Ollie Campbell: Asking for More

Ollie Campbell has built up such a reputation as a goal kicker that he had the New Zealand forwards in fear and trembling when they played against the British and Irish Lions in the first test in Christchurch.

The All-Blacks were so transfixed by the certainty that every time they transgressed the laws of rugby football, a thunderclap named Campbell would punish them with three points that they hardly dare contest a lineout.
 
This state of affairs has brought balm and comfort to the hearts of all those 1959 Lions who will carry to their graves the memory of the test match in which they scored four tries to NCL against the All-Blacks and lost by a single point, thanks, if that is the word, to six penalty goals kicked by Don Clarke.

The sad thing is that Campbell's kicking in 1983 has been fronted by nothing like the same forward effort that New Zealand made on Don Clarke's behalf in 1959, and as a consequence, Campbell's play as a flyhalf has had some observers wondering what all the fuss has been about.

The same deprecations have been levelled at the Lions' loose forwards, and at their scrumhalves, but everyone who has played and has suffered in those positions knows that if the front five of the pack are not truly tight forwards, and are not able to establish control, then everyone else behind them is on a hiding to nothing.

What is more, the further back you go, the worse that hiding becomes. The loose forwards are castigated because they are not making any play, and are not putting any pressure on the opposition, the scrum-halves are derided for being caught in possession, for never being able to cross the gain line and for shovelling on hospital passes to their fly-halves, the flyhalves, meanwhile, have a little notice hung around their necks saying "The Buck Stops Here".

Ollie Campbell is a sensible and mature man and he is realistic about this. "Since I have been in New Zealand, I have come to appreciate the truth of Barry John's remark that anyone going to play fly-half in New Zealand wants to keep his passport in his pocket”, he smiles. "I am reasonably happy with the way I am playing, but no fly-half can play without quick loose ball, and for most of the time on this tour, we just haven't been getting any. Halfbacks depend totally on their forwards and the way they present the ball to them, and this dependence increases with every year that passes because the organisation of defences improves all the time.

'This tour suggests to me that in Europe we have become far too conscious of the set piece in recent years. We try to make all our playoff serums and lineouts, which makes back play terribly predictable and formal. In New Zealand these days, they make all their playoff the loose ball. Scrums and lineouts are just ways of starting the game again and initiating the process of creating loose ball.

"In that respect, the wheel may have come full circle, because all the history books you have ever read tell you that New Zealand forwards and South African forwards were the kings of the set piece and British and Irish backs had to live off the crumbs of possession which fell off their table.

"This forced backs in Europe to become more ambitious, more inventive. They saw so little of the ball that they became excited when they did get a bit of possession, and they tried things that they would not have dreamed of attempting if they had been living off a glut of the ball. I know it happened to me in my own club in Ireland. For a long time our forwards struggled for possession, and I think that made us better backs. We had to be.

"But for the last twelve years or so, British and Irish forwards have taken over from the All-Blacks and the Springboks as kings of the setpiece. That has made European backs much more complacent, and it has made backs in New Zealand and South Africa much more inventive.

'In Australia too, they have produced some absolutely marvellous backs at a time when their forwards have struggled in the scrum and the lineout the world over. So they have concentrated on the loose ball, the quick loose ball, and they have concentrated on moving it like lightning. So they have the Ella Broohers, and Campesi, and Michael Hawker and number eights scoring four tries in a test match against New Zealand.

"They have also evolved new defensive systems. Queensland adopted this system of moving the blind wing into the centre of the field as a third centre in defence at lineouts, and moving the full-back wider, and it is a terrible job to break that down. You can really only kick the ball back into the box on the blind side wing.

"Again, the New Zealanders have resurrected the flying machine type of open side wing forward. Early in the tour, against Wanganui and Auckland, we came across a couple who got into the middle so fast it was unbelievable. They did not come for me, or for John Rutherford. Instead they ran a line to split us away from the inside centre, to force us to turn back inside. There we ran into the wall of support coming up. Oddly enough, Scotland did that to me last season. So set play is becoming harder and harder."

Campbell is a loyal fellow and he does not say that his task has been made even harder by the appalling work of the Lions' tight forwards. Jim Telfer, the Lions' coach, arrived in New Zealand with some commendable ambitions of turning his forwards into a rucking unit, instead of a mixture of ruckers and maulers, but you cannot teach old dogs new tricks, or at any rate, you cannot do it in four weeks, and you cannot do it if your reserve locks are as loose as Steve Bainbridge and Steve Boyle, of England.

But that is the penalty of bad selection. Lions selectors have been making the same mistakes for thirty years now, and you just cannot afford to leave front jumpers of the hardness and the tightness and the quality of Tom Syddall and John Perkins at home. If they had been on this tour, and Maurice Colclough had been used as a middle jumper, as he was in South Africa in 1980, I am quite certain that Ollie Campbell's career as a fly-half would have flourished, as well as the legend of his goal kicking.

The lack of loose ball has forced Campbell into tactical kicking which he knows is less than penetrating. He is trying to do things from set play which are impossible, and is coming back inside too often for his own safety or for the good of the team.

"I am trying to guard against that", he says. "I know I must get back outside if I can." And Campbell admits that he was glad of the support of John Rutherford as a centre against North Auckland last week. "It took a lot of pressure off me."