The 30-Something Wish List
10. Skinny White Guys
Mention Terry Wright’s name to any youngster (that’s people under 35) and they will look at you blankly.
For those older than 35, there is a shared nod of appreciation in the direction of El Tel, who was the last skinny white guy to play for the All Blacks.
Conrad Smith was a brief throwback to a forgotten age when he made his test debut, but 12 months later he was 95kg and is now almost 100kg. The skinny white guy just doesn’t exist anymore.
Dan Carter is the lightest All Black, and at 92kg he’s hardly skinny. He’s built – a small frame but with plenty packed on it. Nope – the idea of someone wiry, light and crying out for a good feed sounds preposterous to the current generation. They don’t get that some players used to be a one-iron with ears. They are the supersized generation and would just mock a spindly pair of legs supporting a deathly thin torso.
Now we have a fixation with power athletes – if you’re not rippling and flexing then no one wants to pick you.
Skinny white blokes (Polynesians and Maoris don’t do skinny) would supposedly be snapped in half. They are supposedly underequipped for the current explosive game. The shame of it is that skinny blokes have to come up with something unusual to survive. They add a point of difference. They have to use their brains. They have to be quick on their feet, agile, clever, and there’s so much theatre to be had when someone entirely breakable dodges his way through 80 minutes to become the hero of the hour.
9. Proper Rugby Boots
Pretty-boy first fives and other handbag carriers always felt a little nervous when they glanced around their changing room and saw their forwards’ feet clad in muckle great hiking boots with crampons.
Back in the day, forwards wore rugby boots – these covered the ankle and usually had steel toe caps. Most self-respecting forwards would toss away the original studs and load their boots with lethal looking longer ones. The scary part for the backs was knowing that in the other changing shed the opposition forwards would be wearing the same boots – weaponry designed to stand firm in the mud and give these already borderline psychos an extra bit of bounce in their step.
The system worked neatly – the boots said it all. Forwards wore rugby boots, backs wore football boots. Boots defined their respective roles and made the game simpler: those with rugby boots spent 80 minutes standing on each other: those with football boots spent 80 minutes trying to avoid contact of any kind. Then it all changed – everyone started wearing football boots.
Manufacturers stopped making rugby boots, mistakenly believing that the big lugs were athletes and wanted something lighter to help them be more nimble. Hello, they didn’t. They loved winding their extra-long laces round and round their ankles and imagining the crunch of bone when they smacked into an unsuspecting leg with their steel toe caps. Bring them back – forwards need proper boots, not poncy green or white or blue football boots.
8. Kicking Castles
Okay, everyone under 35 just said ‘huh’ with a hint of disdain that can’t hide their suspicion that kicking castles are something really old and really crap.
Well, they kind of are. And they kind of turned goal-kicking into a pantomime.
For the uninitiated, back in the day, kicking tees weren’t allowed. Some quaintly misguided notion existed that they were cheating. Instead, goal-kickers had to chip away at the ground.
Props and other dopey forwards would just hack a hole with their heels and drop the ball into it when they tried to show off before training started. Proper kickers – flower arranging first fives and the like – would neatly dig with their heels until they had raised a circle of turf. Then they would fold the corners up with their hands making a kind of egg cup for the ball, pressing their thumbs into the middle. It took an age but somehow that was okay. It meant goal-kicking was a true art form, with soul, performance and routine.
A bit like golf, there was also a strict etiquette – all castles had to be stamped down after use. These days, the kicker calls for a tee, throws it on the ground, places the ball and kicks. It’s soulless, clinical and (yes, okay, much quicker) graceless.
7. Moustaches
This might seem trivial, but rugby in the amateur era was defined by the moustache.
Seemingly everyone had one and it gave rugby a kind of gravitas – a real manly vibe that never bordered on the iffy. On some people the moustache can be suspect. But for rugby players of the 1970s and 1980s, the moustache was cool, rugged – Tom Selleck cool.
Even without ever catching sight of the ball, you kind of knew you were watching a game of rugby. You just needed to clock the faces, see the abundance of readily grown but expertly trimmed facial hair, to know that it was a game of rugby you’d stumbled on.
