Brumbies, Tahs, Rebels fly high while Reds go up flames

I’ll be surprised if anyone in The Roar‘s tipping competition picked all the winning sides in the fifth round of the 2012 Super Rugby tournament. If they did, they’re a genius.

The round confirmed an impression that has been building since the opening round, that this is the most wide-open tournament we’ve had since it started in 1996.

Just look at the overall standings, bear in mind that the top four teams (the Stormers, Brumbies, Chiefs, Bulls) have had a bonus four points added on their totals for their bye, and try and remember whether anyone predicted that any of these sides would be contenders this season.

The last team on the table is the Blues on seven points. Before the season started, the Blues were touted as one of the sides that could probably win the tournament. Like most of the sides, the Blues have suffered from having many of their leading players out with injury. They are also suffering from very poor coaching.

How Pat Lam has stayed so long in the job as Blues coach is beyond my comprehension. He has the cattle. The Blues defeated the Bulls at Pretoria in a convincing manner. But Lam can’t settle on a halfback/fly half pair, even though the Piri Weepu/Gareth Anscombe pairing was brilliant for the Blues.

On Friday night Lam played the Albie Matheson/Piri Weepu pairing. He hooked Matheson at half-time, moved Weepu to his best position of halfback and brought on Michael Hobbs as the new fly half, and left Anscombe on the bench!

The Hurricanes scored a fabulous try right on time to win the match. Beauden Barrett, the young fly half, and Dan Carter’s successor in my opinion, made a telling break which was finished off by the best centre in world rugby right now, Conrad Smith.

Although the Hurricanes are in the top six (just) they lack a decent scrum which will probably tell against them when the season gets to its championship phase. They do have a terrific set of backs who can carve up sides that relax on defence.

It is the lack of any penetration in the backs that is the feature of the Western Force’s game, unfortunately. They play hard, hang on to the ball, but like a tennis baseliner with no volley game, they don’t get any easy points. At the end of their match with the Rebels and down 29 – 30, they could not get field position or a break.

For the Rebels, though, the match was a vindication of the non-stars (except Danny Cipriani) in the side. There was no James O’Connor, Stirling Mortlock, or Kurtley Beale. Moreover, there have been rumours of dissension in the coaching ranks.

The Rebels play the Highlanders at the deep south of Invercargill on Friday night. This will be a test for both sides about their proper ranking.

With their stars back, the Rebels have a look of a side that could be much higher in the standings than its current 10th position.

The Highlanders have won four of their five matches, most of them narrowly as their plus Points Differential of three suggests. Against the Brumbies they looked like an industrious side that lacked fire power to capitalise on their aggressive pack. The forwards missed Adam Thompson’s fiery, aggressive running and tackling. And Hosea Gear, the smash-through winger, looked to be ineffective against a well-ordered defence.

The Brumbies are a similar sort of side to the Highlanders. Curiously they have the same plus Points Differential of three, but against the Highlanders, Joe Tomane gave them a lot of dash and power on the wing. And his first intercept try very early in the match was probably the crucial play in the Brumbies victory.

The Highlanders were all over the Brumbies in the opening half-hour. But that Brumbies runaway try, which was matched by another a bit later in the match, meant that the Highlanders were always trying to catch-up on the score board.

The Brumbies are going to be hard to beat at Canberra. But they will have to do more on the road to maintain their top-four standing. Having said that it is clear that Jake White is doing a terrific job with a team made up mainly of no-names. The forwards are the only Australian pack who seem to have mastered the rolling maul. Their defence is strong. Right now they look to be the strongest of the Australian sides.

The try of the round was scored not long after half time by the Cheetahs against the Crusaders, just when the Crusaders looked like running away with the match. The try started deep inside the Cheetahs’ 22 from a turnover. The ball went wide and the three quarters and fullback combined brilliantly to plant the ball in the corner. The Cheetahs then went on the attack with a vengeance and levelled the scores with minutes left to play.

For some moments it looked as if the upset of the season, even bigger than the Force defeating the Waratahs, was going to happen. But great Crusader nous and courage resolved the issue with Israel Dagg, finally playing in his best position of fullback, scoring the winning try.

The Crusaders traditionally start the Super Rugby tournament slowly. They are doing so again this season. But they have the team sheet and the look of being the best of the New Zealand sides. They were thwarted in the second half when the Cheetahs lost two of their props and non-pushing scrums were put down. Up until then, the Crusader scrum had destroyed the Cheetahs on every occasion.

