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After a summer that has gone on far too long, we had plenty of rugby action over the weekend. Here are some highlights from both the northern and southern hemispheres.
1. It is so far so good for Australia’s Super Rugby contenders
The story of the weekend concerning next weekend’s start of the 2015 Super Rugby tournament was the way the beleagured Reds monstered the Crusaders before an enthusiastic crowd of 11,270 at Ballymore.
The Reds management is doing a terrific job in maintaining the backing for their team in Brisbane and throughout Queensland. They have 22,000 members already this season and are going for more.
This enthusiasm has been generated despite a poor season last year, a coach Richard Graham who has as much bounce and liveliness in his attitude as a deflated rugby ball and with the loss for some months of their iconic play maker, Quade Cooper.
Going into the trial match against the Crusaders, Graham was under pressure to find an adequate fill-in replacement for Cooper.
He received the sterling advice of Eddie Jones that to play Karmichael Hunt at stand-off “I think is just crazy … he is a running player, not a distributing player.”
This sort of analysis reminded me of President Lyndon Johnson’s remark about President Gerald Ford that he “couldn’t fart and chew gum at the same time.”
There are some players who are out-and-out runners and others who are out-and-out play makers. But a handful of players can do both, just think of Stephen Larkham and Bernard Foley.
From what I saw of the clips of the Reds-Crusaders game, Hunt can play competently as a play maker and we will see more clearly whether this is so next weekend when the Reds take on the Brumbies at Canberra on Friday night.
I like Eddie Jones as a rugby thinker, don’t get me wrong, for at least he does think. But there is often an element of the mad scientist to it.
He was convinced when he was the Wallabies coach, that the forwards should go to ground as soon as possible to get a fast play-the-ball, in the league mode.
This insight forgot the crucial point that in league there is no contest in the play-the-ball situation. In rugby, the contest for the ball in every situation is written into World Rugby’s principles of the rugby game.
In fact, it was the Reds’ attack on the ball in the rucks and mauls that disconcerted the Crusaders at Ballymore. The Crusaders couldn’t get any flow into their game and, as a consequence, conceded penalties and were pressurised into errors on attack and defence.
For The Roar’s tipping competition this pre-season, form by the Reds creates the dilemma about whether they should be supported to defeat the Brumbies. The Brumbies performed disappointingly against the Highlanders at Wagga Wagga a couple of weeks ago.
But they are playing at home against the Reds and have the nucleus of a strongish side which should be well-coached by Stephen Larkham.
There is also the fact that the Crusaders are generally poor in the pre-season and early season matches. They have been beaten this year by the Hurricanes, as well as the Reds in 2015. I have grave doubts about the coaching ability of Todd Blackadder, as well.
So perhaps the Crusaders weak performance flattered to deceive about the Reds play. Until they start winning Super Rugby matches, I am still presuming a mediocre season for the Reds. As I write this I instinctively ducked to avoid the inevitable verbal bullets Reds supporters will firing at me!
The other Australian sides have all had good pre-tournament matches. The Rebels are quietly confident, for example, that this is their year to finally make the finals. They have recruited some exciting young players, including Jonah Placid, who is anything but that on the rugby field.
The Rebels have high hopes of maintaining the excellent progress they made last season.
The Waratahs rounded out their preparation to defend their title with a 38-36 victory over the Chiefs at Campbelltown Stadium in front of 5103 fans.
One of the features of the match, and of the Waratahs under Michael Cheika, is that they scored a try early on in the match. This is something that is becoming a Waratahs tradition. It underlines their commitment to play for the spaces, to run the ball and to attack the opposition’s defensive line.
I remember Sir Clive Woodward telling me that one of the best pieces of advice he ever received was from Earle Kirton, an All Black five-eighth of note and later national selector: “The best ball you get in a game is often early on, so run it if you get it.”
Clearly this is the Waratahs philosophy, too.
So going into the first round of the 2015 Super Rugby tournament, it is so far, so good for the Australian teams.
The Chiefs did not field any of last year’s All Blacks in their side (while Sonny Bill Williams, Hosea Gear and Hika Elliot did play). The Waratahs included 12 of their 15 Wallabies in their trial side.
2. Wales are going backwards, thank goodness
Stuart Lancaster is right to rank England’s 21-16 victory over Wales at Cardiff as one of the best, along with the defeat of the All Blacks in 2012, for the side in recent years.
England were playing Twickenham, something of a fortress for the side in recent years, when they beat the All Blacks. But they beat Wales at the Millennium Stadium in front of a passionate and confident Welsh crowd.
