Six Nations has shown Test teams depend on top-class half-backs

http://www.theguardian.com/sport/2015/mar/13/six-nations-test-teams-rely-on-top-class-half-backs

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The great John Rutherford, the last Scotland fly-half to win at Twickenham, was talking this week about that game, 32 years ago, pointing out that his Scotland didn’t live in fear of playing England, as is the case now. “Still, England at home were no pushover,” he said. “We got hammered into them in attack and tackled everything that moved when they had the ball, just like Scotland have always done.”

The following season Scotland took the grand slam and while that is a distant memory, Rutherford, who faced England nine times and won five, did point to certain similarities with Saturday’s meeting at Twickenham, particularly that the Scots were heading south on the back of three defeats.

He also mentioned that Scotland have a No10 worthy of a Test place and had Finn Russell been around against Italy and not banned, the Scots would not be heading for the wooden spoon. It is not just that the Glasgow No10 would have made sure that the bungled penalty in the dying seconds would have finished in Row Z, rather than creating the platform for Italy’s last successful attack. I also suspect that he and his captain, Greig Laidlaw, would not have allowed Scotland to squander a 10-point start in the first place.

Scotland, like every other side in this season’s Six Nations, have learned how utterly dependent Test teams are on fielding a top-notch partnership at half-back. Without one no coach can get their influence on to the field.

At the very top of the pile Ireland, without Jonathan Sexton, looked poor in their first game, against Italy, and only half the threat when he limped off in the second half against England. Much has been written about Sexton being the voice and brain of his coach, Joe Schmidt, on the field and I don’t propose to repeat it, save to say that something similar applies at the very bottom of the pile as well.

Italy have struggled since Diego Domínguez hung up his very accurate boots a dozen years ago. No matter how good the coaches – John Kirwan, Pierre Berbizier and Nick Mallett are no mugs – they have stumbled from stopgap to stopgap. The inadequacies at fly-half have manifested themselves in an inability to harvest the points made available by a pack to be feared. Now, when a few interesting backs have come along, it’s the inability of Kelly Haimona, Zebre’s New Zealander playing in the home of his mother, to link forwards and backs or to kick his goals.

On sunday in Rome Jacques Brunel coaches Italy in the Six Nations for the penultimate time hoping his opposite number, Philippe Saint-André, hasn’t cured his self-inflicted half-back problems either. When Camille Lopez and Sébastien Tillous-Borde run out at Stadio Olimpico they will be France’s third half-back pairing this tournament and, if the abacus is right, the 15th in Saint-André’s 36 Tests in charge. You have to like the man, but I doubt Saint-André will be remembered as a consistent or astute coach, even if luck hasn’t been totally kind to him.

Against Wales last time out Saint-André hit on the idea of playing the Clermont Auvergne pair of Lopez and Morgan Parra together for the first time in an international, rather than Lopez and almost anyone else. Parra failed to last the game, limping out of the Six Nations, suggesting that what is good at club level might be less hot in Tests.

Back home Lopez thrives on the shape and predictability of Clermont whereas Saint-André’s France have been shapeless, so whether Parra-Lopez was a marriage made in Test heaven we’ll never know. Or not for the moment, which is totally opposite to the club partnership of Dan Biggar and Rhys Webb that is bringing something of a change in the way Wales can play.

Pick a Lions squad now and Conor Murray would probably be first choice over the Osprey scrum-half, but as with the Sexton-Murray partnership, so with the Biggar-Webb. In both cases the junior partner (Biggar 31 Tests, Webb 12) is growing into the job. I haven’t seen enough Pro12 rugby, so this may be stating the obvious to regular followers, but Webb seems to have come on in leaps and bounds in a short time, his added tempo giving an alternative – if Wales want to use it – to Warrenball.

Where do England stand in this half-back assessment? I’ll tell you more after Saturday. Scotland will have learned from Dublin where George Ford’s stellar Test season was dragged back into something closer to an earth orbit. It was always going to happen. Test fly-halves probably have a six-month window to state their case and if there was an element of shell shock at the Aviva, Saturday will show whether Ford has the wherewithal to bounce back. You can bet the Scots will give him a decent examination.

I’m not predicting a Scottish win, but outside Russell and Laidlaw – nephew of Roy, Rutherford’s partner in 1983 – Scotland have talent in Matt Scott, Mark Bennett and Tommy Seymour and one of the better Six Nations broken-field runners in Stuart Hogg. The questions hang over the forwards.

However, if Laidlaw gets ball he has a fantastic rugby brain to go with the obvious passion, while Russell is the product of the last hall of fame Scottish fly-half, Gregor Townsend, currently doing great things with Glasgow. If Townsend stays at Scotstoun and Russell keeps out of the referee’s bad books, you can see them doing for Scotland what Schmidt and Sexton have created with Ireland.