Rugby: Mitchell issues World Cup warning

Lions coach John Mitchell sees the kicking game making a comeback at the World Cup. Photo / Getty Images

Eighty-seven days to go to the Rugby World Cup, and John Mitchell issues a blunt warning.

"The World Cup may be a try-fest in some of the pool matches," he says. "But after that it will be back to normal. In some senses, we are going to get a different World Cup.

"But it is still going to come down to some crucial issues - who handles the breakdown best in attack and defence, who kicks most successfully for territory, who kicks most often and best between the poles.

"The tighter breakdown area will certainly allow for other aspects to become crucial. Like accuracy of goal kicking, accuracy at the restarts, accuracy of the kick out of hand and for territory, accuracy in terms of placement of the kick."

So, horror of horrors, could be there a similar version to the kick-riddled 2007 tournament won by South Africa for many of the reasons Mitchell has just mentioned?

"Yes, there could be a lot of kicking," says the Lions Super 15 coach. "Some sides will see kicking as their strength. So a team that plays a pragmatic way could certainly prosper."

If Mitchell is right, that could certainly bring New Zealand, the undisputed No 1 side in the world, back to the field. The kicking for territory of South African first five-eighths Butch James and fullback Percy Montgomery's metronomic goal kicking dominated the 2007 tournament. Nor was it a coincidence that England, also a side that relied on forward power and a kicking game behind the pack, reached the final.

In Mitchell's view, these tactics, if employed, would strengthen the hand of the Northern Hemisphere nations. "They have experience of that type of format and style, and that will definitely help them."

And South Africa? "The Boks were guilty last year of kicking too much ball away. Plus, they were unable to organise their kick-chase line and paid the price. But their kicking game at the World Cup will be wiser, I am sure."

Mitchell returns to the breakdown, arguably the most critical phase in the modern game. Get fast, recycled ball from it and all things are possible for stretched defences will likely be denied the time to reorganise. But manage to slow down the release, just for those few vital seconds, and a quite different scenario confronts the attacking team. They have to search much harder and longer for the gaps to appear.

"The breakdown has gone back to being a tighter situation than last year. It's not so free as it was and that's probably a good thing. The trouble is, there is a lot of inconsistency in that area. Last year, referees focused particularly on the tackler and the release. But they are only just getting back to that now it's too late.

"They have been focusing most of the Super 15 season on the attacking team's arriving players. That area has been tightened up."

It certainly has because players diving off their feet at the breakdown have been relentlessly penalised. The trouble is, as Mitchell says, the tackler has been able to hang on to the tackled player those few moments longer and it has slowed down the whole process.

Mitchell's views on this year's Super 15 as a whole are varied. Good, he says, in the sense that even now, with just one more weekend of round-robin matches before the playoff phase begins, no one has a clue who will win.

"It is really tight, much more so than in previous years. We are one of the bottom teams yet we have lost seven close games ... it is definitely becoming a tighter competition."

But the downside of this year's series? "There have been a lot of forward passes, stuff that is getting missed by the officials. It is becoming difficult for one man alone in the middle to referee this game, to see everything."

Mitchell doesn't favour the idea of two referees, one operating in each half of the field, as some have suggested. What he proposes is greater use of the technology available, a trend that has become increasingly popular in other sports such as cricket and league.

"The TMOs should be able to go back to the start of a move to make sure situations are clear, that there have been no forward passes or knock-ons in that movement. A lot more tries are being scored from first phase so you could confine it to a single movement in many cases.

"Besides, the referees now refer most tries to the TMO and ask if there is any reason why they should not award it. All the TMO needs to do is play the tape from the start of the move. There should be consistency."

But until that happens, and it wouldn't even be looked at as an issue until the end of this year, could the World Cup be hindered by absurd errors that everyone can see but no one can correct? Mitchell fears so.

"There will be some things that cost teams in this World Cup, definitely," he says. "In a professional sport where you are talking about people's careers put in the balance by a referee's glaring error, for example it is essential that we become more accurate."