prioritised above anything else

in sport.

And I could never pretend that the

sevens format has not brought sheer