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Hands up those of you who sat through all eighty minutes of the top-of-the-table Sharks-Brumbies match on Saturday night. Now hands up those of you who enjoyed the spectacle.
Not too many hands, I see.
If you head on over to the Sydney Morning Herald, you will see Steve Samuelson’s rather vitriolic critique of the participants in the weekend Canberra clash.
A championship victory for the Brumbies and Sharks, he reasons, would be an injustice. The two conference leaders are supposedly undermining the sport with their ‘pragmatic’ focus on winning at the expense of providing entertainment.
The thrust of the argument (as I understand it) is that the style of rugby – the so-called ‘Jakeball’ – is the problem.
It is unlikely to attract new fans to the game and puts at risk the support of existing fans who prefer to watch a more aggressive, high-risk, and preferably high-scoring approach to the sport.
It follows then that the Brumbies and Sharks are being selfish by failing to adapt themselves to the kind of rugby that supporters and marketers want to see.
I suppose this line of thought leads me to my question: is ‘Jake-ball’ not a legitimate form of rugby?
I would argue that it is perfectly legitimate. It is a strategy built on defence, pressure, and territory. On the face of it, it would seem to favour a team with a talented place-kicker, but teams with quick outside backs are well-served too.
Indeed, the Brumbies back three of Joe Tomane, Henry Speight, and Jesse Mogg were one of the competition’s most prolific try-scoring combinations last season.
Where the strategy comes in for criticism among its detractors is in its perceived lack of risk.
This seems to have become a tacitly accepted premise – playing for territory is a strategy that runs minimal risk. The insinuation is that by kicking the ball out of your own half instead of running with it, a team can make valuable metres and put the opposition’s kicker out of range of the posts, which effectively minimises the risk of conceding easy points.
That is for most opposition kickers, anyway.
But this remarks only upon the objectives of the strategy, not the substance. I hardly imagine that any team content to advance the ball up the field without kicking would ever intend to throw passes likely to be intercepted or to run into tackles from which they are unlikely to be strongly supported.
But as a risk inherent to that strategy, it is something that those teams have to just accept and be mindful of.
But Jakeball teams have risks as well. What happens if you centres are not totally defensively sound? What happens if your players entrusted with the task of hoofing the ball upfield are struggling to find their accuracy?
Look at the match on the weekend. The tactical kicking by the Brumbies was for the most part woeful. Twice Nic White failed to put out long-arm kicks to touch, Jesse Mogg’s boot seemed to have lost about 30 metres of power, and Deans-esque up-and-unders that had little chance of being regained seemed to be the order of the day.
The Brumbies should absolutely have lost if not for Francois Steyn’s utterly abominable performance for the Sharks. By my reckoning Steyn’s woeful kicking – both from in hand and off the tee – singlehandedly lost his team the match.
But that was a risk that the Sharks were running too. Its occurrence should put a big question mark next to the suggestion that Jakeball is risk-free, if not striking it through completely.
The reality is that there is no such thing as risk-free strategy. Not in rugby, not in anything. Every strategy boils down to the ability of the fifteen players on the field to execute their skills effectively.
If they cannot, then there is really very little that can be planned at all.
The thing that really concerns me about Samuelson’s view – which I suspect he shares with many others – is the idea that there is a formula for Australian rugby that abhors any variety to the mantra of run, run, run.
This formula supposedly embodies ‘the Australian way’ of rugby which has been credited with our successes on the field and off it, and whose validity seems to have escaped scrutiny over its lack of results in the post-Eales era.
I’m just saying, the last time Australia held the Bledisloe Cup, Lleyton Hewitt was World Number One.
Similarly, the last time the Brumbies drew a crowd that threatened Bruce Stadium’s capacity was when they last won a grand final.
Jake White’s influence at the Brumbies did not predate the period of malaise for the franchise that set in shortly afterward. Rugby in Canberra – like in the rest of the country – has been on a downhill slide ever since the glorious days of the early 00s.
What White managed to achieve in his two years in Canberra was therefore remarkable. A rise of eleven places in two seasons, the first grand-final appearance for the Brumbies in nearly ten years, and a victory over the British and Irish Lions.
Whatever the aesthetics, it can’t be denied that on the field, at least, Jakeball has been getting results where only mediocrity existed before. And crucially, it has put another string in Australian rugby’s bow.
So like it or not, Jakeball and any other strategy that challenges the conventional approach will have a place in Australian rugby. At least until we can work out an alternative that actually works.
Join The Roar rugby editor Christy Doran, former Wallaby Matt Toomua and a cast of regular and special guests as they look at the biggest issues in the game on The Roar Rugby Podcast. If you’re looking for great odds on the next game check out Aussie bookmaker PlayUp. Chances are you’re about to lose. Set a deposit limit.