Peter Bills: Catt's vision shows Lions what's missing

(GETTY IMAGES)

It comes to something when a 37 year-old South African is the star of the English rugby Premiership's play-off semi finals weekend.

Mike Catt's performance for London Irish in their match against London rivals Harlequins was audacious. He steered the club to this weekend's final and a meeting with Leicester with a brilliant playmaker's display. Catt's vision tormented Harlequins, putting the ball behind them and dropping it into touch deep in their own 22 time and time again. He orchestrated their demise with an elegance and panache that put him in a class of his own.

It was a wondrous spectacle, a thoroughly heart-warming display which reminded us of Catt's supreme skills and rugby intelligence. He finished off a virtuoso display with an interception and a walk-in try under the posts that sealed Harlequins' fate. If ever there was an example of 'once you've got the skills, you always have them' this was surely it.

But having said all that, you have to wonder at the quality of the English Premiership if a guy of 37 is the stand out performer. Frankly, the level of technical excellence in the two semi-finals, Bath v Leicester and the Irish v 'Quins game, was pretty ordinary. As one correspondent put it, Catt excepted, there was dross everywhere to be seen.

Leicester were overwhelmingly superior to a hugely disappointing Bath side. Bath just don't have the overall quality, the strength in depth of real class to withstand a few injuries and keep beating the top sides. Too many what you would call good club players but few real class acts.

Yet even so, Leicester revealed their own considerable limitations by their inability to put them away more effectively and clinically. A good side would have been out of sight by half time at the Walkers stadium. Yet the finishing was so ordinary that Bath escaped the drubbing they should have had. For all the marketing hype, it told you a lot about the real standards operating at the top of the Guinness Premiership.

Mike Catt has been critical of the general skill levels of too many players in the Premiership. He insists that one-on-one coaching is essential if players are to improve their overall technical ability, composure under pressure and perhaps most essentially, vision

All this has got a great deal to do with South Africa and the rugby about to be played down there, starting in a few weeks time. For the fact is, the Lions fly to Johannesburg in just 12 days time and what we saw last weekend at the so-called peak of the English game, is a grim reminder that this is no great vintage for Lions players.

To read the views of those two great old Lions players from the era of the 1970s, Willie John McBride and Gareth Edwards at the weekend, was both revealing and confirmation of that belief. Edwards insisted no-one much put up their hands to demand selection during whast he called “an ordinary Six Nations Championship". McBride warned that the Lions players were in for a shock when they first encountered the greater pace, dynamism and physicality of rugby in South Africa. It was just the same in 2005 in New Zealand for the Lions.

The injury to Welsh centre Tom Shanklin which has ruled him out of the tour is little short of disastrous for these Lions. Apart from Brian O'Driscoll, Shanklin was the only other midfield player with the creativity and vision to open up a defence. If O'Driscoll gets injured, then heaven help the Lions.

The supreme irony is that the Lions are desperately short of the kind of vision, poise, skill and innate cunning that Michael Catt showed for his club at the weekend. Had they a player like Catt, their threat would be immensely enhanced. As it is, a squad full of workmanlike players will arrive in Johannesburg, but there are few geniuses among them.

Forget 1955 and the likes of Cliff Morgan, Jeff Butterfield and Tony O'Reilly. Forget 1974 and Phil Bennett, Gareth Edwards and Mervyn Davies.

There is a clear and simple reason why Mike Catt still excels in this company at the age of 37. Northern hemisphere rugby has become obsessed with creating behemoths to play the game. Size and power has been the mantra; thinking players, those with judgement and skill, have become marginalised.

The consequences of this policy, I suggest, will quickly become apparent in the forthcoming Test series.