Super Rugby final: Entertainers vs benchmark

Well then, hasn’t this set up a nice old week of trans-Tasman sledging? An Australian team, playing exciting rugby, in front of a parochial home crowd, against the one constant of Super Rugby success, having a endured a season on the road.

In many ways, the Reds-Crusaders final is the promoter’s dream for the expanded season. And if the team from Christchurch couldn’t play their final game of a troubled year at home in front of their expectant, disaster-hardened supporters, then it is somewhat fitting that Brisbane play host after a difficult time for both the city and the state of Queensland.

It’s worth remembering that not six months ago, the first three or four rows of seats at Suncorp Stadium, and indeed, the entire playing surface, was under water. On Saturday night, the teams will emerge from makeshift dressing rooms in the underground car park, such was the level of damage to the main rooms under the stands.

While the floods throughout Brisbane and south-eastern Queensland, as well as the cyclones that hit the north didn’t bring quite the same level of destruction as did the earthquakes in Christchurch and the surrounding Canterbury regions, the need for the people of both regions to get on with their lives is equally apparent.

How much the fortunes of their rugby teams have played a part in this is something I can’t and won’t speculate about. However, I would like to think that there’s a happy feeling of expectation about both teams this week within their followers. Is there any way the shiny new Super Rugby rocket ship trophy can be shared, to avoid any disappointment?

And so the sledging is on. If there’s anything Australian and New Zealand rugby supporters love more than offering harsh opinions on their own side, it’s firing broadsides over the ditch.

The comparisons of Beau Robinson to Richie McCaw will be intriguing this week, not just for their ability as players, but their ability to get away with murder at the breakdown. If there was one thing the Reds have missed in Robinson’s injury absence, it’s been his ruck “management”, if I can be polite. The Crusaders have found a willing understudy to McCaw in this regard in the headgeared Matt Todd, and the Reds will be well served by Laim Gill off the bench.

It’s prospects like this that make me glad I’m not a referee. When it comes to the breakdown on Saturday night, if one team’s not playing the ref, it’ll be fair to assume the other team is.

But ignoring the dark arts of the ruck for the moment, this game looks to have everything you could possibly hope for in a final.

The Reds are very much the darlings of the competition; they’re the entertainers. And suddenly everyone’s second team, Queenslanders aside. Any team that can score tries on the counter like Ben Tapaui’s beauty on one side of halftime, and follow it up in the second half with one even better to Rod Davies from a set piece is going to get people’s attention.

Of course, this wasn’t a new occurrence from the Reds; this was a performance years in the making. From the moment the Reds first started throwing the ball around early last season, there’s been a healthy amount of hope that running rugby could equate to winning rugby. We find out for sure and certain on Saturday night.

For me, there were three highlights in the Reds semi-final triumph over the Blues, and the first two I’ve touched on already – Tapuai’s and Davies’ tries.

It’s hard to know what was more enjoyable about Tapuai’s try, Quade Cooper’s audacious offload, or Tapuai’s pickup from below knee height at full sprint. Outstanding.

For Davies’ try, his second of three for the night, it was all about the execution from a set piece. There’s always a lot to like when obvious set plays come off just as they would at training, and I reckon as Davies doubled around behind Tapuai and Anthony Faingaa at precisely the right time to meet Cooper’s looping pass, he might’ve been thinking the same thing. I was certainly thankful for the extra replays.

The real highlight for the Reds though, in my humble opinion, was the way Cooper and Will Genia controlled the last ten or fifteen minutes of the game. Whether it was smart little box kicks to the corner, or deliberate and calculated direction of the Reds pick-and-go traffic deep into Blues territory for Cooper’s eventual field goal, it was game management that championships are built on. Once Genia and Cooper clicked into this mode late in the game, the Reds were never going to lose.

The final will be a whole other story, of course.

In the Crusaders, the Reds will face the very measure of provincial rugby success in this part of the world. Seven Super Rugby championships, twice runners-up, and three more semi-final appearances prior to this year, the Crusaders have never finished the regular season lower than fourth in the last ten years.

They are literally the benchmark of southern hemisphere rugby.

The way they so clinically disposed of the Stormers on their home turf in Cape Town was almost scary. Jaque Fourie’s disallowed try in the 54th minute at Newlands evaporated any faint hopes of the Stormers season extending another week, and though the final score would be recorded only ten minutes later, there was never any chance the Crusaders wouldn’t be making a tenth appearance in a final in sixteen years.

If Quade Cooper was the star in Brisbane, Dan Carter wasn’t far behind him in Cape Town. Carter’s tactical kicking was excellent as usual, but it was also noticeable in the second half how he was dictating the Crusaders’ forward momentum. Not unlike a league halfback, Carter would station his runners off him at first receiver, and it nullified the Stormers midfield defence well.

And so, it all comes down to 80 minutes this Saturday night.

Super Rugby has served up some absolute belter games in 2011’s new expanded format, and it would be highly appropriate if the ‘Entertainers’ against the ‘Benchmark’ topped the lot of them. It should be a cracking final.