England were down 10-0 early on when Wales played their best rugby for a long time, tough in the forward, direct and smart in the backs. Then Wales reverted to the box kick disease. They neglected their big centres. Yet the main strength of the Wales game is their big centres and wingers.
The halfback, Rhys Webb, who for some reason is highly rated (admittedly he made a fine break to score Wales’ first try) was slow to the rucks and mauls and spent an eternity deciding what he was going to do with the ball when he did get it.
Teams time their clearances from the rucks and mauls with a stop watch. Those extra fractions of a second make the different between an attack being lethal or being easily stopped. And there was Webb standing over the ball, when he actually got to the ruck in good time, pondering somewhat like a judge what sentence to actually pass on it.
Meanwhile, the England defence had time to re-group and then hit the runners with massive tackles that took all the steam out of the Wales attacking game.
England had little pace in the forwards but Wales, by playing slowly, never exploited this. And by kicking the ball back to England somewhat incessantly, Wales brought England back into the game after their slow, nervous start by allowing the visitors to go through their smashing-up one-off attacks.
It seems to me that Warren Gatland claims to coaching genius are seriously over-rated. Except for the first 10 minutes or so, Wales were as predictable as rain at Cardiff.
All this, of course, is great news for the Wallabies. They have Wales and England in their Pool of Death in the 2015 Rugby World Cup tournament.
England, on the strength of this away performance, will be very, very difficult to defeat at Twickenham. They have also discovered in Jonathan Joseph a terrific running centre who is going to trouble a lot of defences in the Six Nations and in the 2015 Rugby World Cup tournament if Lancaster has the gumption to keep him in the starting line-up.
France defeated Scotland in a hard-fought match at Paris. I was impressed with what coach Vern Cotter has done with Scotland.
They were within a failed (just) last-minute interception of a famous victory. I think they will improve during the tournament.
I notice that adidas now provide France’s jersey, taking over from adidas’ rival, Nike. The German sportswear giant are also the All Blacks kit providers.
Nike started the trend for countries like France and England to play in black, presumably to diminish the competitive advantage of the All Blacks colours.
Anyway, France played in red against Scotland who I was pleased to see have returned to their traditional navy-blue colours.
Ireland were equally impressive as they out-classed Italy in the lineouts, driving mauls and held their own in the scrums. They played gritty, attritional rugby on a wet field until they were on top and then they moved the ball wider and started to out-flank the tight Italian defence.
This was impressive stuff from Ireland, who seem on track for a rare back-to-back Six Nations triumph.
3. Has New Zealand rugby unleashed a potential super star in Rieko Ioane?
Old Spiro has been watching Sevens Rugby since the glory days of the Hong Kong Sevens. In that time he has predicted the rise to super stardom of three young players who made startling international debuts in Sevens: Jonah Lomu, George Gregan and James O’Connor.
Readers of The Roar will smile when I report, somewhat shamefacedly, that my first over-the-top reaction to the play of teenager Jonah Lomu at a Hong Kong Sevens was to call him ‘Jonas.’ A message from his manager, Kingsley Jones, put me right on the correct first name.
This reminds me, too, of another naming clanger I made when I wrote a glowing account about a promising young winger from Brisbane called ‘Ben Flute.’ Greg Growden, my colleague at the Sydney Morning Herald at the time, told me that the Queensland coach John Connolly had rung him asking about this fabulous new player and whether he had any relationship to Ben Tune.
‘Right music, wrong instrument,’ I told Growden somewhat apologetically.
Anyway, away from anecdotage, I watched the World Rugby Sevens over the weekend and was taken with a youngster Reiko Ioane, aged 17, 1.89cm and 102kg, who scored six tries over the two days, two of them in the final.
So here is a fearless prediction. Reiko Ioane is New Zealand rugby’s next Jonah Lomu.
Ioane attended Auckland Grammar School, arguably New Zealand best, last year. He captained the New Zealand Schoolboys in 2014 playing in the centres.
He is so young, the New Zealand Rugby Union had to get special permission to play him in the tournament from his parents.
He is fast, tough and showed he has impressive stamina by playing in all the matches New Zealand played, including every minute of the final.
There is an aspect of his story that seems to have escaped the pundits. Everyone tends to write about how hard it is it to get into the top All Blacks side. But the story of Ioane and lots of other youngsters who have played for the All Blacks or the All Black Sevens is that this is a myth.
New Zealand rugby is very quick to promote young players, no matter how young they are, provided they are deemed to be good enough. Australian cricket used to do the same thing, too.
Ioane was deemed to be good enough, even though he is very, very young to be an international rugby player.
This thought occurs watching him play with aplomb and effectiveness, where is his Australian equivalent?