The beard has made a comeback over the last few years. While that’s welcome and gives rugby that real-man feel – rather than the lady-boy, metrosexual, shave your legs and sup on wine spritzers vibe that soccer emanates – the moustache is still sadly missed. A moustache is a bolder statement than a beard as it says this is deliberate: I’ve grown this by choice because I can and because it makes me feel good about who I am.
We all felt that warm comforting, everything will be okay sense, when we saw Buck and his moustache, or Richard Loe, Joe Stanley, Dave Loveridge, Murray Mexted … the list could go on. Moustaches were once commonplace.
6. Tap Penalty Moves
Seriously, why on earth don’t we ever see teams pull off a well considered, intricate tap penalty move anymore?
It’s as if professional teams reject this idea on the basis that nothing from the amateur era could ever work in their super-fast, hyper-fit, brave new world.
Well – news flash – genius coaches out there, think about this. When your team gets a penalty inside the opposition 22, why do you tell your players to kick the ball out? Duh, even the best lineout retention rates are only 90 per cent.
So kicking the ball out means your team runs at least a 10 per cent risk of losing possession. Good start. For most teams the risk is higher, and with the opposition defence choosing not to attack in the air, the defending side have an immediate numerical advantage when the jumper lands.
So well done professional coaches, you really know your stuff, while we old timers should be sent off to a retirement home and be fed with rubber forks in case we hurt ourselves. What could we possibly know about the game? Hmm, we are obviously deluded in thinking a tap penalty move is the best option if you are not kicking for goal but want to go for the try. After all, you should at the very least regain possession and achieve the same objective as a lineout drive, which is to group the defence.
Best case scenario – you split the defence and score, or get very close, with momentum and a scrambling defence. Plus, you know, it’s actually fun working out clever moves where you set up a wall, send off dummy runners and have all sorts going on.
5. Shorter Half-times
The IRB, in all its wisdom, have decreed that if both teams are in agreement half-time can be extended to 15 minutes.
Seriously, it was bad enough when they increased it to 10 minutes at the start of the professional era and the players were allowed to return to the changing rooms.
Back in the day, half-time was barely five minutes, the players stayed on the field and the coach wasn’t supposed to come on. What we had was an orange quarter – admittedly that could be problematic when bits got stuck in your teeth and then you put in your gumshield – and a quick burst from the captain. It was either angry captain – you lot are useless, or happy captain – you lot are useless but keep it up. That was it. A few minutes to get some water on board, have a breather, be berated by the captain and then back into it.
Of course, the precious athletes of today couldn’t possibly do that. They need their isotonic drinks, their video analysis, a kiss and a cuddle from the coach, and a rub down with the physio. They need to check their emails and Twitter accounts, update their Facebook pages, check their phone messages, stretch, apply more make-up and do their hair.
Meanwhile, the rest of us are either left sitting in the stadium, cold, or forced to deal with the wife’s channel surfing as she checks what’s happening in some god awful reality TV show. Stretching the break to 15 minutes is just plain wrong.
4. Rucking
Ah the glory days – when studs could freely scrape the flesh off a man’s back.
The soccer mums hated it, but the rugby purists loved it. Just like those dark, moody, quiet blokes who like to build sheds, rucking is so misunderstood.
Mention rucking and most ill-informed types will immediately conjure up a vision of some flanker lying in a bloody heap after having had his head raked. That’s not rucking – that’s stamping and there’s a huge difference. Good rucking is an art form, a skill and a joy to watch.
Also, and this really is true, it doesn’t hurt that much when you’re rucked properly. The boots all working the body backwards – it scrapes a bit, can leave a few welts but you look hard-as in the pub later, and the girls love nothing more than a half-cut bloke pulling up his shirt and telling his war stories.
The reason old timers like rucking and yearn for it is that it clears the ball in seconds. There are no mass, static pile-ups. You have better body positions and a quicker ball to play with. When rucking was part of the game, there was none of this breakdown talk – you either had rucks or mauls and nothing in between.
