Workmates and I were discussing the Blues’ 33-31 victory over the Highlanders on Friday, agreeing it was a promising start to Tana Umaga’s tenure as coach.
The Blues’ opening match was fairly exciting stuff.
It started at pace and only got quicker. Highlanders fullback Ben Smith opened the try-scoring, gliding through a gap with his usual grace and deceptive speed, then Blues right winger Melani Nanai immediately hit back with a breach of the Highlanders line and dotted down by the posts.
Blues openside Blake Gibson, who mixed it in his schoolboy years with plenty of huge Polynesians in St Kentigern’s First XV, showed his apprenticeship in that school of hard knocks was well-spent. After breaking into space with a strong charge, then looking left and right to find himself yards from any support, he backed himself and smashed straight over the top of Ben Smith on his way to the try of the night.
The scores were levelled again when Malakai Fekitoa drew two tacklers to make a hole for new midfield partner Teihorangi Morgan, and the Highlanders took a half-time lead when halfback Aaron Smith chipped artfully behind the Blues. Big wing Waisake Naholo won the race to the ball.
In the second half, as the game swept back and forth all over the park and the crowd roared its approval, the Blues traded off territory and possession well.
Kicking their points to retake the lead, they eventually found themselves in try-scoring position again with eight minutes remaining. Pulling down lineout ball five yards out, they drove over superbly for big lock Patrick Tuipulotu to score.
A last-minute, long-range Highlanders attack ended with Ben Smith just short of the goal-line, but Smith got up for another go, burrowing through to bring his team within two points and make the final score 33-31.
A fourth try in previous years would have been worth two competition points, but this season a team must score three tries more than their opponents to get a try-scoring bonus point.
Isaia West’s goalkicking for the Blues, after an early miss, proved crucial. His four penalties and three conversions overtook the Highlanders’ extra try.
The Highlanders will have identified many positives in their own performance, but the re-emergence of the Blues as a finals threat was the big story of the night. With a decent crowd in attendance and the biggest talent pool in the country re-energised, New Zealand’s start to the season was auspicious.
Then the Hurricanes spoiled that strong beginning by getting their backsides handed to them in Canberra, going down 10-52 in an utterly humiliating loss to the Brumbies. The spell, broken in last year’s final, stayed broken.
Three first-half tries to centre Tevita Kuridrani, halfback Tomas Cubelli and breakaway David Pocock caught the Hurricanes napping. The Brumbies kicked cleverly to give themselves opportunities then mercilessly exploited defensive weaknesses. Commentary blurt genius Phil Kearns insulted the visiting team at half-time by saying they looked “fat”.
And for once his admirably insensitive terminology was correct. After being unable to bind together to stop the Brumbies’ rolling mauls, the tight forwards were puffing and blowing as they trotted back too slowly to help their teammates make desperate cover tackles.
Unimpressive physical characteristics weren’t complemented by the jerseys. Some design genius at head office in Berlin decided that this year’s livery would have the Adidas stripes going over both shoulders and ending in logos on a horizontal line at chest level. They looked like yellow overalls.
The Blonde came into the War Room at halftime to check the score. At that stage I was still counting on a second-half comeback, but quickly lost confidence when she started rolling around the floor and kicking her heels in the air, laughing. I asked what the joke was.
“Look at them,” she cried, pointing at the Hurricanes in their huddle. “They look like Minions!”
She was right, it was comical, but it was the sort of light-hearted criticism that doesn’t occur to people when the score is 24-3 the other way.
The one-way traffic continued in the second half, dashing the hopes of any still stubbornly optimistic like myself.
Fullback Nehe Milner-Skudder broke clear with some magic footwork and sent young midfielder Ngani Laumape over to provide one briefly heartening moment, but the higher-numbered Minions spent the rest of the game with hordes of Brumbies stampeding them, those hordes not slowed in the slightest by the forwards whose clutches they’d escaped.
Tries to flanker Scott Fardy, hooker Stephen Moore and his replacement Josh Mann-Rei all resulted from unstoppable rolling mauls, and the coup de grace was administered by lock Sam Carter after 60 yards’ worth of mismanaged tackle delegation from the yellow-clad Keystone Kops.
The damage was compounded by officiating which left a lot to be desired. Fardy’s lack of control over the ball while grounding it was ignored by Australian referee Andrew Lees, and not replayed by those in the broadcast truck until after the conversion.
This wasn’t the only smelly decision. Close-ups of the rucks that Brumbies were constantly infringing at were non-existent. Lees kept warning the home side for the same transgressions but waited until the 62nd minute before finally (and almost apologetically) binning someone.
Hurricanes fans can take little heart from this, because the actions of law enforcers and chroniclers were not the biggest worry. Without stalwarts Ma’a Nonu and Conrad Smith to compensate for the disharmony of forwards and the erratic distribution of halfback TJ Perenara, the Hurricanes came apart at the seams and couldn’t regroup.
