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Trying to weigh up the Australian conference by analysing results against South African opponents highlights an average year, but also rams home the flaws of a lopsided draw.
After comparing the Australian teams with their intra-group competitors in New Zealand, it felt a little cheap to stop international comparisons there.
» View the full 2017 Super Rugby draw right here
Last week it became clear the Australian teams are performing poorly against New Zealand’s, but is it any better when we play the South Africans?
Short answer: yes.
Australia has played ten games against South African group teams so far this year and the split is five-five. That is a much better performance than Australia has mustered so far against New Zealand, where getting wins has been tough, and big ones basically impossible since the Brumbies’ first-round effort against the Hurricanes.
Round 10 further emphasised the poor Australian performances against New Zealand. The first placed Australian team, the Rebels, lost to New Zealand’s bottom-ranked Blues, and the Brumbies were beaten by the Highlanders.
So just breaking even against South Africa so far is a start.
Long answer: if you peer a little deeper at the numbers to try and gauge quality wins the picture isn’t as rosy. On top of that, the new conference system makes it hard to be definitive when comparing Australian and South African performances.
Australian teams are playing the Africa 1 conference this year, meaning we skip the Lions and Sharks. That lopsidedness has given Australian teams a few easy wins.
The Cheetahs and Sunwolves have combined for three wins total between them so far, racking up 14 losses together. Four of the Australian victories have come against the Sunwolves and Cheetahs.
The top South Africa 1 team, the Bulls, are undefeated against Australian competition thus far. They beat the Rebels, which is a quality win, and got the job done against the Reds and Force. Those teams are our very own Sunwolves and Cheetahs (sorry, Reds and Force fans) but they’re doing the business.
The Stormers, in second on the South Africa 1 ladder, hobbled the Brumbies, flogged the Reds, then lost in a close game against the Waratahs, so have a winning record thus far as well.
As a side note, I feel extremely sorry for Leonil Zas, who was given a two-week suspension after being red carded for taking Bernard Foley out in the air during the Waratahs’ win over the Stormers. His foot clearly slipped as he planted to leap and contest the ball. While the rules have been interpreted accurately as far as I can tell, I don’t think it’s a huge reach to suggest the Stormers lost a match because Zas’ foot slipped.
The Waratahs were losing 20-18 at the time and the Stormers managed to score ten points with only 14 men on the field. It’s still a good win against a top opponent, but Australian teams could be a few sprigs away from not having a win from their match ups against top South Africa 1 opponents so far.
Going back to the overall record, this experiment has highlighted how difficult it is to judge performances against South African teams: we aren’t playing enough of them.
It would be enlightening to see how the likes of the Brumbies, Rebels and Waratahs go against the middling South African teams this year. They are a step below the New Zealand teams and it appears the best of South Africa is also a smidge better than the top three here. But matches against the Sharks and Lions by a number of Australian teams would help sort out whether we’re buried in mediocrity or a notch above that.
To go into more detail we’d have to take inferences from the Sharks win against the Highlanders and pushing the Chiefs in a close one, compared to them easily thrashing the Brumbies. But there are so many variables and vagaries in those comparisons that I’m loath to put much weight in them.
In the future, it might well be the Sharks and Lions having blinder years, while the Bulls and Stormers muddle along, which would also be frustratingly hard to draw conclusions from.
As long as the draw remains this way we’ll always be in the dark. And we’ll spend more and more time analysing the performances of the top teams in each conference and looking for ‘quality’ wins to gauge performance as the finals approach, rather than having concrete results to draw upon.
Doing our best with what we’ve got this year, we should closely watch whether the Waratahs or Brumbies can get over the Bulls and how the Stormers go against the Rebels.
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.