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Melbourne Rebel's Luke Rooney is tackled by Kutley Beale and Lachie Turner of the Waratahs, in the 2011 season opener match of the Super Rugby 15, played at AAMI Park in Melbourne, Friday Feb. 18, 2011. The Waratahs defeated the Rebels by 43-0. (AAP Image/Joe Castro).
On the plane flying down to Melbourne, five days before the Melbourne Rebels play the NSW Waratahs in their opening match of the 2011 Super Rugby tournament, I read the sports section of the Herald Sun.
This newspaper is the pulpit of AFL at its triumphal worst. It panders to the sort of AFL fundamentalism that saw a Victorian delegation travel to London in the 1890s to lobby the IRB to make the Australian Rules the world’s football code.
In Melbourne, and increasingly throughout Australia, the AFL has behaved as if the IRB had agreed with its demand.
So it was disappointing but predictable that there was only one relatively short story reviewing Friday’s Rebels – Waratahs match, arguably the most important game of rugby ever played in Melbourne.
The story was buried well back in the section. In the sports gossip section there was a staged photo-story featuring the Rebels captain Stirling Mortlock and a drummer from the band that is going to perform Rebels song before the big match.
There was not much consolation for rugby union supporters in Melbourne in the fact that the Melbourne Storm, a Premiership-winning rugby league franchise, scored only one story.
Tuesday 15 February
The Herald Sun’s main rugby story today features a prediction by the former Wallaby hooker, Brendan Cannon, that the Rebels will finish last in this year’s Super Rugby tournament. The heading is gleefully titled: “You’re Cannon fodder.”
The argument in the article is that new franchises generally “flounder” in their first year. The Rebels back-up squad is too inexperienced, Cannon says, to cover the inevitable injuries to the front line players. This sort of prediction falls into the category of G.K.Galbraith’s remark about a fellow economist who predicted six of the last two recessions.
Rebels coach Rod Macqueen’s problem is rather more complicated than Cannon’s forthright blast might suggest.
Rugby has changed significantly in the last two years to favour attacking rugby (which is hard to coach well) over defensive rugby (which is easier to coach). Chris Hickey, the Waratahs coach, who was Macqueen’s assistant with the ACT Brumbies, is wondering what tricks the smart Macqueen will bring to this new era.
I think I can help him.
Macqueen told me not long after he committed to coaching the Rebels that he is looking at rugby league strategies as a way of defeating rugby’s new flat-line defensive systems. England are already doing this with the former league winger, Chris Ashton.
Against Italy last weekend, Ashton scored three tries trailing the inside shoulders of the five-eights (in the league manner) as they took the ball to the line.
The Waratahs on Friday night, and the other teams throughout the season, should expect to see the former league winger Luke Rooney and Stirling Mortlock (both big runners like Ashton) running angles off the deft passing from Danny Cipriani playing a first receiver game.
Thursday February 17
Today was the day of the huge Weary Dunlop Rugby lunch. The Crown Casino, where the event was held, was so impressed with the number of heavyweights present (including the Victorian Premier Ted Ballieu, a former enthusiastic second-rower) and the sheer class of the entertainment (the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra and Teddy Tahu Rhodes) that they said they would pick up the tab for the event.
At the table for journalists I noticed Ron Reed taking notes of Alan Jones’ memorable speech.
Reed is a star sports columnist for the Herald Sun. Yesterday he wrote a piece virtually apologising for being too anti-football when he was sports editor. He gave the Rebels a good write-up in the column, indicating that some aspects of the AFL closed shop are being changed.
The lunch, which featured fireworks and enthusiastic talk of the Rebels being ‘competitive,’ ended with the unleashing of a great new rugby anthem For The Love Of The Game which was written and sung by Mike Brady.
This song doesn’t match the superb Up There Cazaly, surely the greatest football anthem ever, but it is a terrific song and anthem and will become a rugby classic.
Writing up my notes after the lunch, I suggested that now everything depended on the match against the Waratahs for the Rebels to cap off an historic week.
Friday February 18
As I watched on one of the ground television screens the upset victory of the Highlanders over the Hurricanes (making a mess of my Roar tips in the process), a number of Waratahs fans came up to me to say ‘hello.’
Even the great David Brockhoff had a chat with me. There were, it seemed to me, a large number of Waratahs fans who had flown down for the game. As one of them said, he had to be there for such an historic occasion.
Most of the 25, 254 spectators there at the splendid AAMI Stadium (the best rugby ground in the world, according to Rod Macqueen) were Rebels supporters.
It was amazing to see how many of them were decked out in the Rebels gear.
For the first 20 minutes or so the Rebels fired off their best shots, with good field position and a couple of bursts towards the Waratahs try line. The crowd roar during these assaults was thunderous.
You had the feeling that if the Rebels could get a score this crowd enthusiasm might have lifted the side to do great things. But it was not to be.
The Rebels scrum and lineout failed them whenever they were on attack. Their defensive line made some elementary positional mistakes. They had their hooker sin-binned and in the 10 minutes he was off the field the Waratahs piled on 19 points, more than enough to ensure a victory.
In the end the Waratahs ran away with the match, although the Rebels kept the scoring to under 50.
The crowd, after a Mexican wave or two, re-gathered its focus and roared the Rebels on at the end of the match when the home side tried to score a late try.
I believe that a true summary of the week is that the Rebels excelled with their off the field preparations. This is going to be a significant franchise in future.
But on the field?
Perhaps Brendan Cannon and the bookies who have already paid out for the Rebels finishing last will be right. But the great thing is that the Rebels were not as terrible as they might have been in our direst and darkest thoughts.
The side needs to get much better to be ‘competitive.’ But there is some hope that throughout the season, with the tremendous coaching staff the Rebels have, this could happen.