Sometimes the echoes of the past can be hard to ignore. It is particularly true of the Six Nations, rugby’s annual rolling storybook, as winter limps into early spring. Thus it is that as England’s two youthful fly-halves, George Ford and Owen Farrell, await the visit of Ireland to Twickenham this weekend, their ongoing tussle for their country’s No10 jersey recalls the most famous fly-half debate in the history of post-war Irish rugby.
Back in 1979 Munster’s Tony Ward was a 24-year-old with a big future, a darkly handsome emerald gem who was voted European player of the year. He had just helped his province defeat the All Blacks and won the man-of-the-match award in three of Ireland’s four Five Nations games that season. Small wonder it made headlines when his Dublin-based contemporary Ollie Campbell was preferred on that summer’s tour to Australia and duly helped the Irish beat the Wallabies in successive Tests in Brisbane and Sydney.
Their duel, if it can be called that, did not last long. As Ward has been honest enough to confess subsequently, he never really recovered from being dropped, with no warning, from such a great height.
“There is no doubt that what happened in Australia did shatter me,” recalls Ward in Tom English’s superb book No Borders, a glorious collection of evocative tales recounted by the green giants of yesteryear. “I came back and played for Ireland afterwards but I was never the same player, never had the same confidence. It was doubly hard because the guy who had my place happened to be the nicest guy you could ever hope to meet. I wish it had been like Seb Coe versus Steve Ovett and that there was a bit of hatred there. But you couldn’t hate Ollie. It was impossible.’
The record books bear Ward out; by the time he concluded his championship career against Scotland almost 30 years ago he had finished on the losing side in all but one of his previous eight Tests for Ireland.
Campbell, in contrast, helped guide Ireland to their fondly-remembered Triple Crown in 1982 and established himself among Test rugby’s most highly-regarded fly-halves. The ultimate tribute – a classic in itself – came from his friend and full-back Hugo McNeill. “The greatest player I ever played with or against was Ollie Campbell. I used to say two prayers before I went to bed. God bless my mother and father and thank you God for making Ollie Campbell an out-half and not a full-back.
There is one further aspect of the saga, however, that resonates all the way to the present day. In 1981, in a bid to wedge Campbell and Ward into the same XV, Ireland picked the former at centre alongside his rival.
As Campbell wryly recalls: “We played three games together and lost three games and that was the end of the experiment forever. I was never happy in the centre. All of my life I was an out-half. That’s where I was at home. There was a world of difference between the positions.”
Fast forward 35 years to 2016 and England have a similar dilemma looming. For their opening two Six Nations games against Scotland and Italy, Farrell has worn 12 and Ford 10. Having been friends since childhood, though, their professional relationship is about to be tested like never before. Eddie Jones has been making it abundantly clear he regards Henry Slade and Manu Tuilagi as his preferred options at 12 once the pair of them are fully restored to match fitness. That means one of Farrell or Ford, as with Ward all those years ago, is likely to find this summer’s England tour to Australia a confidence-jarring experience. Players will forever insist publicly they are happy just being in the matchday 23 but, deep down, everyone wants to start. “You’re on the bench and you’re supposed to let on that you’re happy but I wasn’t good at it,” admitted Ward in No Borders. “There’d be something wrong with you if you were.”
History also suggests that fly-halves, possibly more than any other position, respond best when a coach backs them totally. Sometimes two into one simply will not go and someone has to suffer. For England, there was the famous case of the gifted Stuart Barnes, who managed only rarely to dart away from Rob Andrew’s shadow at Test level and, at one point in his career, declined invitations to sit on the bench. In Ireland the Test careers of Ronan O’Gara and David Humphreys were forever intertwined; only relatively recently has Dan Biggar, when fit, made the Welsh No10 shirt his own ahead of Rhys Priestland.
The modern game is more forgiving in one sense: replacements make it on to the field more often than they used to. It will be fascinating, even so, to see which of Farrell or Ford – or Danny Cipriani, come to that – ultimately emerges as first among equals. If the distant precedent set by Ward and Campbell is any guide, mutual satisfaction is by no means guaranteed.
DRINK AWARE
When Wales face France in Cardiff this Friday, as discussed in these columns last week, it will be a test of whether evening kick-offs in a busy city-centre location add or detract from the Six Nations experience.
Several readers have subsequently been in contact to point out that examples of excessive drunkenness inside stadiums are on the rise, with some fans missing large chunks of the game as they repeatedly leave their seats to visit either the bar or the toilet. Others feel that it can be a less-than-ideal environment for young children. It is certainly a sign of the times that this season’s London Sevens is being rebranded as a food festival, rather than a fancy-dress party, with a sharply reduced maximum attendance. Let us all hope the Six Nations never has to consider similar measures.
ONE TO WATCH …
The Super Rugby season is about to kick off, with an expanded lineup and a presence in both Asia and South America. While the revamped four-conference structure has not been universally welcomed – there are now 18 teams involved including Argentina’s Jaguares, the Sunwolves of Japan and South Africa’s Southern Kings – it will be intriguing to see how the rugby compares quality-wise with the northern hemisphere’s equivalent tournament.
According to one estimate, the Sunwolves will travel over 80,000km and spend around 113 hours on planes during the course of the season. As AC/DC almost sang, it’s a long way to the top if you want to ruck and maul.
