The Great Full-Back Crisis
Most of my readers will probably be too young to remember the archetypal spiv as portrayed by Arthur English, with a square-shouldered, light fawn overcoat stretching way below his knees, with a cigarette drooping from underneath a pencil thin moustache, and with sharp, beady eyes glittering under a wide-brimmed, soft felt hat. John Reason.
"Pssst! Wanna buy a pair of nylons?"
Well, any spiv who could market a line in international Rugby Union full-backs this season could name his own price. All the countries in Europe are searching for one with varying degrees of desperation - or at least, they are if we are correct in our assumption that Wales will not invite J.P.R. Williams to re-join their national squad.
That may be a large assumption, but the Welsh Rugby Union must be aware that members of the national Rugby Unions in the other three home countries are uneasy at the implications of Williams being allowed to continue to play after the publication of his autobiography. So far, that book has made £50,000 for its author, and England, Scotland and Ireland would very much like to see proof that a cheque for that sum has been paid either to the Welsh Rugby Union, or to a club, or to a charity in which neither Williams, nor any of his relatives or dependants, has financial interest whatsoever.
Whatever the truth of the matter,-Roger Blyth has looked rather vulnerable since he took over as the Welsh fullback, and with Welsh wing-three quarter play at its worst ebb in the entire history of Welsh Rugby, the feeling in other countries is that Europe's most successful team for the past decade might be about to waver.
This is a cosy notion, but even in hard times, Wales rarely lose at home, and the fact is that when they play England and Ireland at Cardiff, as they do this season, they usually win the Triple Crown rather more easily than when they have to play at Twickenham and in Dublin.
Ireland also have to find a full-back to replace Rodney O'Donnell, who was injured when playing for the British Lions in South Africa. What is more, in the absence of Colin Patterson, another casualty of the Lions tour, Ireland will have to ,exchange the bubbling, instinctive play of Patterson at serum-half for the more cerebral but much less physical play of John Robbie. This may work out well enough, but the recent track record of Irish packs does not suggest that it will be necessarily so.
Ireland are full of confidence after their smashing victory over Wales in Dublin last year. The Irish are eternal optimists, and they feel that the Welsh pack is beginning to run out of steam, However, they would do well to remember that Wales did not have Gareth Davies at fly-half on that occasion, and when Wales do have Gareth Davies at fly-half, they have the best midfield outside Australia.
Davies is now challenging the Argentine's Hugo Porta as the best fly-half in the world. Terry Holmes is as strong as an ox at serum-half. David Richards is sharp and strong and very, very quick in the centre, and alongside him, Steve Fenwick does not have an uncompetitive fibre in his body. Maybe the engine is not functioning as well as it did, and maybe Wales have a couple of flat tyres on the wings, but my word, their steering and gearbox are still pretty smooth.
England certainly cannot match them there, for all their Grand Slam which they won earlier this year. As I have
remarked before, I have advanced into middle age on the false dawns of English revivals, and their grand slam in 1980 was an outrageous fluke.
They were beaten all ends up by a Welsh team reduced to 14 men by the sending off of Paul Ringer but were presented with the chance of victory when Elgan Rees compounded all the errors he had made in a dreadful season by failing to run round behind the posts in scoring Wales' second try. This gave Gareth Davies a kick at goal which he was just able to miss, and it gave all the really knowledgeable English punters the chance to lose their shirts with something to spare when "Dusty" Hare, the England fullback, kicked a difficult goal under the greatest of pressure to win the match.
Hare is no sounder as a full-back than Roger Blyth of Wales or Andy Irvine of Scotland and there are strong men in the West country of England who have already decided that they have not the stomach to go to Cardiff on January 17 to see what W. G. Davies will do to W. H. Hare.
England think they can win in Cardiff this year. Indeed, some of their more venerable forwards like Fran Cotton, Roger Ottley and Tony Neary have deferred their retirements for one more year simply to have, as they succinctly put it, "one last crack at stuffing the gits in Cardiff." I hope it keeps fine for them. I suspect that all they will get will be a thick ear.
They might get a lot worse than that, too, if Fran Cotton and Phil Blakeway do not recover from the illness and injury which ended their Lions' tours. Heart specialists insist that there is no reason why Cotton should not regain his former effectiveness, but it seems to me to 'be a lot to ask. For all his iron strength, Blakeway is also injury prone, and it was Cotton and Blakeway above all who demolished Ireland at Twickenham last year and paved the way to England's championship. If you except Cotton, England have no tight head prop within sight of Blakeway in reserve, and if Cotton does not play, the only loose head they have is Colin Smart. The names of other players might be advanced as likely lads. None of them will be good enough if England aspire to win the championship again.
The one commodity that England do have in sufficient quantity to set up a stall in Petticoat Lane is wingers.
They have at least six who would walk into the Welsh team, or the Irish, or the Scottish teams, come to that. England have a fair number of good locks, too, but like everyone else, they are wondering what has happened to the factory that used to produce good, quick, open-side flankers.
France are also struggling in midfield. They cannot find a fly-half to bring out the talent in their back-line, and they
cannot find any locks to win them the ball. They are short of a loose head, too.
France will have the advantage of a tour to South Africa. Their president, Albert Ferrasse, cheerfully hopes that this tour will produce ,the players that France need to flesh out their team, but judging from their "B" team which played Wales this season, there will be no new stars burning brightly. They will just have to find a better combination from the fifty or sixty caps they have already.
Even France are not looking too secure at fullback these days. Admittedly, Jean-Michel Aguirre, fast approaching middle age, and on an off day, would do Wales and England nicely, and probably Ireland too, but the splendidly named Serge Blanco, who is of very dusky Moroccan descent, is no sounder than Andy Irvine. He has just married the daughter of a former middleweight champion of France, so maybe that will toughen him up a bit. He is a marvellous runner and on a good day in late Spring in Paris, he could be dynamite.
Scotland look to be just as badly off as they have been ever since Gordon Brown stopped playing for them. The persistent illness of Brown's wife has prevented his return to the game, which means that once again, Scotland are likely to be flashy going forwards and almost invisible going backwards, and therefore challenging strongly for their customary spot at the foot of the table.
Ireland are only too conscious that last season, they were so complacent after their wins in Australia that their pack went into the first match against England only half-fit. England had had the advantage of some provincial matches and an international against New Zealand.
This year England will not have such a flying start. Wales will have that, but Ireland are hoping that the work they put in for the short tour by Romania will go some way to readying them for the international championship. Not that they can have taken any comfort from their result against Romania for in the end they were lucky to draw. How a backline of John Robbie, Tony Ward and Ollie Campbell fares, with much less ball, in the championship, remains to be seen. But there is definitely the suspicion that Ireland will have problems in another key back position - Pssst!
Anyone got a full-back?