SPOILER IN RUGBY

Hawke's Bay Herald-Tribune, Issue 65, 3 April 1937, Page 14

SPOILER IN RUGBY

englbh's cbitics viewpoint _ When the 1935 All Blacks were in s^ngland, they received the fairest •reatment in public print from the well-known critic Howard Marshall. A recent article by him under the heading "Wing-Forward in Rugby is Ruining the Game," has, therefore, double interest for New Zealand. Mr. Marshall is referring to the activities of the loose forward, and he wrote ihe article after watching the Eng-iand-Wales international match at Twickenham. "We shall realise one day that the -ack-row forward whose job ifc is to :lo nothing else but spoil the opposng attack is a menace to the game," .ie says. "Rugby football cannot thrive on negative tactics. The first duty of any effident team is to concentrate on at*.ack. This means using eight scrummaging forwards to give the backs iheir chances on a dry day, and to "cntrol the game by shoving, wheeling, and dribbling when the ground is wet and heavy. "At present the sequence of thought 5s reVersed. First stop the other fellow, says the modern theorist, and then grab your chances. Tries, he argues, come mainly from opportunist attack after the swift heel in the loose, the dropped pass, or the judicious kick ahead. "Bush it to the Wings" "Of course , there is a modern 1 Iheory, which maintains that orily by •Mfting the point of thrust from stand-off half to wing in this manner can the back-row forward be beaten. And the wing is not limited to the kick into the centre. He can run himself, or punt ahead, or work the scissors, or kick right across, His duty, at any rate, is to change the direction of attack suddenly, and so disorganise a modern system of defence which now makes midfield thrust impracticable. Ingenious and worth trying. Tt may be that to every development in the tactics of any game there Is a logical answer, even to the methods of the roving forward in Rugby football. Perhaps it is unwise to try to put the clock back, but if we are to choose between the old tactics and the new, mark me down as a conservative diehard."