- Video
-
Club Roar
Captured a great grassroots sporting moment? We want to see it!Content Collections
The Roar Community
- Join
- Login
When I sat down to watch the Waratahs-Bulls match on Saturday morning, my focus was firmly on Kurtley Beale.
Well, him and my bacon roll brunch with freshly squeezed pineapple juice.
An article on Beale was in the air, and I fully expected the Bulls match to provide the positive bulletin I needed.
With his season-ending injury in the first minute of the game, the juice nearly hit the floor.
At first I thought I’d have to change topic, but after a little more consideration I realised his injury brought so many different issues into sharper perspective. So I forged ahead.
Beale is due to join English Premiership side Wasps in October on a mould-breaking two-year deal reportedly worth £1.5 million. In the political context, the buying power of clubs in England and France has to be a worry for the Southern Hemisphere.
Here in England, the salary cap has risen from £4.76 million in 2014-2015 to £5.5 million in the current season. Next year it will rise again to £6.5 million, with £7 million mooted for 2017-2018 ($AU13 million). That would represent a near 50 per cent increase over four years. Moreover, two ‘marquee’ players can be excluded from the cap tally entirely.
The organisation which administers the game in England is not the RFU, it is Premiership Rugby, and it was formed by the clubs themselves to look after their own interests. The clubs, mostly backed by wealthy self-made owners, police themselves – and the results can be observed in the recent salary cap controversy, in which two clubs were accused of breaching the self-imposed salary limit. Nothing was done, no punitive measures incurred. The clubs in England are indeed a law unto themselves.
But the ability to lure a Test-match certainty – as Beale was for the June series against England – to the Northern Hemisphere at the pinnacle of his playing powers is a new development in the struggle for rugby’s soul. Up until the beginning of this season, it was only players in the twilight of their Test careers who jumped ship to Europe. Now it is Test starters in their prime: Beale, Sekope Kepu, Will Genia, even Adam Ashley-Cooper, still near his peak at the age of 32.
When I began to look back at some of the Waratahs games this seasons, I understood what a huge loss on the playing front Kurtley Beale will be to both the Waratahs and the Wallabies. For the Waratahs, he is irreplaceable. For the Wallabies, he will be very hard to replace and was without doubt one of the players Michael Cheika would have been looking to build his back-line around over the next World Cup cycle.
Quite simply, he was playing the best rugby of any inside back in Australia up until the moment of his injury last weekend.
The other issue raised by Beale’s injury is that of the need to accommodate players with unique skill-sets. This issue raised its head in my article on Michael Hooper a few weeks back and it is the same with Kurtley Beale.
Beale’s physique, speed and positional awareness qualify him for the back three, but he has the attacking instincts of an aggressive first five-eighth, and Robbie Deans did indeed (in days gone by) invest some time on developing him as a 10.
Just as the current Wallaby coaching staff have made a special accommodation with Michael Hooper’s skill-set, so have they with Kurtley Beale.
Although he wears 12 on his jersey, Beale defends mostly from the backfield as a back three player, but attacks from first or second receiver on offence.
In the Waratah/Wallaby system developed by Nathan Grey, Beale will usually drop to the backfield on defence – either to blind-side wing from lineout for example…
Or as one part of the two-man zone in phase play…
Playing as an extra full-back, Beale is a plus – witness his 4/4 performance under the high ball against the Highlanders’ kicking bombardment earlier this season. Against the Western Force in Round 9, his kicking game was also a significant asset out of the defensive backfield – and on one occasion from first or second receiver on attack.
He kicked 9 times in the game and effectively controlled territory for the Tahs:
By contrast, the one notable area of weakness in his game is his ability as a defender-in-line:
In this example from the game against the Stormers at Newlands, Beale gets caught defending in the 13 channel after the home side turn over a Tahs lineout. He starts drifting far too early (despite a Stormers’ passing error) and makes his inside shoulder an easy target for the step and offload. He is never square to the target at any point.
As a result Nathan Grey likes to drop him back at every reasonable opportunity and has created a unique ‘defensive accommodation’ at both provincial and national level.
As an attacker Beale does not play like a traditional back three player at all.
