Going on the attack
By Leipziger
December 11 2013
I’m not against a good defence. Back when we were teenagers, my mate Billy and I had a bit of a fascination with defensive football. He even got a Norway shirt for his birthday one year, while I still maintain that Roy Keane was the best footballer in the world back around the turn of the century.
I remembered this last night, somewhere between the office in the City and the Deptford Travelodge.
No good rugby team achieved anything while letting in three tries every game, and if gets regular results then I’m all for it. It seems to be accepted in professional rugby, at least among coaches and the media, that a team that goes out to attack will be relegated (or finish in the top half, presumably), and so those of us who support teams at the wrong end of the Premiership are doomed to witness a turgid, forward-dominated style of play.
I’d add ‘wasteful’ to the adjectives in that sentence. “We could build a platform from here, but because we’re only forty metres from our own goal we’d better kick it to their full-back and let him run back at us. Even if that full-back is Mike Brown or Ben Foden.”
Smithy reckons that Dean Richards has publicly stated that the Falcons will kick everything in their own half. I didn’t see that quote but no reason to doubt Smithy, so it’s quite disappointing that we have this philosophy. Not only does it mean that we fans have to watch an unattractive style of play normally, I just don’t think it works.
A negative style of play didn’t work against Harlequins, and for all of the plaudits our team got at Northampton, a 0-18 defeat suggests it didn’t work there either. My eyes told me it didn’t work.
The league table suggests we are doing OK, but I think we (and Gloucester and London Irish) have to remember that Worcester are having an extraordinarily poor season and but for that things would be a tighter.
I remember a few years ago reading an article by a fan of (I think) Worcester, which claimed that relegation didn’t cause negative rugby – rather, s/he argued, negative rugby caused relegation. Their back-up for this view was a table of tries scored per team in the Premiership that season. Of course the top teams will always score more tries than those at the bottom, but the gap was so big that it suggested there was something more at work. A difference in philosophy.
Read more here.
If you do not already have an account Click here to Register.
Quote:...which claimed that relegation didn’t cause negative rugby – rather, s/he argued, negative rugby caused relegation.
Good thoughts to go with Breakfast Leipy. The way to win rugby is to starve the opposition of ball, only ever give them rubbish ball, you keep the bloody thing & score points with it. You cannot score tries without the bloody ball.
Our philosophy at present seems to be exactly the opposite.
I say again, look at the season we were relegated. If for the first 13 games of the season under Alan Tait we were playing a negative game because of "fear of relegation" (a logical assumption), did it do us any good? I guess not, considering our league position at the time and the fact that we won just two of those 13 games.
Relegation is not the death of a club – look at Harlequins and Northampton. Even ourselves and Worcester have come back not much worse off.
All I'm saying is, negative rugby over the years has got us absolutely nowhere, except a relegation and contributing to a situation where we have quite poor crowds. Why not take a risk and go out and attack? When we have in the past, we've actually got decent form together, so who's to say it won't happen again this time? It's not like our form is going to get much worse.
I remember playing sarries down there and we played some great rugby till we got a silly amount of injuries and Hogg ended up on wing and mayhew playing with no foot and unable to run.