SPIRO: Is the tide turning against NZ teams in Super Rugby?

New Zealand rugby was spared a weekend of Super Rugby results from hell by a very close and fraught victory by the once-imperious Crusaders over the perpetual wannabes, the Stormers.

It took a penalty goal near the end of the match by Tom Taylor to ensure that a 13-year sequence of Crusader victories over South African sides at Christchurch was maintained. Just.

The glory days of the Crusaders sweeping aside teams at home from not only South Africa but from New Zealand and Australia seem to be over, at least for the time being.

The Crusaders are without Dan Carter (on a rugby sabbatical) and Richie McCaw (a fractured thumb). When these two players are in the same side, whether it is the Crusaders or the All Blacks, their winning rate is at a 90 percent level.

Without them, and even with Kieran Read, the best player in world rugby, leading the side, the Crusaders are looking like a second-rate, struggling team.

The knives are out for coach Todd Blackadder. Certainly, the Crusaders under him have shown nothing new from the successful structures developed by Robbie Deans, which have now been overtaken by time and oppositions understanding how to cope with them.

Blackadder, too, has shown an uncanny knack of not getting the best out of his star players.

Robbie Fruean, now playing for the Chiefs, seems to be twice the player he was for the Crusaders. And how could Blackadder seemingly destroy the confidence and talents of Israel Dagg?

I’ve always believed that among other things, one of the tests of a good coach is that all players tend to play well under them.

Blackadder fails this test, and so does the embattled Hurricanes coach, Mark Hammett.

Hammett was forced on the Hurricanes by the New Zealand Rugby Union, who were scared of losing him to the Melbourne Rebels. In hindsight, this was a bad call.

Hammett has taken a side that won 60 percent of its matches under Colin Cooper to a side that hangs around the 40 percent mark.

Moreover, the Hurricanes’ attractive style in the past has been compromised by Hammett in a way that was embarrassing last weekend when the Hurricanes tried to play a plodding form of structured rugby.

It was not until the end of the match that the Hurricanes started playing with their usual freedom from heavily-structured play and were more free-form and successful in their attacks than earlier in the game.

With the Blues going under to the Bulls, there has been a spate of hand-wringing by New Zealand rugby writers.

The gist of their comments is perhaps New Zealand rugby is on a slide and that the poor form of the New Zealand teams in the Super Rugby tournament so far is a sign of this.

I would exclude the All Blacks from this general comment about the slide in the New Zealand Super Rugby sides. But it is true that so far the New Zealand teams have been disappointing when playing teams out of their conference.

“Ah,” say some New Zealanders, “the New Zealand teams tend to start slowly.” And this is true.

But it is the quality or lack of quality in the play of the Hurricanes, the Crusaders and the Blues against the Bulls that seem to suggest a tide turning.

I don’t think we are going to get too many triumphal articles from New Zealand journalists about how weak the Australian conference is in comparison with the New Zealand conference. Nor should we – the Australian conference looks to be stronger than it has ever been.

After the Rebels’ smashing of the Cheetahs, who would have thought they, in turn, would be smashed by the Western Force?

Was the home ground advantage in play in this match? The strong tendency this year and most years is for the home ground advantage to be just that, an advantage. This is why the Brumbies result was so special as they defeated the Hurricanes at Wellington.

Whatever it was, the Force was a different side to the bumble-footed muddied oafs (except there is no mud on grounds these days) that posed as Force players in earlier games.

The Force may well have been helped, too, by a major coaching blunder by the Rebels head coach, Tony McGahan. He made no fewer than six changes to the starting side that defeated the Cheetahs 35-14.

One of the rules of selection is never change a winning side, unless you have to. The notion put forward by McGahan that new players would put pressure on the dropped players has never made sense to me, especially when a team is playing a match it is expected to win (hands up anyone who took the Force in The Roar‘s Tipping Competition!).

A coach should always nail the win by selecting the players who have won for him in the past.

There is one other matter about this game that continues to rankle. SANZAR allowed two teams playing in blue – dark blue for the Rebels and lighter blue with patches of dark blue for the Force – to take the field. This decision was an insult to viewers either at the game or watching on TV.

SANZAR knew about this blue problem because the Force had played the Waratahs, also a team that plays in blue, with their blue jerseys. It was explained that this was the Force’s travelling colour.

So what? It competes with several other sides in the tournament. The Rebels, in this case, should have been instructed to wear some other colour, anything but blue.

For reasons that escape me, SANZAR does not seem to consider these matters to be relevant in any way. Well, they need to know that clashes or mingling of colours in this case do nothing for the presentation of the game and its enjoyment by spectators live or watching on their television screens. Or does SANZAR not consider this to be an important matter?

We will get a better picture of how strong the Australian conference is when the Reds do battle over the weekend with the rampant Sharks.

Everything is in the favour of the Sharks. They are at home. They are scoring tries and winning their matches convincingly. Their set pieces are excellent.

The Reds have run cold and hot. For many parts of their match against the Cheetahs they were just wonderful. And then they would do stupid things and miss tackles and play like a team that seemingly hadn’t played together.

I have been taking a hammering in The Roar‘s Tipping Competition and with a heavy heart, with realism defeating high hopes, I reckon the Sharks will be too good for the Reds right now.

This match should gives us a good test on whether the Reds are a competitive side – not only in the Australian conference but in the whole tournament. This same comment applies to the Sharks, too.

The Lions are a surprise package of the tournament, with their dead-eyed goal kicker, Marnitz Boshoff, knocking over penalties and drop goals from all parts of the opposition half.

You would think the Blues need to win at Johannesburg to have any credibility as a possible winner of the New Zealand conference. I’m taking the Blues, after vowing never to vote for them again after their loss to the raging Bulls.

When the Highlanders play the Force at Dunedin they have the opportunity to gain some respect for the New Zealand conference. The Force live up to their name sometimes at home and very infrequently away.

The Rebels have tended to be difficult opponents for the Crusaders. But the Crusaders can kiss their season goodbye if they don’t win against a side that has just been thrashed by the Force.

The Chiefs are often lethargic after a lay-off of a week. Like most New Zealand teams, they play best when they play often. At home and with an extra week for injured players to recover, the Chiefs look a good thing.

Like the Crusaders, the Hurricanes’ season is basically over if they don’t defeat the Cheetahs. There is so much talent in the team that not even as coach who seems intent on squashing talent is able, surely, to condemn his side to four straight losses.

Mark Hammett is the coach who thought Aaron Cruden didn’t have the game to be a good Super Rugby player, let alone a champion All Black and a possible captain.

Is it a wonder, with his treatment of another potential super star Ardie Savea (benching him), that the Hurricanes are dressed up but not dancing a winning game?

For most Australians, though, the match of the round is the Brumbies-Waratahs encounter at Canberra.

The Brumbies looked terrific against the Hurricanes, but the Hurricanes have been mediocre this season. The Waratahs, on the other hand, have been sensational.

Perhaps it will be the Zavos Kiss of Death, but I’m anticipating a strong victory to the Waratahs and onwards and upwards to winning the Australian conference.