Australia coach Eddie Jones said domestic rugby in the southern hemisphere had much to learn from the ”intensity” of the English Premiership if it was to prepare players properly for the Test arena.
The Super 12, the southern hemisphere’s leading club rugby union event, has been derisively branded ”basketball” by critics who claim it puts too much emphasis on running rugby at the expense of traditional forward skills such as the lineout and scrum.
And with the next World Cup taking place in France, in 2007, Jones said it was vital southern hemisphere teams got used to playing in European conditions as well as incorporating some of their forward skills.
Jones, whose team face world champions England at Twickenham on Saturday in a repeat of last year’s World Cup final, told reporters at the Wallabies’ hotel in London on Wednesday it was inevitable that Premiership and Super 12 rugby differed.
”It [the Premiership] is different because it’s played in different conditions, with slower pitches with greasy balls.
”But what we’d like to do in the Super 12 is to build a competition that’s a hybrid. We want to keep our ball usage, which is our point of difference as we play on hard tracks with dry balls.
”If we can add that intensity and more competitiveness at the set-piece we’ll have a pretty good competition that will prepare our guys for Test footy and that’s got to be our aim over the next two or three years.
”We don’t want to change the essence of Super 12. People over here [England] see it as limited-over cricket,” explained Jones, a former first-grade cricketer with Sydney side Randwick.
”In some ways it is but what we want is a bit of Test match competitiveness in it.”
However, the former ACT Brumbies coach admitted his calls for change to the attack-orientated style of Super 12 would not be universally welcomed.
”That’s one of the difficult things. I remember when I coached Super 12 thinking ‘why can’t you play Test rugby like Super 12?’
”I was ignorant of the way the [Test] game is. You can’t play it like Super 12 because there are so many more pressures on and people are better in the areas of the game where you just have to have tactics, have to have experience and have to have skill.
”I read recently of a coach suggesting we needed another ball-runner in our second row. ‘Well, we do, but we’ve got to win the ball first.’ You can’t win Test match rugby, or it’s very rare, unless you’ve got 50% of the ball.
”And to win 50% of the ball you’ve got to win around anywhere from 85-95% of your lineout ball,” said Jones, who almost guided Australia to a World Cup final win on home soil before England ran out 20-17 extra-time winners in Sydney last year.
Earlier this month, Six Nations champions France beat Australia 27-14 in Paris, a match where the home forwards dominated.
But Jones angrily rejected suggestions it would be a similar story against England.
”Is there some accusation we are going to be shying away from the physical part of the game by being clever? We’re not.
”Rugby is a physical game. We’ll take the physicality to England and hopefully we’ll be able to use our skills,” insisted Jones, who was forced to make three changes to his back division because of injury following last weekend’s 31-17 win against Scotland.
In June, Australia thrashed England 51-15 in Brisbane with many of the tourists exhausted after the rigours of a long domestic season.
Now the roles are reversed, with Australia bidding to become the first southern hemisphere side to win at Twickenham since New Zealand at the 1999 World Cup.
Jones said whichever side could win regularly away from home in its off-season games, as England did in the build-up to the last World Cup, would deserve to be regarded as the sport’s best team.
But he insisted he was not preparing the ground for a Wallaby defeat this weekend.
”We’re at the end of our season but we are not fatigued. We go into this game with absolutely no excuses.” – Sapa-AFP