logo

How much rugby have I missed over the last four years? I haven't

Posted by admin   ·     ·   Jump to comments

"How much rugby have I missed over the last four years? I haven't a clue, to be honest, but to give you a ballpark figure, I reckon I've spent 20 months on the injury list."Because of that, I'm both surprised and delighted to have this opportunity, which is one I really must take. Am I in good enough shape? Well, I can tell you this: I'm enjoying my rugby again, which is a big factor. I tend to stop enjoying it when I think too much about it, when I over-analyse my game If I try too hard, try to force things, I begin to struggle. I think that's what happened on the Lions tour in 2001, when things went wrong for me. I was guilty of trying to manufacture too much, rather than backing my instincts, and when I do that and things don't come off, I can look a bit of a prat."The move from Bath to Leeds also helped.

Balshaw is back in the here and now because the world champions need a strike-runner rather than a stonewaller.Happily, he has rediscovered his appetite for the weekly diet of thud and blunder. "I'll be concentrating on my basics," he said, in his flat northern tones. "I'll be thinking about taking the high catches and making my tackles."There is more to Balshaw than that, of course; if the fielding of snow-covered rugby balls and the clattering of opposition backs were of paramount importance to England's fortunes, rather than bog-standard chores to be taken for granted, the ultra-dependable Perry would have accumulated 70-odd caps by now. "I'm free of injury now," he continued, referring to his interminable problems with his shoulders, which have been surgically reconstructed to prevent more dislocations, and his ankles, the ligaments of which he once tore for a pastime. The latest statistics indicate that teams who patiently retain possession through three or more phases - once considered to be a surefire way of scoring - are less likely to cross the opposition line than those who attack straight from set-pieces, and Balshaw's highly developed grasp of rugby geometry makes him ideal for a dynamic offensive approach based on pace, angles and timing.Not that the 25-year-old from Blackburn was talking himself into a particularly dynamic game plan yesterday.

Iain Balshaw is more of a hasn't-been than a has-been, on the basis that he never did what everyone said he could do with sufficient regularity to justify his advance publicity. But the fact remains that England, struggling more desperately than at any time since the recently incapacitated Jason Robinson switched codes from rugby league, now find themselves back in their pre-Robinson world - one that had yet to be exposed to, and seduced by, the twinkle-toed riverdancing of the celebrated cross-coder from Sale.It will be fascinating to see how England's attacking strategy, which has yielded only three tries in as many outings during the current tournament, is tweaked to accommodate Balshaw's elusive, but essentially orthodox style on Saturday On the face of it, they should prosper. The thing about being stuck in an England rugby-style time warp, as Dr Who might usefully explain to the viewing community when he returns to the television screen later this month, is that past and future have a nasty habit of colliding, with the most disorienting results. Three days ago, Matthew Perry produced a performance of such iron-clad solidity for Bath against Gloucester that it was impossible not to regard him as the best full-back in England, which he once was, rather than as an international has-been, which is how the red rose coaches have treated him for the last four years. Twenty-four hours later, Perry's successor in the Test side suddenly materialised from the back end of beyond - Leeds, to be precise, which in union terms amounts to the same thing - to secure the No 15 shirt for this weekend's Six Nations game with Italy at Twickenham.

readers comments

Comments are closed.

NBA

NBA

MLB

MLB

NFL

NFL

NHL

NHL

WWE

WWE

Your sideblock text goes here