It has become customary practice at Murrayfield in recent years to reseed the international pitch during the summer months but, after Scotland's astonishing victory over Australia in rain-lashed Newcastle on Tuesday evening, you wonder whether the stadium's groundstaff would be better deployed on installing a sprinkler system instead.
The word from Australia – and particularly the Australian coaching team – was that the deluge that hit the Hunter Stadium had been a levelling factor. Aye, right, as they don't often say in Wagga Wagga. From where I was sitting, there was nothing level about it. As the scoreline suggested at the end, Scotland were comfortably on top.
In fact, the only contest Australia seemed in any danger of winning was the New South Wales Drowned Rat Lookalike competition. Bedraggled and frozen to the core, Digby Ioane and Will Genia, global superstars both, lost a lot of their lustre. If you were looking for an Australian who might thrive in the conditions, you'd probably stop at Ian Thorpe. Or Flipper.
In fairness, Australia coach Robbie Deans was gracious in defeat, qualifying his observations about the conditions with the admission that the weather was the same for both sides. It was an important point, although not one his Wallaby predecessors have always been keen to grasp.
In fact, watching Australia toil in the downpour, it was hard not to think back to the reign (pun, er, intended) of Rod Macqueen, who was in charge of Australia when they won the 1999 World Cup in Wales. The venue was significant, for having watched his side scrape past South Africa in the semi-final at Twickeham, Macqueen seemed to spend the entire week fretting about whether the roof of the Millennium Stadium in Cradiff would be open for the final.
Macqueen whined, whinged and bellyached, demanding that the roof should be closed. What's the point in having it if you don't use it, he asked. Well, Rod, maybe because rugby is an outdoor sport.
The following year, Macqueen got his wish when Australia took on South Africa at the quaintly named Colonial Stadium (which has had about half-a-dozen other names since) in Melbourne. Officially, it was the first rugby union Test match to be played indoors. Looking ahead to that match, Macqueen could hardly contain his excitement.
"There is no rain or mud and you see good open football," he blabbered. "The roof means you don't have some of the uncertainties you have in other Tests when you're worrying about the weather and if there's going to be a wind factor."
It was a staggering argument. Since when were uncertainties a bad thing in sport? Since when was dealing with bad weather, be it rain, wind or cold (or better still, all three at once) not one of the core skills of a great rugby team? As far as I can remember, coping with the elements has been part-and-parcel of the game.
To their credit, the International Rugby Board dealt with the emerging phenomenon of indoor rugby by decreeing that both sides would have to agree before a roof could be closed, failing which a game had to be open to the heavens. It was a sensible compromise, so sensible in fact that it was bound to come under attack. Enter Wales coach Warren Gatland, a man who appears to have inherited Macqueen's mantle as rugby's whiner-in-chief, who recently demanded that the home side – ie, him – should be able to do as they please.
Gatland moaned when Andy Robinson insisted that the Millennium Stadium roof be kept open when Scotland played there two years ago. And he moaned again when France made the same demand this year. "Potentially, it makes a game less open or less attractive," he argued before that France game. "We all have a responsibility not just to broadcasters but to the public and the game as a whole to make it as attractive as possible."
It was, of course, sanctimonious piffle. Gatland was seeking an advantage for his side, whose strengths lay mostly behind the scrum. He wanted a fast track and a dry ball for his backs to run. If he really wanted to act responsibly towards the sport he would have paid heed to the fact it had been an outdoor sport, with all that implies, for the first 150-or-so years of its history. And so it should remain.
In the past few years, rugby has brought in replacements (in droves), kicking tees, near-perfect surfaces and video analysis, all of which have served to reduce the number of unpredictable factors. It needs more uncertainty, not less. Weather is its last, great variable and its influence should remain.
Sometimes it works in Scotland's favour, sometimes not. Fiji is next on the agenda for Scotland and the conditions there, especially the heat, will be very different to what they encountered in Newcastle on Tuesday. They have ended a long losing streak, but we will only know how good they might be when they've played in a variety of circumstances. But isn't that what rugby's all about?
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