OPINION

Soapbox

Voice from the Stands

Tuesday 29th July 2008

James Haskell: Leadership material?

It's been a busy week in the rugby world this week, busy playing and watching if you're down south, busy studying the new laws if you're up north, busy looking at video replays for specks of blood on Jimmy Cowan's face if you're Craig Joubert, busy sticking a knife into Graham Henry if you're a Kiwi, busy organising a sleek campaign to tell everybody that rugby's not going so well if you're... well... whoever it was who wrote that random report on Sunday, and busy telling everyone you're the greatest if you're James Haskell.

Haskell is digging himself a deep pit. There have been rumours of his exceptional forthright single-mindedness and determination over the past twelve months, and he's been schooled by Lawrence Dallaglio at Wasps so we shouldn't expect too much humility.

The 23-year-old flanker uttered the following words about a possible England captaincy in an interview on Monday: "It has always been my dream to captain my club and country. I have the personality and attitude to do it and everyone knows that is my goal. But it's about timing."

Yes it is about timing, and that timing would presumably include not going on about your captaincy credentials in public before your new manager has even seen you in a training session. You may remember said manager - possibly England's greatest-ever captain - saying captaining club and country would be a dream for him, but you certainly will not remember him banging on about how he was the most suitable person for the job.

Captains should be men apart, able to rise above such personal breast-beating verbal volleys. Able to rise above pretty much anything actually, emerging as leaders around the game, slipping into the background away from it. That was one of Martin Johnson's most admirable and necessary talents, and Haskell's little boast may convince Johnson of his unsuitability for the role at a time when England need a collective regrouping and a little quiet time.

Meanwhile, there is uproar over the Ellis-Cowan-Ellis substitutions during the Tri-Nations at the weekend.

Now, the rules do lend an air of legitimacy to the manoeuvre, but the limp Cowan sported while coming off for a blood injury does not.

But - and excepting the front rows for this principle - it seems odd that Ellis should be able to come back at all?

I would advocate a little tweak of the blood-bin rules: namely, a bleeding player can be temporarily replaced, but only by a player who did not start the match. Had Cowan been bleeding, he could have been replaced by, say, Conrad Smith from the bench, rather than bringing back the specialist player. If the bench has been emptied: tough. It's not tiddlywinks. And maybe it would stop these momentum-killing bursts of substitutions around the hour mark of every Test (front row replacements are exempt from this).

New Zealanders are angry after the defeat as well, basically because they think Robbie Deans should have been coaching. The natural reflex in such circumstance is to clamour for the NZRU to reach for the nearest axe and swing it like it has never been swung, but it does ignore one obvious point: Deans won't be coming back from Australia in a hurry, so who would coach the All Blacks if Henry was fired? Nobody's given an answer to that one yet...

The report that popped up on Sunday, commissioned by an anonymous group of "committed rugby people", to tell everybody that rugby was in an 'English ghetto' was baffling in the extreme.

It accuses the IRB of being narrow-minded, which is nothing new, and says that the World Cup must go to a developing nation in 2015 in order to help globalise the game. This is not exactly rocket science either.

However, it also draws clear comparisons Twenty20 cricket as an example for helping development. Huh? What do we want? A Twenty20 version of rugby - perhaps shorter halves with fewer players to suddenly crop up and spread like wildfire all over the globe? Ahhhh, of course: Sevens.

I have posed many a cricket fan the question: 'Is Twenty20 the way forward?' and I get, without exception a resigned reply: 'I don't really like it, but it's here to stay. It brings in money and viewers.'

Sevens does that too. And the joint announcement for host venues for 2015 and 2019 World Cups is a clear indication that the tournament will head outside the usual pastures. The report makes some valid points, but about three years too late...

And that's about it for this week - but feel free to tell us what's been on your mind!