The Melbourne Rebels’ second season is near. They are still at the embryonic stages of development and are trying to find their place at the table with the big boys.
I believe the Rebels have possibly sacrificed a little grunt up front for a shot at the more glamorous big imports out wide in Kurtley Beale and James O’Connor. Surely one rather than two of those purchases was required, and better known support in the forwards could have been brought in.
There are excellent parallels between this approach and The Social Network, the movie adapted story of the beginning of Facebook.
There comes a point, after the original site’s conception has made waves and created a small beach-head in the realm of social networking, when Mark Zuckerberg decides he needs to find a way to dramatically expand his business and really dominate the market.
He all but ignores his best friend’s normal marketing approach and hooks himself to the flashy young man who invented Napster (a site that changed music forever before record labels shut it down) and his Venture Capital buddies.
This causes a huge amount of relationship tension and is a lot of what we take away from the movie – was it worth going the flashy way? Did it leave you without substance?
Rebel fans will probably find themselves asking the same question a lot this year. This season will see them without the rock Greg Somerville, who was completely underrated last year even with the praise he received. They haven’t really brought in anything of note to build the front row or any other areas of the pack, either.
One of their bigger forward signings has been Paul Alo-Emile. He is an Australian under-20s representative and touted for big things just as most other rep players are. However at the age of 19 he isn’t going to bring the house down for a couple more years at best.
He may be able to run the ball but will need to work very hard to get his scrimmaging up to a level of the better forward packs.
The three players that standout from their pack at the moment are breakaway Jarrod Saffy, lock Hugh Pyle and number eight Gareth Delve.
Saffy was a first-year player in Super Rugby last year and although he played as a youngster was probably still adjusting and working out his spot in the team for the majority of the year. Everyone was impressed with his athleticism and work rate around the park – a welcome contribution from his league training.
This year he will be expected to continue that high tackle rate and add some bigger impact ball running to that mould.
Hugh Pyle is considered a great young prospect, to the point where he was named as one of the Rebel’s vice captains. He didn’t have any experience at this level last year but was able to hold his own and then some.
He wasn’t the best lock in the competition, but with only 10 full games of experience he is a fairly good bet to improve this year. He is tall enough at 200cm and was obviously agile and quick when he scored an intercept try last year.
The older more experienced Delve was good last year. He was one of the reliable week to week prospects for the Rebels after the first month. It took him a little while to get up to speed on Super Rugby, but once he adjusted he was always around the ball making a nuisance and tackling hard.
His ball running got better as the season wore on. He is a vice captain this year and was definitely one of the best leaders on the park last year. The Rebels will need him to be Mr Dependable again.
The jewels of this team are definitely now out wide with the imports O’Connor and Beale. It will be great to watch this team as they attempt to gel the very explosive skills of those two with the incumbent 10, Danny Cipriani.
Year one probably wouldn’t be categorised as a raging success for Cipriani in Melbourne. People thought he would settle down and get to work a bit more than he did; he seemed to underestimate the ability of the local media to include his past in any small indiscretion off the field.
On the field is probably a similar story. He played really well in some matches – his kicking almost solely kept the team in it sometimes – but there were plenty of matches in which he disappeared.
I for one would love to see him run the ball a smidgen more. He has a great first few steps that enable him to blow past an unprepared defender. He doesn’t utilise that enough.
Also the obvious area for improvement was his defence. There is often less time to settle into the line in Super Rugby and he wasn’t able to make the tackles when he wasn’t in the stronger position.
O’Connor will probably play 12 and Beale will slot in at fullback most of the time. They will probably interchange positions a little bit though. Both of them have skills that allow this. Hopefully they don’t take too much of the ball away from the bigger straighter running backs but play the facilitator enough to keep the defenders guessing.
If Cipriani really fires this year and O’Connor and Beale keep playing to their own high standards the Rebels will already have one of the best backlines going around. That is without adding in Cooper Vuna, who will grow in confidence this year. Mark Gerrard and Richard Kingi will also cause people to watch closely.
Last year scoring points wasn’t easy for this side sometimes. They are obviously hoping that the best way to remedy this quickly is to get a few players on the park who can score from anywhere.
Now as we see the season unfold we will know whether going the flashy route worked out for the Rebels. We might find out they needed to secure a few more proven, quality forwards to compete in every match, but there will be opportunities on some nights for the quality out wide to find its stride.
The best part about the Facebook story is that many people will know the flashy strategy worked out so well that they are about to make an IPO for the value of five billion dollars.
They didn’t take the simple, more sustainable route in building the business. They risked a lot by going big early and it is about to reap rewards. The Melbourne Rebels will be hoping for the same risk/reward picture to be painted in a couple of years’ time.
Fearless Predictions
Australian Conference: third
Overall: Good, but not good enough
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