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I don’t know if you have ever played chess or not
I learnt to play, half a lifetime ago while at school. It was taught I think, as a means of self-improvement because by playing it, you learn the arts of foresight, circumspection and caution. The first reference to chess in literature is from Persia around about 600 AD, but I believe it is much, much older than that and may have originated in China 2000 years before Christ. Then, as it is now, it was used as a means of teaching and training the minds of young officers in the arts of war strategy and tactics.
Strategy is all about setting and achieving long-term goals during a game and tactics is about your immediate manoeuvres to achieve your desired strategic goals. The game or match is usually divided into three parts, the opening gambit, the middle game, and the endgame. One of the main aims of the opening is to mobilize your pieces to positions of power and usually to take control of the centre of the board. The middle-game is about attempting to strengthen your own position while weakening your opponents by careful preparation of the pieces for future attack, defence and the set-up of the endgame. Both players are working hard to see their opponent’s strategy and tactics and trying to implement their own. The best endgames, usually have each player with several pieces left, is difficult to analyse and you are never certain what the final outcome will be, until it’s all over. Once you have learnt the rules of chess and the strategies and tactics involved, it can be the most entertaining and fascinating of spectator sports, although non-players will often say, “I’d rather watch paint dry, it takes to long and it’s boring”.
But understanding what is happening and what is being done to engineer the victory, how and why pieces are positioned in certain ways, the feints and distractions that lead to the final “coup d'état” is what it’s all about.
Rugby has often been likened to war and therefore chess, the “gladiatorial contest” and to try and understand what I’m on about, consider two rugby coaches sitting high in the stands with the chess board laid out before them, pieces coming and going from the interchange bench, tactics and strategies played out in 80 minutes of frenetic paced action. But often the opening gambits started perhaps six or twelve months before as would be the case with this year’s Super 14, when the whole competition is actually the game. The middle-game is the round robin series, where each team play’s off against each other and the endgame is the semis and final. While each game or move is exciting in itself, the overall strategies and tactics used by each coach to position themselves for the endgame is what can be truly fascinating for the rugby loving chess players out there.
All Blacks unavailable for half the season, key pieces injured at inopportune moments in the contest, and how a chess-master or coach deals with these issues is often the mark of a champion.
As the global super powers of world rugby are positioning their pieces on the chessboard of France, Graham Henry is undoubtedly New Zealand’s current grand Chess-master, and I’m absolutely certain the opening gambit started four years ago when he was appointed to lead the charge on the holy grail. No doubt his Generals Hansen, Smith and Lochore, have been instrumental in developing his strategies and their early tactics have been truly fascinating to watch as he has planned, prepared and implemented them.
I’m also absolutely confidant what Graham Henry’s first words will be when the endgame final whistle blows on the 20th of October 2007.
“Checkmate”
But then, that is “Just an old trucker’s” point of view.
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