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The four teams contesting the semi-finals of the 2014 Super Rugby tournament are all worthy contenders with a chance of tournament victory: the Waratahs, the Crusaders, the Brumbies and the Sharks, probably in that order.
Before the qualifying final at Canberra, the Brumbies coaching staff were suggesting that the 2014 side was a better team than the side that almost won the final against the Chiefs at Hamilton last season.
Certainly, as they demonstrated against the Western Force two weeks ago and then against the Chiefs on Saturday night, they have far more strike power than last year’s restricted game plan allowed.
The Sharks, in their matches against the Stormers and then the Highlanders in the qualifying final, also had much more to their game than the Jakeball tactics of earlier in the season. It was noticeable that they kept the ball in hand a lot more.
There was some aerial ping pong at the beginning of the thrilling match before the Sharks began to use their loose forwards and Bismarck du Plessis in particular to smash their way through, over and very occasionally around the Highlanders.
Certainly you can win penalties and score points kicking the ball away, but you can’t score tries without the ball.
Ironically, it was a couple of chips kicks by the two New Zealand sides, one by Dwayne Sweeney against the Brumbies and two by Aaron Smith for the Highlanders, that allowed their opponents to score vital tries.
Another interesting aspect of the qualifying matches was the very poor set piece play of the two New Zealand sides. The Chiefs’ lineout cost them severely throughout the match. Their scrum, statistically, has been the best in the 2014 Super Rugby tournament, but the Brumbies pack handled it easily.
The Highlanders were monstered in the scrums, the lineouts and the rolling mauls. The Sharks pack were like a convoy of bulldozers smashing through gerry-built walls. The Highlanders could not cope with the awe and destruction that the Sharks visited on them.
Yet, rather remarkably, the Highlanders led 17-13 at halftime, after being down 10-0 early on in the game. The lead came from a sensational breakout from a penalty won on their try line with time up for the half. Ben Smith ran the ball and the passing between the backs and forwards was brilliant and clinical.
My point again is that the ball-in-hand game has the virtue of allowing teams to score in multiples of 7 or 5, rather than the penalty-kicking game with its multiples of 3.
I divert from this analysis of the two qualifying finals to make one other general point. The New Zealand Rugby Union is often criticised for supporting South Africa in the SANZAR negotiations. But the Sharks’ obliteration of the Highlanders pack provides the answer to why this is so.
The NZRU rightly admires the physicality and set piece excellence of South African rugby. With this admiration comes the realisation that if New Zealand rugby is to remain the world leader, it has to maintain its standards at all levels with the set pieces of the rugby game.
South African rugby provides the continuing test for New Zealand sides, as the Sharks demonstrated at Durban against the Highlanders, for set piece excellence. You can win the occasional one-off match with brilliant backs and a poor set piece pack, as the Highlanders showed earlier in the season when they defeated the Sharks at Durban in the pool rounds. But you can’t do it regularly.
With 10 minutes to play, and with the Highlanders leading 27-25, they won a penalty outside their own 22 and on a tightish angle. Knowing that the Sharks lineout was stealing wins regularly, Lima Sopoaga tried to gain as much territory as he could. He missed touch and the Sharks stormed back into Highlanders territory. They finally won a penalty that gave them the lead.
Just as the NZRU keeps contacts strong with South African rugby because of the set piece excellence shown by South African sides, it also keeps a close eye on Australian rugby for the excellence of its back play.
The variety and timeliness of the back moves by the Brumbies against the Chiefs was a pleasure to watch, and a match-winning feature of their play. The halftime scoreline was 22-10 for the Brumbies, set up by some superb running rugby. The Chiefs missed 23 tackles in the first half and 48 for the match.
No team can miss this many tackles and hope to win an important match. In fact, no team in the history of the Super Rugby tournament has come back from the halftime deficit the Chiefs faced and gone on to win. The Chiefs almost did it. But in the end, points on the board early on in the game was a hurdle they just could not clear.
The Brumbies gave away their earlier season Jakeball game for what I called in the Sydney Morning Herald on Saturday the Macqueenball game.
Macqueenball, which gave the Brumbies its two Super Rugby titles (under Eddie Jones and David Nucifora), has big running forwards (then Owen Finegan, now Leon Power, Scott Fardy, Sam Carter and Fotu Auelua), clever running and strong defensive halves (then George Gregan and Stephen Larkham, now Nic White and Matt Toomua), and big, powerful outside backs (then Joe Roff, now Tevita Kuridrani and Henry Speight).
The engine of Macqueenball is the ball-in-hand, patient continuity possession game; the methodical, precise, clear-headed and often deadly build-up to create gaps and holes in the defence for the big runners to motor through.
The third try the Brumbies scored was built on 20 phases before Jesse Mogg, back to his brilliant running best, scored wide out.
In the first half particularly Henry Speight was a one-man running blitzkrieg with 134 metres run from breaks that involved smashing through, around, palming off, and bumping off Chiefs defenders as if they were little kids trying to bring down the giant.
This was one of the great halves of brutal, punishing and effective running by an outside back we have seen for many years. And, with congratulations to the coaching staff, the Brumbies inside backs had numerous plays (some of them revealed last week by the rugby mastermind Scott Allen) to bring the rampant, charging Speight into the contest.
The mark of a tremendous display of rugby, is that the player makes his position the most important position on the field. Speight made the wing the most important position on the field in the Brumbies’ qualifying final.
Du Plessis made the hooker’s position the most important position on the field in the Sharks’ qualifying final, at scrum time and lineout time and then over the ball, getting turnovers and cleaning out Highlanders trying to pilfer.
If these players can stamp a similar mark on their semi-finals, then the Waratahs and the Crusaders are in for a hell of a contest.
One writer on The Roar‘s excellent incident-by-incident account of the Sharks versus Highlanders match made the comment that the two qualifying finals were terrific contests with 14 tries scored and a combined points differential of only 6.
The same sort of contests will enthrall us next weekend at Christchurch and Sydney. Game on!