And, yes, let’s admit it, a bit of vigorous footwork on an irritating opposition flanker who wouldn’t stay onside was probably the best deterrent to cheating.
3. Afternoon Tests
Bit of an old chestnut this one, but still, until we get regular afternoon tests, we old blokes will harp on.
That’s the way of the old bloke – we see everything through the rose-tinted spectacles of the past and until the world returns to how it was, we won’t shut up, making our point again and again as we know the younger generation will never listen.
The beauty of afternoon tests is that the weather is almost certainly better. In the South Island, there’s nothing dafter than seeing local clubs and schools playing in glorious winter sunshine and then spending a fortune to watch the All Blacks play in temperatures close to zero with the pitch heavy with dew.
Here’s an idea – let the All Blacks play in the glorious sunshine so everyone can enjoy it more – the fans, the players and the local economies.
The added beauty of afternoon tests is that people don’t have so much time to drink beforehand and are likely to head out for dinner afterwards. It makes for a more civilised occasion and the best thing of all, younger kids can come along. The biggest problem with evening kick-offs is that those under 10 years struggle to hold their form until 9.30pm.
A test used to be such fun when Saturdays went like this: play rugby mid-morning; get a feed; sink a couple of cleansers; go to the game [enjoy in daylight and sunshine]; sink a few more afterwards; head for another feed; one for the road and bed.
2. The Spiral Punt
Whole afternoons, days even, could be lost to endless games of force-back.
No one ever used to even think about drop punting back in the halcyon days. It was always, always the spiral. And for good reason: first, a well struck spiral is still the best way to get distance. Ask the All Blacks kicking coach Mick Byrne if you disagree. The drop punt is more accurate, but the spiral sends the ball further.
Secondly, the spiral is a thing of beauty. Is there a better sight than the ball flying off the boot, perfectly rotating? It’s stunning – even props, in the highly unlikely event of them ever pulling one off, love the thrill of striking the perfect spiral.
But just like so many aspects of our great game, the spiral was lost to professionalism. Like skinny white guys, the spiral was deemed high risk. Even a well struck spiral dips at the end of its flight and runs the risk of being kept in play by opposition defenders if it is too low at the point of crossing the touchline.
With that in mind, the drop punt became more popular – the safer way to kick for touch, especially from penalties. It was a case of sacrificing distance for accuracy and, before long, the spiral was dead. The drop punt became the kick for every occasion.
Tactical patterns changed as well – the wipers kick was replaced by the cross-field kick and the art of spiralling was lost.
Now, no one has the confidence to use the spiral. Not even Dan Carter.It needs to come back otherwise we old blokes will be out in the back field with our kids, our spiral punts being mercilessly mocked for being so old-fashioned – like personal stereos and Ataris.
1. Mid-Week Games and Tours
Even the current generation must understand this is not the lunatic ramblings of the deranged – proper tours with mid-week games were the best thing about rugby. Why oh why did they ever stop?
Which brain dead freak said the All Blacks should travel north in November and have a new system of playing five random tests on five weekends with nothing in between? Find them and fire them. Please.
Old-style tours where provincial and club sides lined up to kick the daylights out of the All Blacks – they were brilliant. Everything built up towards the test series, which actually meant something. The dirt trackers got their chance to push for a test place and the local club and provincial sides got their day in the sun, too. For the fans, there is something truly magic about cramming into a small stadium until it nearly bursts, desperately hoping the international side will get their beans.
Everyone could get up close. It was personal, it was intense and it was intimidating. It didn’t matter whether you were hosting or following your country overseas – both experiences were fantastic. Bring them back, please. The current shambles bores everyone to death, including the players. Ask those on the periphery of international squads whether they would rather spend five weeks holding tackle bags at training or five weeks playing mid-week games. Actually don’t bother – we all know what their answer will be.
Two comments
King Kong
Those were the days when men were men and a recovery session was a cheese and onion toasted!
zzpoppd
Issue 149: Feb/March 2012.Great reading but cant seem to enter competition giveaways???? am I to early????or being Waitangi weekend.
Anonymous comments on this post are disabled. Please sign up to post a new comment.