It left a bad taste in my mouth which I couldn’t get rid of until the Crusaders and Chiefs fought out a 21-27 classic in Christchurch on Saturday evening.
Worries about the Crusaders’ awful pre-season form looked unfounded when they dominated the first half. Dan Carter understudy Richie Mo’unga ran the cutter well with plenty of clean ball served up by halfback Andy Ellis and the Crusaders pack.
They combined for a neat set-piece try when Mo’unga drifted blind from an attacking scrum and Ellis dummied the other way. Number eight Kieran Read picked up the ball and found Mo’unga in a three-on-two situation, so the young first five had the visiting defenders at his mercy and went over untouched.
This made up for the defensive error made earlier by David Havili. The fullback was dispossessed on his own line by Chiefs’ debut winger Shaun Stevenson, resulting in the opening try. Mo’unga’s reply gave the Crusaders a 13-8 halftime lead.
The Chiefs, however, stuck to their guns. Clearly reassured by one of Dave Rennie’s encouraging and businesslike debriefs, they came out firing.
With the emphasis on maintaining possession and executing, first five Aaron Cruden and fullback Damian McKenzie created space, found holes and put the ball in front of their forwards only when penetration wasn’t possible. A short pass by halfback Tawera Kerr-Barlow sent Seta Tamanivalu into a yawning gap and the Crusaders’ cover tacklers couldn’t bring the giant centre down. The conversion put the Chiefs back in front.
The Crusaders managed to get through Charlie Ngatai’s well-marshalled line of midfield tacklers only once, with a lineout maul and a defence-exhausting drive. Ellis found Mo’unga with a long skip pass, the final tacklers were committed and Havili dived over, but the home side’s lead never looked fully secure.
Ngatai joined Cruden and McKenzie in creating havoc. Patiently picking his moments to step through or swerve around defenders, he was as comfortable in restricted space as ever and looks every inch the likely replacement for Nonu at Test level.
With Anton Lienert-Brown replacing Tamanivalu at centre there was no loss of cohesion in the midfield pattern, and the two combined for the game’s decisive play.
Ngatai, picking up a loose ball, sized up the situation nicely. Side-stepping through a fractured defence, he offloaded to Lienert-Brown who carried on ducking and weaving to within touching distance of the line. A quick recycle let McKenzie hit the ball at speed on the blind side and dive low for the go-ahead try.
A lineout drive not long after put the issue beyond doubt when flanker Sam Cane emerged from a pile of bodies with the wide grin of a victorious captain.
If there was a downside to the opening weekend from New Zealand’s point of view, apart from 52 eggs all over the Hurricanes’ faces, it was our untidy scrummaging. The four other nations in the Super Rugby competition, including Japan and Argentina, all made restarting play look routine.
It is high time New Zealand faced facts. Steve Hansen may have fixed many of our lineout problems at top level, and those solutions appear to be filtering down, but Mike Cron’s repairs to the All Blacks scrum were already beginning to crack in 2015 and our Super Rugby franchises have been among the weakest scrummaging teams for a while now.
It began the moment complicated engagement procedures were implemented in the late 1990s. Prior to that, scrums were more like the cluster-flirts of league, with front rowers making up the rules as they went along.
The new guidelines were necessary. The professional era brought with it much larger and fitter men whose muscle mass had increased at double the rate of skeletons strengthening. Sixteen of them pushing in two directions became a deadly force, deficiencies in technique notwithstanding.
Our advantage in having fitter, more mobile hookers and props disappeared. We were slow to adjust and now we’re playing catch-up. We’re big enough and strong enough but scrummaging is all about technique.
Even if our front rowers have better ball skills around the park, that’s little consolation to fans getting bored waiting for six ugly grippers to get themselves together and not succeeding.
Cheetahs 33-34 Jaguares
Sunwolves 13-26 Lions
Waratahs 30-10 Reds
Force 19-25 Rebels
Kings 8-43 Sharks
Stormers 33-9 Bulls
The most impressive teams outside of New Zealand were the Brumbies and Stormers. It was great to see the Jaguares begin with a win, and I couldn’t care less whether the Sunwolves won their first game or not; just having new blood from two of our logical geographic partners makes me happy.
Giving the South Africans a sixth franchise, however (instead of including a team of Polynesian all-stars) is a sign that top level administrators, despite all their sterling work recently, have some screwy priorities.
Sure, they’re nowhere near as bad as match-fixing Indian bookmakers or FIFA, and the players they’re organising are not deflating footballs or cheating drug tests, but there are plenty of work-ons.
That’s just my humble opinion though, and ancestral entitlement probably makes it questionable.
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