Jason Robinson's first season as a coach isn't exactly a bed of roses, what with Sale sinking to the foot of the Guinness Premiership. But I've just started reading his autobiography, Finding My Feet, and I can't help being catapulted back to those great Billy Whizz on-field moments. You know the stuff: those scything Six Nations bursts, the try in the 2003 World Cup final, the skinning of Christophe Dominici.
A couple of days after I began reading Robinson's book, I travelled to Watford to cover Saracens' Guinness Premiership match with Bath. The contrast was stark. Here was my response in my weekly column for The Bath Chronicle:
At what price victory? If triumph on the rugby field comes at the expense of all entertainment, is there really any point in 30 blokes – and importantly, thousands of supporters – turning up for a match?
Much has been made this season of the style of play that Brendan Venter has been cultivating at Saracens. The South African director of rugby has been seeking to emulate the kind of approach that his national side has honed over the past couple of years: get your backs chasing the high ball, tackle your opponents hard, and slot over the penalty kicks when the other chaps creak.
It is a game-plan that gave Sarries, for a brief period in the first half of this season, an aura of muscular invincibility. But the cracks are now beginning to show in this remorselessly and tediously one-dimensional style of play.
Sarries' problem is that they aren't prepared to deviate from Plan A, not even for a second. They are in a tactical straitjacket, and instead of playing what's in front of them, they are playing like automatons, doing only what they have been ordered to do by the uncompromising Dr Venter.
It's one thing to read how achingly boring Saracens are, it is another thing altogether to watch how achingly boring Saracens are.
Saracens have a more-than-decent inside centre in Brad Barritt, the England Saxons midfielder. But his fly-half Derick Hougaard, as far as I could observe, didn't once opt to use him during Bath's visit to Vicarage Road on Sunday. Instead, Hougaard put high ball after high ball up into the air, balls which Matt Banahan and Nick Abendanon were more than equal to.
"Throughout the whole game they never threw one backline play at us," said Banahan to me yesterday. " I don't think our 12 or 13 made a tackle the whole game. It shows how negative their structure is."
Saracens 10-man style of rugby doesn't even play to their strengths at the moment. With a pack enervated by Six Nations absentees and the odd injury, they don't have the muscle to turn the screws at the breakdown. Moreover, it reduces to close to zero the attacking opportunities for such fleet-footed backs as full-back Alex Goode, whose career would surely be better served by him joining a club with a more open style. Bath, for example.
When Jason Robinson first dipped his toe in the waters of union in 1996, he spent the rugby league off-season at The Rec.
When the then Bath coach, Brian Ashton, opted to play the speedster at full-back, he bet Robinson – not known for his fondness of the boot – that he would be forced to make at least one kick.
Robinson ran everything out of his own 22 and Ashton lost his little wager.
Few would question Sarries' potential. But they need to leaven their kicking game with a smidgen of Robinson's spirit of '96.
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