It’s official. Last weekend’s round has produced the most losses, five, the Australian Super Rugby franchises have ever inflicted on their supporters and themselves in a single round.

The ARU’s website states that the Western Force’s loss to the Stormers is “the first winless weekend for Aussie teams since 2005, before the Force or the Rebels were in the competition.” Now 11 years later, this disaster has been trumped by a winless round that includes all five Australian Super Rugby sides.

Let us set out the details of this round from hell:

Blues 40 (6 tries) – Brumbies 15 (2 tries)
Reds 5 (1 try) – Chiefs 50 (7 tries)
Crusaders 85 (13 tries) – 26 Rebels (4 tries)
Waratahs 17 (2 tries) – 28 (3 tries)
Western Force 3 – Stormers 22 (3 tries)

The Australian sides scored 9 tries and their opponents, four New Zealand sides and a South African side, scored 32.

What this try differential might have been if conditions had been conducive to the ensemble game played in full orchestral style by the New Zealand sides and in quartet mode by the Stormers is something that should keep Michael Cheika awake at night.

To add to the disaster for the integrity of the Australian Conference, four of the five losses provided bonus points for their opponents. This is despite the fact that three of the matches were played in Australia and two were played in New Zealand. So much for the touted home ground advantage.

Even more critical is the fact that the Brumbies and the Waratahs were playing for a home final for the winner of the Australian Conference, and a possible wild card finals place for the local team edged out of the home final position.

For the Brumbies and the Waratahs there was, as the cliche says, “everything to play for.” Essentially, they had to win their weekend matches and next weekend to give themselves a strong chance of playing in the finals.

Both these teams played so negatively (especially the Brumbies) that you had to presume they were petrified by the challenge. Rather than rising to the occasion, they sank to mediocrity under the pressure of the occasion.

They played not to lose, rather than going all out to win.

Oh my brilliant Brumbies teams of so long ago! Instead of the dynamic forward play and sensational cutting edge back play of the glory days of the first three coaches, Rod Macqueen, Eddie Jones and David Nucifora, we had a yawn-a-thon throwback to JakeBall, with incessant kicking and an undue reliance on the winning power of the driving maul.

Okay, the Brumbies did make inroads with some of their driving mauls. But this is a one-trick pony of a game plan. The Blues, after some struggles and some curious decisions against them by the New Zealand referee Ben O’Keefe, finally worked out how to nullify the rolling mauls.

The Brumbies backs looked pedestrian in their play and their thought processes. They had a Puma at halfback and three Wallabies from 10 to outside centre. They were all outplayed by their young Blues opposites with not an All Black among them.

So superior were the Blues back line youngsters that they created two tries to none while their captain Jerome Kaino was in the sin bin.

The dreaded question must be asked: Is Stephen Larkham the real deal as a backline coach?

One of the tests of the quality of a coach, in my opinion, is whether he gets improvement out of his players. It is interesting and perhaps significant that there is no Brumbies back who has improved this season. In fact, two of the Brumbies/Wallabies, Matt Toomua and Tevita Kuridrani, have actually regressed this season.

The Blues coaching staff virtually read the Brumbies’ rush-defence system and had plays and systems that entirely negated its effectiveness. Toomua rushed up all night and did not, as far as I could see, make a telling tackle.

There were multiple ways in which Toomua was thwarted. Sometimes the cut-out pass was used by the Blues which resulted in Toomua attacking the wrong receiver. Other times the first-receiver runners held on to the ball and ran behind the onrushing Toomua into a yawning gap. And occasionally, a receiver used fast hands to get rid of the ball to runners, either on the inside or outside, to put them into gaps.

The fact of the matter is that the Brumbies and Wallabies back coach was totally out-coached by a first-year Super Rugby coach, Tana Umaga.

Once again, an Australian side succumbed to the Eden Park Hoodoo. The Blues have now won 13 of their past 15 Super Rugby matches against Australian teams at Eden Park. In my view, the way to beat hoodoos like this is for a team like the Brumbies to take their big game to the contest, not the small game they opted to play on Friday night.

The Brumbies are still well-placed to win the designated Australian Conference finals spot which carries with it the home ground advantage. They can ensure their own destiny. If they inflict a bonus point defeat on the Western Force on Saturday night at Canberra, they will represent the Australian Conference in the 2016 Super Rugby finals.

If the Brumbies do this they will thwart Daryl Gibson’s chance of being the first Waratahs coach to reach the finals in his first season in the job.

By and large, after a disastrous start to the season when four of the first six matches were lost, Gibson has done a fair job as the Waratahs coach.

He has tried to re-fashion the Cheika game plan of endless, repetitive recycling of the ball into a system that embraces the New Zealand notion of disrupting set defensive lines with contestable kicking, high and along the ground.

He has moved Israel Folau into the centres where he needs to be playing. However, Folau is moved out of the front line when opponents have the ball. This enables the opposition, as the Hurricanes did on Saturday night, to kick to Folau, knock him over and take him out of play.

The Gibson dream is still a sort of virtual reality depending on several big Ifs.

The Waratahs are on 39 points, along with the Brumbies. The Brumbies, though, have won more matches than the Waratahs. So if the two teams are tied on points at the end of next week’s round, the Brumbies will go through to the finals and the season will be finished for the Waratahs.

The Western Forcem who the Brumbies are lucky enough to be playingm are as weak as the Blues, the Waratahs opponents at Eden Park on Friday night, are strong.

