Rugby Plagiarism?

Last night I watched my recording of the Britis & Irish Lions first tour match of 2013 on Australian soil. They played the Western Force, not the strongest opposition, and won comfortably.

What made me smile was the post match disucssion that highlighted the strategy of using big strong ball carriers out wide and moving the ball to them pretty quickly. Moving from one side of the pitch to the other they stretched their opponents defence and managed to score nine tries,many of them right on the touchline.

Along with George North, the giant Welsh wing, players like Maku Vunipola, Jamie Heaslip and Tom Croft all appeared in the five metre channel. It was simple, but very effective.

This brought back fond memories of the Henley RFC under-16 tour to Le Havre back in 1975 I think. As a team we were above average size for our age group and had been pretty successful. This your culminated as the curtain raiser for an important French club match, between Toulouse and Biarritz I think.

We had all stayed with the families of the french players and I recall attending a big family lunch before the match. Remember this was long before the professional era and we were under sixteens! So looking back the ploy to ply us inexpereinced English boys with copious quantities of wine was probably intentional and not just generous hospitality.

In the changing room before the match we discovered that a number of players had developed involuntarily and hitherto unrecognised sidesteps. This necesssitated some rejigging of our game plan and team line up. This was before squads so we only had 15 players to make up a 15 man team. No one could be left out.

Two players had developed particularly strong side steps so they were consigned to the wings. these were two large and mobile forwards. One was Chris Challis an All-England schoolboy sprinter who was also 6'2" and weighed around 13 stone. The boy called Jeremy (I forget his surname) was a big prop forward who could also run well.

Our game plan became

• Win the ball
• Shift the ball to the wing as quickly possible.
• At the breakdown win the ball back
• Shift  the ball to the other wing
• Repeat as we progress up the field until we score
• Start again

I think Warren Gatland must have been in the stands that day! I don't remember the score, but I do recall it was a successful day for Henley.

Good plans are worth repeating and I am very happy we were able to show the Lions how to do it.

Good days!!!