England’s fallow weekend is not the ideal preparation it may seem

Back in the days when Wasps were showing everyone how to peak at the right time to win domestic and European titles, their coaching guru, Shaun Edwards, had a regular mantra. “To rest is to rust” he would repeatedly say and, 15 years on, we are about to discover if the same principle will influence the knock-out stages of this World Cup.

Clearly sports science is more sophisticated nowadays but there is still nothing like a properly hard, competitive Test match to sharpen up the reflexes. No amount of training ground work, however intense, can entirely replace the hands-on feel of a major game. History suggests that weathering some genuine pressure en route to the latter stages of a World Cup is not so much desirable as essential.

Which brings us to the quietest on-field final pool weekend in World Cup history. As everyone will be aware, the scheduled fixtures involving England v France and New Zealand v Italy have been cancelled, a major deal in numerous respects.

Not only has Italy’s World Cup ended prematurely but two of the tournament frontrunners have been left distinctly short of meaningful rugby. Since their opening weekend game against South Africa, the All Blacks have been marking time against Canada and Namibia. England, meanwhile, have so far conceded 20 points in the entire tournament and have yet to have their title credentials truly examined.

Students of World Cup history will recognise this as a potential recipe for future trouble. Even now New Zealanders still talk about 2007 when they romped through the pool stages, scoring 46 tries and racking up a points difference of plus 274 in just four matches. Little good it did them in the quarter-finals when they were stunned by France at Cardiff in one of the great ambushes of the pro era.

In that tournament much the same fate befell Australia. They, too, won all their four games with bonus points to top their pool, only to stumble to a 12‑10 defeat in Marseille to England, who had been packing their bags that morning in readiness for an imminent trip home. Even South Africa, the eventual champions, were seriously inconvenienced for an hour by Fiji in their quarter-final, and, on another day, might have lost.

Maybe those results would have transpired anyway but there does seem a tendency for sides who have cruised into the last eight to take time to readjust. It is particularly the case for players who, for whatever reason, have not seen much game-time. At least Brodie Retallick is back to bolster the All Blacks pack but he has played only 30 minutes of Test rugby – against Namibia – since July.

For England, too, the France game was going to be a chance to give valuable minutes to, among others, Mako Vunipola and Henry Slade. As with Retallick both are richly talented but even Rolls-Royces need to be removed from the garage and driven on public roads occasionally. Should England play Australia in Oita on Saturday week the Wallabies will be comfortably the more battle-hardened of the two squads.

Does this matter? Ireland’s head coach, Joe Schmidt, has been arguing otherwise, suggesting England and New Zealand have been handed a clear “advantage” heading into the quarter-finals. “I think it’s always an advantage to get a longer lead-in,” he said. “That would be my personal opinion. I think it would be the opinion of any coach that you ask.”

Pictures of a beaming Eddie Jones heading off for a fallow weekend while Ireland prepared to have lumps knocked out of them by Samoa have prompted mild envy. “He looked fairly disappointed that he was going to head off on a mini-camp, do some really good training and have a few beers,” observed Schmidt, tongue firmly embedded in his cheek. “While they’re doing that we’ll be rolling our sleeves up trying to combat Samoa.”

Somewhere in between is the All Blacks coach, Steve Hansen, who stresses that a two-week mid-tournament break is primarily a mental challenge. “You can look at it as a negative or a positive. We’re choosing to look at it as a positive. It now gives us more time to play against whomever it is we get in a quarter-final and we just have to modify our training. Apart from Brodie and Jack Goodhue, who probably need a bit of footy, it’s not a disruptive thing at all.”

Instead New Zealand have been looking at some kind of training match, which their full-back Ben Smith reckons can be as challenging as the real thing. “They’re pretty full-on. I remember we had a game in Auckland like that before the last World Cup. They even got a referee in. When you’ve got Dane Coles, Brodie Retallick and those kind of players there’s always going to be a bit of niggle, but that’s good.”

England, one suspects, will be taking similar precautions. As Jones has been stressing for months, World Cups are a multi-faceted marathon not a sprint. In addition there is the practical bonus of being well out of harm’s way when Typhoon Hagibis blows in.

For teams based in Tokyo and Yokohama, along with everyone else in this sprawling metropolis, it is a case of lying back and thinking of lucky old England. Can too much rest be a bad thing? This World Cup may shortly deliver the definitive answer.

source: theguardian.com