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NSW Waratahs Benn Robinson scores a try despite pressure from the Queensland Reds Scott Higginbotham and Van Humphries during their Super Rugby match at ANZ Stadium, Sydney. (AAP Image/Dean Lewins).
On Saturday night, the Reds play the Waratahs in what should be a decisive match in their run to become winners of the Australian conference. The Waratahs need a victory to give them a chance of staying in the race. Both teams need the points to make them finals contenders in the two other conferences.
The pool round of matches is a bit like the practice rounds of a Grand Prix. The teams are essentially playing for pole position in the finals.
The way it works in this year’s new Super Rugby format is that one team from each conference automatically gets one of the six finals positions. The next-highest teams in the rankings, regardless of conference, make the finals.
Now we get to the tricky point. The first two conference winners with the highest points tally are ranked one and two for the finals. These teams go straight through to home semi-finals. The third-ranked conference winner plays at home against number six on the table. Four and five play the other quarter final.
The highest-ranked side gets the home final.
This sounds slightly more complicated than it really is. The idea is that each conference automatically hosts a finals match, no matter how few points one of the conference winners might accrue.
The system enhances the conference format, as does the fact that each conference side plays its opposition conference sides twice, home and away.
Which brings us (at last, I hear some gasping) to next Saturday night’s match at Suncorp Stadium.
The Reds go into this match having won six straight matches, the first time the franchise has achieved this since 1996.
More importantly, they have defeated all four of their South African opponents. It’s a remarkable achievement which suggests the team has the necessary strength in its set pieces (a South African specialty) to mount a strong challenge to win the Super Rugby tournament for the first time.
The point here is that the championship-winning sides invariably have packs that are strong in set pieces and which hunt together in the loose to set up situations for their backs to exploit. Forwards win trophies, not backs.
Another impressive aspect of the Reds this season is that they are capable of playing in different styles to defeat oppositions with different skills.
Against the Stormers at Cape Town two weeks ago, the Reds kicked for position a lot. The point here is that the Stormers are a mobile side, with a huge and effective running back row and a winger, Bryan Habana, who is a lethal short range finisher.
Yet the Stormers couldn’t get their power running game going or set Habana loose because they were playing from deep most of the game.
Against the Bulls on Saturday night, the Reds hardly kicked at all. Quade Cooper put in one chip kick in the first half and one kick for touch in the second half. Will Genia’s kicks were little dinks over the ruck while attacking, to allow Luke Morahan, particularly, to re-gather and burst away.
As the Highlanders showed in their splendid victory against the Bulls in Pretoria, if a side can keep the ball in hand and move it wide with a accuracy and pace, the Bulls are liable to run out of puff. I call this tactic ‘the running of the Bulls.’
The Reds played this game brilliantly. Which brings me to an interesting difference between them and the Waratahs. The Reds seem to be able to work out effective game plans which the players are prepared to put into place.
In other words, they’re a coachable side (a point that Ewen McKenzie makes in most game interviews), with a smart coaching team that has a grasp of rugby fundamentals in working out their game plans.
I reckon they will play the same sort of ball-in-hand game that upset the Bulls against the Waratahs. And the reason for this is that the Waratahs, like the Bulls, have a strong pack that lacks aerobic fitness.
The one question mark about the Reds is that so far this season they haven’t played a New Zealand side. The four they are scheduled to play won’t be easy. But their two toughest matches – the Blues and the Crusaders – will be played at home, a bonus given the Reds’ current streak at Suncorp.
The best that can be said about the Waratahs is that they have defeated all four of their Australian conference rivals.
They have lost two out of three matches against New Zealand sides, with the Crusaders thrashing them and the Blues demolishing them in the first half of last Saturday’s contest. They also are yet to play in South Africa, where their opponents are the Sharks at Durban and the Bulls at Pretoria.
But the Waratahs are not a coachable side, in that you cannot discern a game plan that adapts to the strengths and weaknesses of their particular opponents. A combination of factors may be at play.
The team has a culture of entitlement, with senior players rarely dropped despite poor form, that has defied the efforts of good coaches like Bob Dwyer and Ewen McKenzie to break.
I don’t have confidence that Chris Hickey and his assistant Michael Foley have the nous or the confidence to change things, or to put game plans in place against strong sides. The side has too many aspects of the flat track bully for my liking.
I also believe that the coaching staff made a major mistake in bulking up its loose forwards to the extent that they lack the mobility to enhance a ball-in-hand game, if the Waratahs wanted to play this style.
The coaches don’t understand that New Zealand adage, “The pace of the forwards is the pace of the fastest forward.”
The Waratahs simply do not have a fast flanker since Phil Waugh started to bulk up five years ago. And it shows. Attacks that would be carried on with a support flanker making a telling catch and pass simply die out, or the ball is kicked away.
The impact that Beau Robinson, a Waratahs discard, has had on the Reds is a case in point.
My fearless prediction from all of this is that although the Reds are entering uncharted waters in seeking their seventh successive victory, and despite the risk of potential records unsettling sides, they will have too much momentum, energy, skill and motivation for the Waratahs.
Can the wilting Waratahs defeat the rampant Reds? I don’t think so.