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Pressed to name a MVP for the 2014 Super Rugby season, it’s a fair bet that many pundits would have the Western Force’s Nick Cummins very near the top of their lists.
Similarly, there seems to be general agreement that Cummins will be one of the first players named in Ewen McKenzie’s first Australian side of the year, for the June 7 Test against France.
There are a number of reasons for this:
– A devastating, three-try, man of the match performance against the Waratahs
– Unrelenting combativeness and 100 per cent effort every game
– His distinctive, Johnny Platten-like appearance
– His candid post-match interviews, laced with more homegrown Aussie slang than an Austen Tayshus gig
Cummins is undoubtedly popular. He has put his hand up, demanding Wallaby selection, and his selection will duly be on merit.
Which is not the same thing as saying that opposition coaches Steve Hansen and Heyneke Meyer will be suffering through sleepless nights as a result.
The All Blacks and Springboks will pay Cummins due respect – as they do any player worthy of Test selection – but they will certainly not fear him.
This is because – at the risk of being fingered as the evil person who shot Bambi – scratching beneath the surface, there is a case to be made against Cummins being a Test quality winger.
Despite running 95 metres for one of his tries against the Waratahs, and despite a background which includes athletics and sevens rugby, Cummins lacks real pace. His other two tries that night were made more difficult than they should have been as a result.
Similarly he fluffed a try at the corner against the Chiefs, more resembling a tubby accounts clerk flailing and floundering after a slow moving tram than a clinical finisher.
Cummins has been tried before at Test level, 12 matches bringing a total of five tries. Nobody could say he has let his country down in any of those matches and he was among the better performers on the 2013 spring tour. But at the same time, nagging doubts remain.
Cummins is 26, unlikely to be getting any better or faster, and certainly not a strapping 21-year-old flyer with potential to burn.
“Workmanlike” is perhaps the word which springs to mind – which isn’t the word I like to associate with a position for which “electric” and “powerhouse” are a better fit.
By any rational account, a direct comparison against Bryan Habana and Julian Savea as international wing men leaves Cummins a very distant third. He has Habana’s opportunist nose, but not his explosive pace, and he lacks the swerve and power in the hips to break tackles like Savea does.
Injuries, lack of form, ineligibility and overseas transfers have combined to thin the ranks of suitable alternatives. Cummins should be knocking on the door for Wallabies selection, and that would be fair enough. But to be an automatic first choice suggests that player depth still isn’t all that it should be.
In 2013 Cummins was awarded the Australian Rugby Union Players Association Medal for Excellence. But is it fair and reasonable to suggest that a deal of this popularity is due more to his hair and snappy one-liners?
Drawing a comparison with Australian politics, figures like Clive Palmer, and Pauline Hanson before him , appeal to sections of society because they represent a finger to the “norm” of authority. They provide fresh copy for the media, with an anti-establishment bent and, as a result, something new and different for people to talk about.
Consequently, when Cummins mischievously talks of “grabbing himself some meat” he instantly connects with sports followers stale from player after player parroting the same “one game at a time” cliches.
I don’t doubt for a second that rugby needs more Nick Cummins types. But as refreshing and entertaining as he is, let’s not, to borrow from Monty Python, confuse him with the Messiah.
In a few short weeks analysis will swing away from Super Rugby to the now decade-long problem of how to wrest the Bledisloe Cup back from New Zealand.
Catchy one-liners about “going fishing up north, or maybe down south”, and images of a headband disappearing into a forest of ringlets will soon give way to cold hard reality.
Bledisloe Cup rugby is no snack, and judging by how Jerome Kaino laid waste to Kurtley Beale and others at Eden Park on Friday night, it seems doubtful that the All Blacks will be distracted by the Cummins circus.
The Honey Badger provides an enjoyable diversion to be sure, but fans should enjoy it for what it is and no more. This is not the stuff from which Test series victories are founded.