I wondered whether the Cheetahs injuries were somehow contrived as they got a tremendous benefit from the non-contestable scrums system. It is probably time, too, for SANZAR, to rule on an eight-man bench with two props to prevent the nonsense that non-contestable scrums bring into the game.

Now for the Waratahs. The first thing to say is that the franchise desperately needed the (flukey?) victory over the Sharks. The afternoon was a glorious one, with that magic Sydney blue sky and bright sunshine and hardly any wind. The opening phase of play from the kickoff lasted five minutes, a remarkable length of time with play moving from one side of the field to the other. And it was the Sharks who seized the moment and scored early on.

The ease and efficiency with which the Sharks carved up the Waratahs with their outside breaks looked ominous. To their credit, and mainly on the strength of Brendan McKibbin’s kicking (goal-kicking that is, as thankfully he seemed to have discarded the dreaded chip kick) and running, the Waratahs stayed close to the Sharks, even though they were being out-played at times.

Readers of The Roar will know that I have been less than impressed with the play of Tom Carter over the years. Let it be said, though, that he had a blinder in this match which was so important for the Waratahs. In the words of the cliché, he stood up to be counted. Carter made breaks. He tackled. He charged into ruck and mauls. He was, along with McKibbin, the Waratahs’ man of the match.

With eight minutes left to play, the Sharks had established a 30 – 27 lead after kicking successive penalties. Then came the finest minutes the Waratahs have played in several years. The snake oil nonsense of the ‘new attacking kicking’ game was rightly thrown away. They ran the ball, and more importantly ran hard on to the ball.

Dean Mumm’s run from inside his 22 down to about 30m from the Sharks’ tryline, smashing through tacklers like a runaway truck through protective barriers, brought the crowd to their feet.

Minutes later when another series of charges and inter-play passing saw Tom Kingston streak for the corner and then dive metres out to prevent being shoved into touch. I must admit that this writer broke the ordinary journalistic rules and lept to his feet to punch the air in triumph.

The match statistics make interesting reading. Possession was shared 50-50 between the two teams. The Waratahs made 766m in 112 carries compared with the 545 in 102 carries by the Sharks. The Waratahs missed only 20 tackles to the 31 missed by the Sharks. The Waratahs scored four tries and two penalties: the Sharks scored three tries and three penalties. And the Waratahs conceded 10 penalties to the Sharks’ six.

The last statistic sort of explains (in my opinion) why the Waratahs almost lost a match they should have won comfortably, if the statistics have any validity. The referee, New Zealand’s Chris Pollock, was very tough on the Waratahs for sealing off at the rucks.

This was unfair, as what seemed to be happening was that the Sharks did not contest many rucks. The Waratahs forwards, with no one to ruck against, tended to go to ground, as you do. And then Pollock would penalise them for sealing off.

It’s time for SANZAR to look at this. If teams do not contest a ruck, this gives them an advantage in numbers in their defensive line. The corresponding benefit to the attacking side should be that if forwards coming into an uncontested (by the opposition) fall over, they should not be penalised.

I was watching the Bulls-Reds match on replay when the phone rang. It was the publisher of The Roar, Zac Zavos, ringing up for a chat. I had watched 25 minutes of play, and the score was 3-3. I was amazed when Zac said, “Pity about the Reds being thrashed!”

Then I went back and watched the thrashing. Once again, as they did against the Sharks last week, the Reds lost their fly half at a crucial time in the match. But in the last 50 minutes of the match they were out-played totally by a rampant Bulls side playing with strength, athleticism, pace and a high degree of skill.

It was difficult to believe that the Bulls had been out-played by the Blues (of all teams!) two weeks ago. But this round, at least, the South African sides were outstanding with their ball-in-hand running.

As for the Reds, they are now in the same situation as the Waratahs were in before the weekend. Before the Bulls thrashed them, the Reds had won three matches. They had not played any team higher in the table than seven. They had only scored four tries and had four tries scored against them. The Bulls are the second-ranked team in the tournament, and they shot the Reds down in flames.

With two successive losses, and a negative points differential of 34 only exceeded by the Cheetahs’ -35 and the Force -44, the Reds are facing the same sort of crisis now that the Waratahs faced a week ago.

Can the Reds rise up against the Force at Perth next weekend?