• Engaging the defence – speed to the hole. The first three examples from the highlight reel (two from the Stormers game in Round 10 and one from the Brumbies match in Round 8) illustrate Beale’s first instinct to engage the defence right on the advantage line. He is always looking to make the play right in the teeth of the D, where the break will really count because the defence has less time to recover from error.
The threat to the defence is reinforced by his speed to the hole. One measure of an American Football running back’s effectiveness is the speed at which he recognises and exploits the hole in the defence that has been created. In the first example (Stormers at 6:45), Beale cuts back underneath the Stormers’ #6 and #7 before they can react before accelerating into Schalk Burger at 6:47.
He starts seven metres shy of halfway but makes the offload six metres past it. Against the Brumbies he starts eight metres shy of halfway but offloads three metres past it. Beale both sees and hits the hole quickly, his runs naturally straighten the attack, and they actively invite inside support in all three instances.
• The rapport with Bernard Foley. Beale and the Tahs’ #10 Bernard Foley have consolidated their understanding over the past few season to the point where the rapport between them is instinctive and automatic. They work and attack as a pair whenever they are together, as illustrated in the next four clips in the reel. Whenever you get two attackers working on the same wavelength, and at the same mental speed like this it always creates problems for the defence.
As soon as Foley sees the hole underneath Damian de Allende (Stormers @8:03), Beale instantly picks him up on a convergent support line, while in the Force at 69:52 Beale tracks Foley as he switches the direction of the attack across the back of the breakdown. The chip through at Force 34:33 was clearly a scripted call between the two, while Beale actually waits on the kick return by Foley in the Stormers at 69:48 (Foley starts 10 metres behind him) in order to pick him up on the inside.
• Kurtley Beale on the ‘touch’ pass. Beale has also developed some excellent finesse on sliding ‘touch’ passes in midfield. At Stormers 37:39 he waits for as long as possible before threading a line-ball to Israel Folau through the 10-12 gap in the defence, while in the next example from the same match at 40:54 he drags the D across field before timing the line-ball perfectly for Jed Holloway to make the break in between a static pair of defenders in the Stormers’ #6 and #8.
Beale’s upside as a ball-carrier and distributor is extensive.
He is able to offload and create scores even when ‘in the grasp’ of defenders:
And he is capable of making end-over-end passes to get the ball through the hands more quickly on left-to-right movements:
Summary: The Waratahs have no chance of replacing Kurtley Beale’s value as a kicker, runner and passer in the remainder of their Super Rugby season. They will have to accept whatever they can get from young, developing David Horwitz in the knowledge that he will not be able to replicate the same link to either Bernard Foley (inside) or Israel Folau (outside).
For the Wallabies the situation is more complex. The only player in Australia who can possibly justify the same ‘special accommodation’ as Kurtley Beale at 12 plays for the Reds, and his name is Karmichael Hunt. Hunt has the closest skill-set to Beale in terms of his ability in the backfield and to play the support role to Bernard Foley as first or second receiver, straightening the line and creating space for the outside backs.
Hunt is tougher and more physical than Beale, but his experience at 15 with the Reds this season has left him short of practice in the roles Michael Cheika would demand of him. It would be a huge call for Cheika to select him at 12 to start against England with the first Test at Brisbane less than one month away.
Every other Australian-based selection means a change of system which Michael Cheika will be reluctant to make. Samu Kerevi in the centres with Tevita Kuridrani pares Australia down to a single play-maker in Foley – and Kerevi is clearly the sort of player you want on the end of the pass, not trying to provide it himself.
The Brumbies pair of Christian Lealiifano and Matt Toomua do not have the same mix of skills as Beale at first or second receiver – Lealiifano is not as aggressive on the ad-line, and while Toomua will take the ball up, he does not have the same touch on the pass when he gets there – and neither are as effective as Beale from the backfield.
Which brings us back full circle to the ‘European problem’. Probably the only player Cheika will trust to do the business at 12 against England is Toulon-based Matt Giteau, and we do not know whether Giteau’s contract will allow release for the full five-week Test window from end of May to beginning of July, especially with Toulon likely to be in the thick of the Top 14 playoffs throughout June.
Sooner or later, the situation between the English and French clubs on the one hand, and the national unions in the Southern Hemisphere on the other will escalate from uncomfortable coexistence to all-out war. It is just a case of when it happens.