Just beating the Blues is going to be an achievement for the Waratahs. But although their destiny is in their own hands and in the hands of the Brumbies, I still think that they are a strong chance to go further in the finals if they make them than the Brumbies.

I am not quite as critical of the Waratahs as I am of the Brumbies in their performances last weekend. The Waratahs were in their match against the Hurricanes and looked possible winners from about the 20th minute through to the 60th minute. The opening and closing sections of the match were their downfall.

But there was a lack of leadership and skills under pressure that exposed the Waratahs to their defeat.

Why, for instance, did Israel Folau hardly touch the ball in the first half? When he had his chance at the beginning of the second half he beat off tacklers to surge through for a terrific try that gave the Waratahs a 17-11 lead.

Why couldn’t the Waratahs win their own lineout ball at crucial times?

Where was the flowing ensemble play that was a feature of the 2014 Michael Cheika-coached champions?

Will any coach tell Nick Phipps to just shut up, stop coaching the referees and concentrate on getting to the rucks in timely fashion, sending out catchable passes and making the occasional sniping run to keep the ruck defence honest?

And why is there such a lack of execution in crucial times by the Waratahs? In the 76th minute of play, with the scoreline Hurricanes 28 – Waratahs 17, the Waratahs had a lineout throw five metres out from the Hurricanes try line. A try would have given the home side a bonus point and a converted try would have given the Waratahs a final, desperate chance of even pulling off a sensational victory.

We had some dillying around and then a hurried throw. The Hurricanes thwarted a drive and then forced an error under their posts. Strong teams, strong in their skills and their mental attitude, just do not give up chances of making crucial scores as the Waratahs did throughout the match and, indeed, the season.

Michael Hooper, in my view, is a skipper of the future. Right now he is too young and too keen to do the exciting thing rather than the right thing when he makes his decisions. Who should captain the side, though, is a matter that needs to be resolved for next season.

As usual it was an ordeal to endure the Phil Kearns comments on Fox Sports about the injustices inflicted on the Waratahs by the referee and the assistant referees. Greg Clarke and George Gregan tried to explain to him where he was invariably wrong with his calls. Generally to no avail.

But Kearns did make one comment that was spot on. Towards the end of the match when yet another ball was dropped and yet another pass went astray, he opined: “The passing skills of the New Zealand players are far superior to those of the Australians and South Africans.”

Right on, Phil!

The 2015 Rugby World Cup triumph and now the stupendous play of the New Zealand teams in this year’s Super Rugby tournament have been built on a simple premise: rugby is best played as a passing game rather than a kicking game.

About 80 per cent of practice time by the New Zealand teams is spent on honing passing and catching skills. And it shows.

The way the New Zealand teams exploded into action in the opening minutes of the latest round virtually sealed their victories. The passing was beautifully varied, it was long, short, hard and flat, short and pop, invariably under the eye line and in front of the runner.

This passing enables the New Zealand sides to out-flank the defensive line thereby putting enormous pressure on the forwards who were forced to chase players running on outside gaps against them.

The irony in all this is that the New Zealanders are essentially replicating and taking it to a higher level of the old Randwick “Galloping Greens” game. Anyone who has had some vigorous discussion on the correct way to pass and catch the ball from Geoff Mould, the discoverer and creator of the fabulous Ella brothers game, will know what I mean.

Where the Hurricanes were flooding onto passes and putting flat runners into space with beautifully weighted balls, both backs and forwards, the Waratahs were laboured in their passing, catching and running.

There was one moment that caught my eye. Towards the end of the match, there was some disjointed play. Nick Phipps grabbed a stray ball and popped it up for Rob Horne to run on to. Unfortunately, Horne dropped the ball.

He did not expect the pass and his hands were as hard as concrete. But this was a ball that a New Zealand prop, say, would have snaffled and moved forward to continue the attack or then pass on to a player in a better position to continue the attack than he was.

The bad news is that the gap between Australian rugby and New Zealand rugby has seemingly increased this year to the point where every New Zealand team in the Super Rugby finals will have accumulated more points than the sole Australian team.

The worse news is that New Zealand rugby is determined to ensure that the gap is a permanent divide. The evidence for this is a fascinating story in the Daily Telegraph published last Friday with the headline: Chiefs’ Secret Ploy To Lure Future Wallabies.

When the Chiefs were in Brisbane preparing for their annihilation of the Reds, the franchise held a secret training session with a couple of dozen of Australia’s most talented rugby stars with a view to poaching the best of the bunch.

An Australian player agent ran the event at Souths Brisbane Rugby Club. It featured players between 17 and 21, some of them from interstate, and all of them eligible to play for the New Zealand All Blacks.

One player was quoted:”I just want to get the best opportunities in rugby, whether that is here or in New Zealand. Obviously I have roots in New Zealand and every Kiwi dreams of of playing for the All Blacks.”

Meanwhile, Israel Folau has been touting the value of Jarryd Hayne coming across to the Waratahs and allowing him (Folau) to concentrate on playing fullback.

The Waratahs already have someone who can play fullback up to international level, probably better than the muscle-bound Hayne, and that is the youngster Andrew Kellaway.

A rugby nation that sees its future in an ageing league/NFL/sevens (?) player rather than in a cluster of talented youngsters is doomed to the seeing its Super Rugby sides destroyed as the Australian sides were last woeful weekend.

Once again, where is the ARU in all of this?

Are they allowing the young talent being developed here to be poached back to New Zealand?

Surely it is time to start demanding better Super Rugby results from the players and the coaches, or heads will roll?