Brave new world as rugby makes a pitch for astroturf
That seemed to be the overriding sentiment after Ireland’s unexpected rout of Argentina six days ago but a more subjective and wide-ranging retrospective on November’s Test action makes for less comforting conclusions.
Once again, it was a case of Europe’s finest playing second best to the southern hemisphere with the standings showing 11 wins for the ‘visitors’ to just six for the hosts, and with New Zealand and Australia fancied to further that gap when they face England and Wales tomorrow.
Take away France’s three wins from three against Australia, Argentina and Samoa and the grimness of the remaining evidence takes on a distinctly distasteful veneer for the Home Nations who didn’t exactly cover themselves in glory last summer when they were the ones on tour.
None of this is anything new. The Big Three have been whipping Euro butts for a lot longer than most of us have been alive but you would be forgiven for thinking that the gap shouldn’t be quite so apparent now that we are approaching 20 years of professionalism.
Gone are the days when New Zealand would drop anchor in these parts with a raft of players who were pro in all but name and primed to face the clichéd smattering of farmers, policemen and solicitors. No-one trains harder or longer than anyone else anymore. Not to any significant degree.
All of which makes you wonder why the divide remains so striking. Among the theories espoused has been our choice of season in the north with the period between September and May encompassing the worst ravages of a European winter — let’s leave aside for a moment the fact that New Zealand is hardly unfamiliar with the vagaries of excessive cold, wind and rain.
Ask non-converts to picture a game of rugby union in their heads and more than a few will invariably conjure up an image of a mountain of men piled on top of each other in a muddy field, the steam rising off them and their shirts so caked that individuals and colours are all but indistinguishable. Needless to say, the ball is nowhere to be seen.
The reasoning goes that if we just switched over to summer rugby, then skills would improve, the tempo would shoot up and our national sides would be better placed to live with the quicker and less forward-orientated version of the game played in the SANZAC countries. Improve the track and the horse will stride and all that. It’s an interesting argument but it may be that there is another way, one that may involve shifting the very ground under our feet as opposed to the entire calendar with its myriad of competitions involving clubs and countries across the entire continent.
Last Tuesday, the Watford Observer posted pictures online of the artificial pitch which Saracens will play on as of next February when they host their first match, against the Exeter Chiefs at the newly renovated and renamed Allianz Stadium.
Teams of workers in high-vis jackets and hard hats were shown dragging the carpet across what looked like a tarmac base layer. They looked for all the world like ball boys struggling with the tarp at a rainy Wimbledon though the beauty of Sarries’ innovation is that it will be weatherproof.
Virtually, anyway.
Only temperatures that drop below -8 degrees celsius will be sufficient to have a game called off at the 10,000-capacity Hendon venue and the club’s chief executive, Edward Griffiths, has joked that he is already open to phone calls from clubs in need of alternative digs when winter kicks.
Saracens like to think of themselves as innovators off the pitch and they will be the first professional rugby union club in the world to play competitively on a 100% artificial surface. Their claim is that it will bring about a faster and a safer game, although Griffiths admits there is an element of risk involved in such a unique project.
Griffiths told the Watford Observer: The “general reaction of other clubs has been ‘okay, it’s interesting, but let’s wait and see how it turns out’, but at Saracens we want to be first and we want to be taking the club forward. In two years’ time either everyone in rugby will have moved to what we have or we will have moved back to grass.”
Sport has stood at this same frontier before. Anyone old enough to recall the 1980s will be reminded of clubs such as Luton Town, Oldham Athletic and Queens Park Rangers who embraced the concept of artificial grass at a time in its evolution when making a sliding tackle involved an acceptance of second-degree burns and a week’s application of Sudocrem.
The technology behind it has moved on in the 30 or so years since but there is still a difficulty in acquiescing to its place in a game where the sights, smells and sometimes even the squelching sounds of real, actual grass can still inspire a sense of nostalgia and belonging.
Then again, rugby as we know it now bears little resemblance to the code as it was when Boundary Park and Loftus Road were home to the early versions of astroturf.
If Saracens’ experiment is a success, that process of transformation may make yet another giant leap forward.
Or back. Depending on your point of view.
