JULY 2005
ROOSTER ONE DAY, FEATHER DUSTER THE NEXT

This certainly pertains to a few characters in this edition of the Broadside including myself. Perhaps the biggest feather duster award must go to Sir Clive, he has taken a cast of thousands to New Zealand with an entourage close to 100, including players and support staff. Not only have they performed like duds, their total focus after the Test on the weekend was concentrating on O’Driscoll’s tackle. Sir Clive would have been better off talking about his team getting comprehensively outplayed by the All Blacks instead of concentrating on peripheral stuff like the tackle on O’Driscoll. It was a good hard tackle it happened right in front of the touch judge who said there was nothing illegal; hence it was not dealt with by the match commissioner. Move on Sir Clive and try and get your dud side up for the next Test Match.

The poor performances have a lot to do with the massive entourage Sir Clive has brought to New Zealand. As soon as I heard the size of the playing squad, now I think 45 and rising, I knew the Lions would be in trouble. Also hearing the policy of splitting the mid-week and Saturday teams with full support staff for each, this would also be a problem. I was on the last full tour of the Wallabies to New Zealand in 1990, 6 weeks, 12 matches and 3 Tests. In the modern age you would need 35 players max (we had 30), with all the squad travelling together to each venue. Each player would need a full game each week as you slowly work towards your Saturday or Test Team. It is based purely on form with no players rested and combinations tested in the warm up games. This means by the first Test you have in form combinations and in form players on the field. Not the disjointed rabble Sir Clive rolled out in the First Test against the All Blacks. Players had not played together, others had been rested and the consequence was the display we saw highlighted by the 10 own lineout throws lost.

I don’t think Sir Clive can pull it out of the bag for the next two Tests. Though the Kiwis have been choking in World Cup games they are super tough at home. I have been watching with pleasure the small Kiwi provincial teams take it up to the Lions. Brought back memories of my own match against the Bay of Plenty with the Wallabies, where I was slippered in the head and I had to go off after 1 minute with a gash requiring 20 stitches, the Bay got up and beat the Wallabies too that day. Must be the only country left in the world that these small provincial teams can get up and compete with teams like the Lions.

I have also had the Rooster to Feather Duster feeling over the last few weeks. On June 11th we played Thailand in Singapore for our first World Cup Qualifier, we won 47-27. It was a tremendous game with our guys really sticking to the game plan and dominating in the forwards, thus allowing the backs to also score some good tries out wide. Man of the match for me was Andrew Kwong, but so many players had their best ever performance for Singapore. Our lineout and scrum completely obliterated Thailand and we were scoring at will from driving mauls from any lineout with 10 meters of the Thai try line. Fast-forward to Colombo on the 25th of June and it was a different story, this blog I sent out from Colombo will set the scene.

Hello from Colombo
Yesterday we went down to the start of the Tsunami devastation about 20km south of Colombo, the devastation is immense. The wave just wiped out everything; the poor people are still living in tents and under bits of board. The world seems to have forgotten about them. I bought a painting off a bloke who had is stuff set up on the remains of his house, just the concrete floor. The wave was 12 ft high and demolished everything, very sad. Colombo is tense, and security is very tight, there are machine gun posts everywhere and our hotel has an army blockade out the front.

The Tamil Tigers are threatening to kick off hostilities again. We were cruising around town yesterday quite oblivious to the fact that there was a riot outside parliament house where tear gas was used. Tamils are upset that no foreign aid is getting to the Tamil autonomous zone, which was also hit hard by the Tsunami. I have never seen security so tight, must have been an ugly war here. All the posts are sandbagged in so the sentries are not exposed to Snipers, with heavy machine-guns all that you can see poking out between the sandbags. These are literally on every street corner; the airport also had heavy tanks dug in. With all this going on we have a Test Match going on today, which we are confident of winning. We have prepared very well and our team is looking good, wish us luck.

Well you could have wished us luck but it would have done us no good we lost the Test 34-17. We were outplayed by the better team and we simply did not turn up to play. We were nullified by a very fired up Sri Lankan team, who were really playing well in front of their big home crowd. I though we had the personnel and the game plan to win but this was not to be. Sri Lanka belted us in the lineout and the scrum and they also had a lot of pace out wide. It was a hard day at the office and full credit to coach George Simpkins and the Sri Lankan team. Our World Cup Qualifiers are over and Sri Lanka go through to the next round.

Too bad Spiro Zavros from the Sydney Morning Herald was not there. He would have seen a massive home crowd in Colombo in a match that was live on TV. Next year there will be 17 countries competing in the Asian Rugby Football Tournament in Sri Lanka. So Spiro there is Rugby outside of the 3 Pacific countries of Samoa, Tonga and Fiji and we also deserve some IRB support. I was incensed to read that Spiro suggested that the IRB forget about Rugby in Asia and concentrate on funding the Pacific Islands. The IRB has to support the game globally not continually bale out the problematic Pacific Islands.

Email Matt Ryan at bubbaemu@hotmail.com