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The Brumbies’ tremendous smashing of the benign Stormers at Newlands in the Super Rugby qualifying final sees them now travelling to Wellington to play the Hurricanes in the semi-final.
The equally impressive victory by the Highlanders at home in Dunedin against the Chiefs has them travelling to Sydney to play the Waratahs.
Just quietly and between us, there is now a possibility – and let’s not make it more than this – that we could have an all-Australian final between the Waratahs and the Brumbies.
I say possibility because history tells us that teams travelling to South Africa to contest a final and then having to come back to Australia or New Zealand for another final rarely record back-to-back wins.
An experienced traveller, someone who has flown from all over the world on business and thinks nothing of flying from Sydney to Auckland for a lunch and then back again to have dinner at home, tells me that the hardest part of journeying from Australia to South Africa is the trip back.
There was something about circadian rhythms in his explanation. These rhythms are an internal clock that regulates and controls our biological activities throughout a cycle of the day. Apparently (and I stand to be corrected on this by more knowledgeable readers of The Roar) this clock is more in synchronisation when someone is flying back from South Africa, as the Brumbies will be.
Perhaps the Brumbies have done the hard part of their travelling. It will help, too, in their recovery from the long trip back and the game itself that they played energetically, athletically and with plenty of mongrel on defence and hard running on attack.
If someone new to rugby was watching the qualifying final and was asked to identify which of the teams had recently flown from Australia to South Africa, that person would surely have nominated the Stormers.
The Brumbies played as if Newlands was their home ground and the spectators yelling their heads off were actually supporting them.
A visiting side that scores six tries to one and wins by the huge tally of 39 to 19 (including some missed and easy conversions) is a rare thing in a final. Admittedly, the Stormers missed Shalk Burger and Duane Vermeulen, and there was no sting in their defence or attack, aside from Damian de Allende who must have sealed his spot as the Springboks’ inside centre.
Incidentally, the result puts the Brumbies’ 24-23 loss to the Stormers at Newlands during the pool rounds into perspective. During that match the South African referee Stuart Berry penalised the Brumbies 19 times!
South African Jaco Peyper refereed the qualifying final. He did a good job, but he should never have been put in this position by SANZAR who seem to be impervious to the arguments in favour of neutral referees for finals.
It was noticeable that Peyper went out of his way to explain his decisions to Stephen Moore, as if he was conscious of the likelihood that any controversial decision against the Brumbies would inevitably raise their supporters’ hackles.
It was noticeable, too, that he was strict on the mauls for most of the match, being attentive to the requirements of the side with the ball to move forward and to bind correctly. This follows some instructions to all referees from World Rugby.
At the end of the match, when the result wasn’t really in doubt, Peyper allowed the Stormers too much time to set their rolling maul. When referees allow rolling mauls time to set, re-set and don’t call them for stopping, it makes it virtually impossible to stop the resulting maul.
In one case towards the end of the match when Peyper allowed this to happen, it resulted in Scott Fardy making killing the maul in an obviously illegal manner. This was ruled to be ‘cynical’ and a dreaded yellow card was issued.
My hope is that Peyper wasn’t allowing himself to lapse back into his and other referees’ bad habits of allowing illegalities from the mauling side and then coming down hard on players trying to defend the indefensible, namely an illegal rolling maul, with their own illegalities.
In the matter of neutral referees, justice must be done and be seen to be done. It is not justice being seen to be done when a referee for a final (unless it is two teams from the same conference) is also a local.
For all the Brumbies’ excellence, and a team can only play what is in front of them, the Stormers were a travesty of a conference winner. There was no energy, physical and especially mental, in their play. They played by numbers, and the lowest numbers too with their JakeBall game.
The first lineout on the Stormers 10-metre line set the pattern of the match. The Stormers stole a lineout, as they did several times in the match. The ball was charged forward in rugby league-style hit ups. Then halfback Nic Groom took a box kick.
This notion that it is smart to kick the ball to your opponents, unless the chase is 110 per cent, is nonsense. As soon as Groom did his box kick, you had the feeling that the Stormers had already, after a minute or so of play, given away any pretensions to try and win the match by anything other than forced penalties.
And anyway, wonderful to say, Jesse Mogg fielded the kick under some pressure and like William Webb Ellis back in 1823 actually ran with the ball!
