- Video
-
Club Roar
Captured a great grassroots sporting moment? We want to see it!Content Collections
The Roar Community
- Join
- Login
The Waratahs have suffered a second loss at the hands of a physical side in both defence and at the breakdown, with the supply of ball to the outside backs comprehensively cut off at the source.
These tactics are precisely what they should expect from the top teams in the competition from here on in.
Before their Round 13 bye, the Waratahs will face the Stormers in Cape Town, the Force in Perth on the way back, the Bulls at home, the Blues in Auckland, and the Hurricanes at home. The first three of those teams are more than capable of playing the same defensive and hard-at-the-breakdown type of games that the Brumbies and Sharks have used to great success.
In Jean de Villiers, Kyle Godwin, and Jan Serfontein, Kurtley Beale can expect three more weeks of the in-your-face defensive treatment that Francois Steyn dished out on the weekend – much like Pat McCabe and Matt Toomua offered up a few weeks back.
This will be one of many things on Michael Cheika’s plate this week en route to Cape Town. Israel Folau is possibly rejoining the side this week, but his presence alone won’t produce points if the Waratahs midfield is again shut down so comprehensively.
It wasn’t just the outside options, either. So well were the Sharks defenders reading Beale (or so much was he telegraphing the play) that his inside runners were picked off all night in Durban, almost for fun by the end of the match. With the creativity of Beale essentially extinguished, Bernard Foley wasn’t able to produce many opportunities himself, leading to criticism at the lack of a Plan B.
Already, it seems that if the Stormers (with all of their defensive issues) can close down Beale, they’ll be halfway towards notching their second win for the season.
Cheika has to look long and hard at his Test-strength front row, which again was dominated in the scrum. Much has been said about Benn Robinson’s evident decline with the new scrum engagement sequence, and how superior scrummagers are now regularly exposing him.
Sekope Kepu wasn’t much better in this department, and he regularly found himself being worked over by ‘the Beast’, Tendai Mtawarira. Paddy Ryan fared no better – much worse, in fact – for the 27 minutes he was on.
On the topic of scrums, did anyone else notice Jannie du Plessis’ trickery on the ‘bind’ call? After being told the other week that he couldn’t bind on the armpit, and despite his on-field protestations that he was told he could, du Plessis would loosely grab Robinson’s jersey around the ribs as required on ‘bind’, only to let it go and re-grip on the arm or armpit on ‘set’.
Cheika may well have concerns about referees’ perceptions of his scrum, but there’s probably good reason such perceptions exist.
Then we have the rather liberal interpretation of what Cheika meant by suggesting the Waratahs were going to have to “front up” against the Sharks, and take them on physically. I think the notion of trying to out-muscle the most physical and aggressive side in the competition is up there in the ambitious stakes with trying to out-kick Marnitz Boshoff, but credit where it’s due, the Waratahs did well and truly hold their own in the physicality stakes.
Where they let themselves down was how they went on with things afterwards, or the little cheap shots that they interpreted “front up” to mean. That’s certainly not to say the niggles were one way, but the for the most part, the Waratahs brought a lot of it on themselves.
Whether it started the rot is inconsequential, but Rob Horne should not have stayed on the field after his stiff arm to Steyn’s jaw. In fact, given both Horne’s move and Steyn’s rag-doll tackle on Beale were deemed to have “met the red card threshold for foul play” on the charge sheet, the question of why they did stay on the field is legitimate.
The clear sanction under any of the numerous categories of Law 10 Foul Play – including both high and dangerous tackles – is a yellow card as a starting point. Moreover, referee Mike Fraser could have pre-emptively stopped the spot fires that broke out by issuing the first yellow there and then.
Either way, Horne will now miss the Newlands game, and can probably count himself lucky. Steyn should too, after it was ruled his sling tackle on Beale didn’t warrant suspension.
In the end, Waratahs captain Dave Dennis was the first to cop the yellow card, and I have absolutely no sympathy for him. For all those suggesting the 47th minute decision was a soft card – and I understand the sentiments – you need only rewind the tape to the 39th minute, where Fraser pulls both Dennis and Bismarck du Plessis aside for a chat after yet more niggle.
“There’s nothing in that, it’s just a bit of push and shove,” Fraser says, before telling the interjecting du Plessis that he’ll be doing the talking this time.
“Have a word to your players, there can’t be any more, OK, or somebody’s going to sit down. There’s too much off-the-ball stuff here. Leave it out, we don’t need it.”
The warning can’t have been any clearer. Cut the crap out, or someone will sit down. So when Dennis then started the next round of niggle with a shove on du Plessis at a scrum, Fraser had no alternative.
“There’s no need for the push, away you go,” Fraser said, with the look of a parent disappointed that a child would be stupid enough to call their bluff.
That moment summarised the lack of leadership the Waratahs had all night. A comment on The Roar over the weekend suggested that Michael Hooper showed more leadership in the 10 minutes Dennis was off the field than Dennis did in the 70 minutes he wasn’t, and I agree.
I can’t help but wonder if Cheika might need to give Dennis a Ewen McKenzie-style of rev up, a la James Horwill midway through the 2013 international season.
It’s one of many things the Tahs need to think about.