Chance lost for scrum practice

The feeling doing the rounds is that the opening hands played by Ireland and France can be pretty much treated as a bluffer's initial gambit. They've each even kept a few aces up their sleeves, in the likes of Brian O'Driscoll, Denis Hickie and, perhaps, Christophe Dominici. It seems a pretty sound theory as well.

Both should benefit from their less than dynamic start to the Six Nations Championship last Saturday week, and both will thus play markedly better when they come face to face next Saturday, not least because they are acutely aware who's on the opposite side of the pitch. Nothing concentrates the mind quite like a bit of fear.

They are also both delving deeply into their respective European Cup semi-finalists, Munster and Stade Francais, amid moans that the two sets of players have been carrying too heavy a load of late and so will have benefited from last week's respite - particularly the inactive Munster contingent.

Arguably though, the theory is sounder when applied to France. Their teams have long since taken blowing hot and cold. That the mercurial French should follow up a stirring 42-33 win over the All Blacks with a scratchy and stultifying 16-6 win over the Scots is about par for them. It's patently clear too that Les Bleus were striving desperately to transfer their marvellous Marseille performance to the "cursed" Stade de France, where the pressure to perform and win seems almost suffocating for them. By comparison psychologically, Lansdowne Road (where they are unbeaten since 1983) might almost seem like a more hospitable home from home. The premise that Ireland will knuckle down and rectify the sluggish aspects of their Roman opener depends on some serious work being done in the interim, as Warren Gatland has stated will happen. And no doubt it will be done. However, this need is all the greater after the somewhat surprising admission that, due to the disrupted preparations and the facilities laid on by the Italians, Ireland did not do any scrum practice in the week of the Italian game. This in turn begs the question, why was nothing availed of last week? After all, isn't this surely the prime benefit of having a largely home-based squad and central contracting? Of the 10 forwards in the Irish squad only Keith Wood and Jeremy Davidson (who has since been replaced by Gary Longwell) are based abroad. Indeed, with six of the starting pack and one of the subs coming from Munster, it would have required relatively little organisation or expense to hold some beneficial scrum sessions down in Limerick.

Furthermore, Harlequins (who are very co-operative toward Wood and their international contingent) might even have been agreeable to Wood joining in later last week after helping them to a valuable League win last Tuesday evening. Even without Wood, there surely would have been some considerable benefit in having two or three days' scrummaging work.

INSTEAD, the home-based players all went back to their provinces. Yet in the week before Munster's European quarterfinal with Biarritz, national demands held sway on the Test squad members on the Monday and Tuesday. Irish rugby has a system which, by popular consensus, is the envy of Europe but this seems like a missed opportunity to make the most of it.

The concern is amplified because, for all their difficulties against the Scots, the French scrum went well and they were able to supplement it with Cristian Califano, not to mention Abdel Benazzi in the second row. And if Bernard Laporte is worth five francs of his weekly wage, he'll assuredly have targeted the Irish scrum as a potential source of weakness, and for that matter Malcolm O'Kelly as the primary source of strength in the Irish lineout.

Left with only a week to prepare, the temptation can also be to do too much, seemingly something Laporte could not resist in the build-up to the France-Scotland game. Word on the grapevine was that France had trained at full contact for the guts of five hours on the Wednesday and for the same again on the Thursday. Any wonder they looked a bit "flahed" against the Scots?

That England were the best prepared for the start of the championship is self-evident. What with their American Football-style template of a nine-man, full-time coaching staff and more regular get-togethers during the season, this suggests that the others might catch up to some degree as the championship unfolds. Not, alas, for the Troncon and Dominguez-less Italians, who look primed for the championship's biggest hiding this weekend in Twickenham.

England's set-up was something of an eye-opener for Graham Henry, though it seems odd that after his initial transformation of the Welsh they are, by comparison, apparently back at the starting grid.

As England have discovered (and indeed Ireland last season) the game is about playing at a high tempo and with pace, especially out wide.

One of the more curious aspects of the Wales-England game was the statistical evidence that in all manner of areas Wales had more possession (twice as much ruck ball, twice as much gain-like breaks, more lineouts) as well as more position on the field. Rugby, like other sports such as football which are going the way of American Football, is being blinded by statistics, damned lies and statistics, as opposed to science.

As John Hart observed after the All Blacks Lomu-inspired World Cup pool win over, ironically, England with statistically half the amount of ruck ball, it's not the winning of the ball, it's what you do with it that counts.

gthornley@irish-times.ie