This remarkable change of tactics by Mogg, who has spent this season kicking ad nauseam, galvanised the Brumbies. They launched a series of phases, more than 10 of them, before being thwarted.
But from the next lineout, after Matt Toomua had taken the ball up like a minor version of Sonny Bill Williams, Nic White threaded a perfect grubber kick through. Joe Tomane charged through, gathered in the ball and scored the first of his three tries.
Readers of The Roar will know I am not a fan of much of White’s play, nor his often stupidly stroppy manner to opponents and referees. But he played so well, passing crisply, tackling accurately and strongly, and making great decisions with his covering play, that he has established himself as the number two halfback in Australia.
If Michael Cheika is going to select Matt Giteau in the Wallabies Rugby World Cup side as a third halfback and a permanent reserve to cover all the positions in the back line, then Will Genia will need to be dropped for the Nick Phipps, White, Giteau halfback trio.
You saw the advantage of a strong tackling halfback in the Highlanders-Chiefs match, where Brad Weber, as small and as baby-faced as a choir boy, and talked about as an All Black prospect, could not handle Waiseke Naholo, who ran over him like a tank flattening an obstacle of playdough.
Interestingly, the All Blacks selectors have included the noted tackler Tawera Kerr-Barlow as one of their three half backs in their 41-man squad, even though he hasn’t played this season. The back-up while Kerr-Barlow is getting some match time is the veteran Andy Ellis.
There was a pathetic moment in the last 10 minutes, too, when the Stormers had to score three times to win the match, and they kicked the ball away after a series of attacks. Then a few minutes later, admittedly when the game was lost, they kicked out from behind their try line and did not contemplate running the ball.
South African rugby is facing a crisis in terms of the quality of their teams, the way rugby is played in the Republic and, more importantly, in the way teams are coached. If the coaches are brain dead, with the exception of the Lions staff, their teams will play brain-dead rugby.
Because the Stormers were so clueless that they couldn’t make a match of the qualifying final, even though they were playing at home, the quality of the Brumbies’ win is hard to evaluate.
But despite all the caveats this was a Brumbies performance that the teams of the glory days would have been proud of.
The Hurricanes have defied all their critics this season by playing expansive rugby and winning all but two of their matches. They will be fresh and invigorated by the fact that two of their better players, James Broadhurst and Nehe Milner-Skudder, have been named in the 41-man All Blacks squad, along with Dan Coles, Ben Franks, Jeremy Thrush, Victor Vito, T.J. Perenara, Beauden Barrett, Ma’a Nonu, Conrad Smith, Cory Jane and Julian Savea.
Those 12 players make a formidable list for any team take on the field, and for an opposition like the Brumbies to defeat.
The Waratahs’ task of getting into the grand final is easier. The Highlanders were superb in their breakout play against a Chiefs side that played with the same sort of structure of the Waratahs. But, and this is something that could be important, the closed-roof stadium at Dunedin and the perfect surface really helps the breakout, clever play the Highlanders turned on to smash their way into the semi-finals.
The match against the Waratahs will start at 8pm on Saturday night in Sydney. It will be cold. The playing field will be wet, if the weather we have been having recently keeps up. These conditions do not suit the razzle-dazzle Highlanders game. They do suit the aggressive, hard-shouldered, ball-in-hand game played by the Waratahs.
Having said that, the two Highlander Smiths, Aaron and Ben, must be the two best backs in the world. The Highlanders, too, have two new All Blacks in Lima Sopoaga and Waisake Naholo, who is even more devastating right now than Israel Folau with the ball in his hands. With Malaki Fekitoa, this is a collection of backs that can threaten to take the game away from any team, at any time.
But here is the crunch: not one of the 22 forwards in the All Blacks squad comes from the Highlanders.
Forwards win finals. The Waratahs pack should be too strong for the Highlanders and they have gifted backs of their own, as all but Matt Carraro are Wallabies. Away from home, the Highlanders will struggle to stay in the match.
So Waratahs to defeat the Highlanders, and Hurricanes to defeat the Brumbies.
The Hurricanes should be too strong all over the field for the Brumbies. Travel does impose physical restraints, no matter which direction you come from. Moreover, the Hurricanes will be playing at home in conditions they know well.
I suggest that there is a possibility of an Australian Super Rugby final, because this is the case. But I do not think it is a probability.
I expect the Waratahs to have to travel to Wellington to play the Hurricanes in the final of Super Rugby 2015.