Stephen Jones
A huge challenge awaits the four home nations on their summer tours. Stephen Jones looks for slithers of optimism amid the bruising itineraries
STEPHEN JONES
Rugby’s most outspoken and influential journalist
THERE IS nothing like a good rest at the end of a T ferocious season and as usual this year, there will be nothing like a good rest for the home union teams as they depart for lung-bursting tour matches in the different hemispheres – England are playing New Zealand having been to Japan, Ireland are playing South Africa, Wales are playing Australia and, in the western hemisphere, Scotland are playing Canada, USA, Chile and Uruguay.
Only the philosophy behind the Scotland tour rings at all true. They will be playing decent and (hopefully) rising teams, and it will be something of a missionary tour because all bar Uruguay appear to have been declining lately and it will be something in which their second-rank players will be able to take part.
As for the rest, they will be bashing and crashing and thundering on. Sorry if you have heard me say this before but to give just one example – the idea that after the season they have just had, the core of the Leinster team who looked knackered at the end of the season have to take on South Africa in South Africa – in Pretoria and Durban – all the while with South African players and followers on their backs after hints that some of us believed that Ireland and France were the two best teams in the last World Cup. Hard life, hard life.
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It is perfectly legitimate for the coaches – Steve Borthwick, Gregor Townsend, Andy Farrell and Warren Gatland – to claim that these tours are all part of their development. They may well perform in some places a development function but the main reason, overwhelmingly, is that the teams will be touring simply to fulfil the concept of reciprocal fixtures, keeping the massive but inadequate coffers of the major unions in business. It is a real shame.
This is not to say that there will not be decent games and that there is no fascination. Perhaps the chief fascination of all will be the progress of Australia under their new coach, Joe Schmidt, to see if they’ve thrown off the dread hand of Eddie Jones and are improving again.
Of course, Wales played South Africa at Twickenham before departing, one of those typically bonkers fixtures which, so it turns out, had South Africa as the home team. There is no possible reason for this game to take place other than to make money, and that at a time when rugby and safety are under the microscope. It is ridiculous.
Granted, we can al
