Rugby's Big Brother era
Drive past a deserted Twickenham on a non-match day and it would be easy to assume nothing is happening. It is a misleading image. In offices and gyms up and down the land there is a growing army of people dedicated to ensuring that England, with all their enviable resources, punch their weight consistently. When it comes to attention to detail, the Rugby Football Union's elite rugby department makes even forensic scientists sound like devil-may-care cowboys.
It is not just the sophisticated computer software, which, at a punch of a button, can tell Martin Johnson how far Jordan Crane has carried the ball this season and supply a video clip of every single instance. Nor is it the slow-motion sprint imagery that is helping to identify why David Strettle keeps suffering metatarsal injuries. These days the RFU also delves deep into the minds of possible future internationals, finding out what makes them tick in order to weed out the flaky before they get near the England set-up. George Orwell would be delighted.
So would Carl Jung. The latter's theory of typology is now being used to assess players in the under-20 squad with the aim of dividing them into one of four general categories: Cool Blue, Sunshine Yellow, Earth Green and Fiery Red. The reds are the forceful natural leaders, the blues are the more cautious and orderly types, the yellows are typically cheerful and social while the greens tend to be caring and sharing. The idea is that, once identified, players can be handled accordingly. Coaches can also see who is likely to relate best to whom, and vice versa.
It also helps, in theory, to discover which individuals will be mentally toughest under pressure, the essence of international sport. According to the RFU's national academy head of psychology, Matt Thombs, the chief components of mental toughness are self-belief and commitment. Identify players who score highly in those departments and you have a potential Test player. Overlay that particular graph with the results of physical tests, sprint times etc and the selectors' job is virtually done for them.
Or maybe not. To Johnson's credit, he is not totally in thrall to the statistics and computer print-outs. There is even the odd Luddite in his elite squad, he reveals, who is not yet online at home and cannot receive the bundles of electronic data supposed to transform his life. "They're not robots to be programmed, they're people," stressed the national team manager this week. He prefers to treat the information is a useful tool, nothing more. As yet, personality profiling is only restricted to the national academy intake. Big Brother has not entirely taken over Twickenham.
That said, the range of information at Johnson's fingertips is staggering. Did you know, for example, that the average international prop runs 7km per game and is involved in 100 contact situations? A winger will run a kilometre further and probably experience only 22 "contact events". An open-side flanker, normally the fittest member of the side, will run 7.7km, make 44 sharp sprints and experience 90 hits of varying intensity. Only the fittest need apply, which is why a player's gym scores are monitored obsessively. Every weight or time they register is graded with a green, amber or red code; too many reds and the coaches will come looking for you, regardless of whether you nicked a couple of crucial lineouts last week.
It is the considered belief of Stuart Lancaster, the England Saxons coach, that no modern player can play 30 games a season in the way his predecessors would have done. The game is simply too hard and fast. As for today's coaches, preparing for a game without the benefit of video analysis is completely unthinkable. England's analysts are already poring over hours of footage of their next opponents, Australia, with the match still weeks away. "I think the coaches would feel slightly naked without it," says John Hall, the outstanding former Bath and England flanker who is now the grandly titled Head of Data and Analysis.
Referees get pored over to the point where England's management know them better than their own wives and partners. The quest is to identify patterns of behaviour: if so-and-so doesn't award many penalties at the lineout, maybe a window of opportunity might present itself. It rapidly became clear from the computer stats that England's problems last autumn were largely caused by slow ball at the breakdown; the only drawback is that anyone with a pair of eyes could have told them that already.
Which is why Johnson still prefers to rely, to some extent, on his own intuition. World domination is not quite as simple as having the best computer software. There is no doubt, however, that it helps and England believe they are at the cutting edge of the technological revolution. The next step is to unearth more players as quick and agile as the New Zealand side that won the U20 World Cup in Japan. England, for once, felt they matched the young Kiwis physically but not in terms of instinctive skills. The appliance of science may close that gap but robots and gym monkeys will only get you so far.
Simon says
Everyone connected with Wasps' glory years seems to have published an autobiography lately. Ian McGeechan's book is due out shortly and Simon Shaw's effort, The Hard Yards: My Story (Mainstream, £18.99), will hit bookstores at the end of this month. Shaw's story is an affable read and offers the clearest insight yet into what happened during England's moment of crisis at the 2007 World Cup. "We were getting one message from one coach and another message from another and, while those messages may not necessarily have been wrong, it was a mixed bag. We had the meeting, lots of opinions were expressed for the first time, the coaches listened and we did a two-hour walk-through. Then everyone assembled in a local bar and we had a massive piss-up." So now you know.
Monsieur le drop
This weekend's biggest game is taking place in Marseille. Jonny Wilkinson's Toulon versus the class acts of Toulouse at a stadium that, for my money, ranks among the most atmospheric grounds anywhere in the world. Even 12 months ago it would have been as improbable a prospect as Saracens attracting over 44,000 people to a Premiership game at Wembley. The game is changing faster than we think.
