UR TV CAST

If the players were as confused as the observers, Great Britain were in deep trouble. If ever a “smart alec” was heading for a fall, it was Waite.The revised line-up, with Horne and Johnson playing just once each, still looked an odd one. A couple of hours later, however, Waite’s sternest critics had to hold up their hands and admit one thing: you might not warm to the man, but this was a damn well-prepared Great Britain rugby league team.The multiplex cinema next to the McAlpine Stadium was screening previews of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone. Waite is no magician, but he is something of a philosopher – and his philosophy was vindicated during the drama that unfolded in the outdoor theatre.This, remember, was a Great Britain team without stars, with the likes of Iestyn Harris and Jason Robinson strutting their stuff that same weekend – with varying degrees of success – on a different stage.The threequarter line, however you looked at it, lacked the necessary fire power, and yet opposition that was – in theory and on paper – stronger man-for-man, was comprehensively outplayed.One obvious reason was the difference in the quality of the two sides’ preparation.

Despite their denials, Australia – with their on-off build-up – were significantly under-done. Going straight into a Test without a warm-up game always looked like taking things a little too much for granted – and so it turned out.Great Britain’s preparation was much better, with plenty of time together as a squad and two games, against their own Under-21s and against France, to try out some new combinations.It was still a surprise and a delight – as well as a tribute to the adaptability of the modern player – to see how well those combinations worked on Sunday. If you had said three weeks ago that Mike Forshaw and Kevin Sinfield would successfully divide dummy-half duties in a Test against Australia, you would have been laughed out of town, but those two were one of the strengths of the side.And what of Horne? The 19-year-old Hull scrum-half was obliged to go through the charade on Thursday of pretending that he was in the starting line-up, when he knew full well that he was not. That sounds like a good way of messing up a young player’s head before his Ashes debut, but Horne came into the game after half an hour and made an important contribution.Of course, Sinfield, Forshaw and Horne would have played equally well had they been named in the roles they were actually destined to fill. The danger is that Waite will become even more addicted to pulling rabbits out of hats, to doing things for their cleverness rather than their effectiveness, and that is better left for Hogwarts.One thing he will be very good at is keeping his team’s feet on the ground in the build-up to the second Test at Bolton on Saturday.

There will be no premature celebrations, partly because everyone is realistic enough to know that Australia, with the rust now burnt out of the engine, will be a very different proposition at the Reebok Stadium.Other Great Britain coaches have been in this situation and they have not been able to take that extra stride that would win a series for the first time since 1970 Waite could now be that man. The objections to him – at least outside a xenophobic minority – are not that he is Australian, but that he gives the impression of being arrogant and supercilious. One more victory over the next two weeks and he will be forgiven the latter as well as the former.. In theatre or opera, they are called directors or producers; in rugby, coaches or, sometimes, managers. In the performing arts, the predominance of these people has led critics to ask not so much whether the play was well acted or the opera well sung as, rather, whether so-and-so’s slant on the production was interesting, exciting, preposterous or merely dull. The players are now complaining as loudly as would actors or singers.My sympathies are largely on their side It is they, after all, who have to do the work. And yet the Sunday and Monday papers were as full of the thoughts of Clive Woodward the England coach, and of Graham Henry, his equivalent with Wales, as they were of the matches which these coaches had watched from the stands or the reserved places at Twickenham and the Millennium Stadium.This concentration on the coach is understandable I do not blame my colleagues in the least The coaches pick the teams They dictate the tactics – or try to do so.