Pages turn, but story remains the same

Friday 20th November 2009

So the dust has settled on the Gillette Four Nations tournament and another page has turned in the British (or English) quest for the "Holy Grail" of victory over Australia in a major competition or Test series.

Tony Smith has gone as coach and our international team begins the search for a new figurehead at the helm before they next go into battle in 2010.

It will be fascinating to see if the RFL bosses are able to find a suitable British candidate to be the national team coach, or whether they will have to turn to Australia again. Of course, the former is always going to prove difficult when so many of our Super League clubs have overseas coaches and when the few experienced British coaches include names like Brian Noble and John Kear who have already "been there and done that" with the national team.

Personally, I wish we could have an Englishman at the helm of the English team; just as I wish we had a Frenchman in charge of France. I know this labels me as a dinosaur, but I often wonder what is the point of international sport if it is not all about pitting the talents of one country against another country, where each nation brings its own style and unique character to the contest.

We now live in a world where, in so many sports, national teams are quite happy to employ coaches from other countries. What does it tell us about Britain today when we see so many of our national sporting teams feeling they need to go overseas to recruit coaches to guide them at elite level?

When I was growing up as a Rugby League fan, it was unthinkable that Great Britain would have an Australian as their coach, just as it would have been unbelievable that France would have a Widnesian coach and several Australian players in their team.

Of course, back in the 1960s the role of the coach was nowhere near as high-profile or all-important as it is now - indeed British international teams often took the field without having a coach on the sidelines.

Sometimes, the RFL secretary Bill Fallowfield donned his tracksuit and became the "coach" (imagine that happening today?) and the brilliant Lions touring team of 1962 had Hull K.R.'s Colin Hutton in the role of "trainer," whilst four years later the 1966 Great Britain touring team relied solely on its physiotherapist Paddy Armour to take charge of training sessions.

In those days, the senior players would be responsible for planning tactics.  One of the most infamous examples of a British international team travelling without a coach was at the inaugural World Cup in 1954. The RFL had engaged the former international hooker Joe Egan (who was then the coach of Leigh) to conduct a couple of training sessions for the Great Britain team before their departure for the tournament in France.

But then it was decided that it was "not worth the expense" of taking a coach with the team across the channel, so Joe Egan had to stay at home and all responsibility for the team's performance was thrust on the shoulders of the captain Dave Valentine.

We all know that Valentine and his team of so-called "no hopers" returned in triumph as the first winners of the World Cup, and the players duly paid tribute to the work done by Joe Egan in those two training sessions, one at Rochdale and the other at Huddersfield, in shaping their success.

I often cast my mind back to that story when we see the sporting world today, where millions of pounds of Sport England funding enables us to have numerous people with job titles like "performance directors" and "human resource analysts." After England's flop in last year's World Cup, one of the key proposals to come out of the post-tournament enquiry was that we would be investing more resources into sports science to ensure our players get the very best preparation.

What people seem to have forgotten is that, for many years - from the mid-1980s to the mid 1990s - Rugby League was at the very cutting edge of sports science and advanced preparation in British sport, thanks largely to Phil Larder soaking up all the knowledge he could from the Australian Rugby League coaching scheme and the 1982 Kangaroos' coach Frank Stanton.

And, to be honest, all the most advanced sports science in the world counts for nothing when we are confronted by the sheer instinctive footballing brilliance of players like Greg Inglis, Billy Slater or Darren Lockyer. I'm sure the England players know that, because physically they are better prepared than ever, and they could not have tried any harder than they did in the Four Nations final at Elland Road.

To play as well as they did for an hour, and to take the lead again at that point when Sam Burgess scored his second try, had all English fans thinking that, at last, the "Holy Grail" was going to be achieved. But then class came into play as the Aussie backline stars rose to the occasion and put on a master-class of precision, skills and accuracy.

The Australian coach Tim Sheens was absolutely correct when he analysed his team's performance by pointing to the presence of a handful of great individuals who could add that extra ingredient when it mattered.

It has been a familiar story over many years - just cast your minds back to previous Australian teams in England and instead of Slater, Inglis or Lockyer, substitute names like: Brett Kenny, Wally Lewis, Peter Sterling, Mal Meninga, Michael O'Connor, Laurie Daley, Brad Fittler, Brett Kimmorley or Andrew Johns. All brilliant back-line stars who broke British hearts by producing the match-winning plays after our boys had matched the Aussies toe-to-toe for so long.

That has been a recurring theme, every bit as much as seeing hopes dashed at a dark, damp Elland Road. Whoever takes over as the England coach must know that the key to any success must lie in our clubs discovering and nurturing more players with the individual skills and talents of Joel Tomkins, Kyle Eastmond or Sam Burgess.

The strength of the Australian game is its constant ability to keep on producing new stars to fill the boots of retiring greats. Look at the Kangaroos right now and you might think, how will they cope when Darren Lockyer retires? But, in the past I thought exactly the same about Lewis, Sterling, Daley, Fittler or Johns - and their departures did nothing to slow down the green and gold juggernaut.

Pages may have been turned, but the story remains the same.

Read more about international Rugby League and its history in "Rugby League Journal."
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