SPIRO: The Australian Super Rugby conference has been Forced open

In his preview of an intense Reds-Force match at Suncorp Stadium, Greg Martin’s statistics suggested a Reds victory. Of 42 matches in Super Rugby 2014, only eight had been won by sides away from home.

Last year in the equivalent round, teams visiting South Africa had won 7 of their 19 matches against the locals, a 37 per cent winning record. Before this weekend’s match, in 16 matches, no visiting team from Australia or New Zealand had won a match in South Africa.

As it happened, this round put a dent in this theory. In terms of the outcome of the conference tables, some damage was done to a couple of home sides, especially the Reds and the Lions.

I have a theory, too, why there were two away wins (the Force and the Crusaders) and an away draw (the Chiefs) in this round. Before the round of two weeks ago, SANZAR sacked some referees and put several others on notice. This concentrated the minds of the surviving referees.

Also, several matches were officiated by neutral referees, while the Lions-Crusaders match had an excellent new South African referee, Marius van der Westhuizen. We did not see the lopsided and often inexplicable avalanche of penalties for the home side.

Georgina Robinson wrote an interesting article in the Sydney Morning Herald on Saturday, where she analysed what might be happening with home ground advantage this season.

Michael Cheika believes it is tribalism rearing its head in Super Rugby, or the inevitable maturation of a competition that has at times struggled to look and feel organic…

What most teams at the wrong end of the travel schedule at this point in the season will tell you, is that it has become much tougher to win the respect of the referee.

The new tribalism, with the crowd playing as the 16th man, has had the effect of referees in the earlier rounds turning 50/50 decisions into 70/30 decisions for the home sides.

Whatever the reason, there was virtually no example of the 16th man effect in any of this round’s matches. I say ‘virtually’ because Australian referee Rohan Hoffman, who will deservedly gain Test status later in the year, was somewhat generous at times to the scrumming power of the Brumbies in their monstering of the Blues at Canberra on Friday night.

Even self-acknowledged Brumbies booster Rod Kafer, in the Fox Sports commentary box, found Hoffman’s decisions to give several penalties against the obviously dominant Blues scrum a bit puzzling. Even more puzzling were the Blues’ bizarre tactics of not running the ball, clearly having no clue how to counter the Brumbies’ superb kicking game.

Once again, the Brumbies looked to be an excellent, well coached team which made their defeat to the Rebels a week earlier hard to explain, other than home ground advantage.

As a totality (including Hoffman), the refereeing for the round was excellent. The result was a series of terrific matches, with four of them being in the balance up to the final nail-biting plays.

The Rebels almost got their first overseas victory at Dunedin against a Highlanders side that was, almost minute to minute, either sublime or stupid. After having some success with box kicks, the Highlanders continued to kick away possession, even though the Rebels were able to set up a sequence of try-threatening movements in running the ball back. Then the Highlanders would put on a thrilling ensemble attack from deep in defence.

The Hurricanes played the same tactic of bombs from within their own 22. After the brain-dead play of the Blues against the Brumbies, and the wilful handing back of the ball by the Highlanders and Hurricanes, some mad scientist has infiltrated the coaching boxes in New Zealand with a new-fangled (or really an old-fangled and discarded) theory of the third dimension of rugby thinking.

At times this season, I’ve thought New Zealand teams are not playing with the intelligence of years past. Is there a reversion to the 1990s mode, when Australian teams led the way with smart, inventive thinking and play?

The Bulls were given every chance by an even-handed Steve Walsh to knock over the Hurricanes at Napier. They have two great centres, yet they seldom use them. The consequence is when they desperately need to score tries, they have the air of a team stoically taking a bitter medicine in the cause of a greater good.

As the great David Campese used to say, “You can’t learn to run the ball in five minutes.” The South African teams, in particular, rely too much on blood and (pumping) iron. If their backs ever matched the power and technique of their forwards, God help their opponents!

The game of the round in the Australian conference was the aforementioned thriller at Suncorp Stadium. There was a lot of history going into the contest. Some of the Queensland coaching staff had come from the Force camp after being effectively sacked by their first franchise, while several of the Force staff came from the Reds with much the same story.

I am interested, for instance, in the role Phillip Fowler is playing at the Force. He was a guru for Ewen McKenzie during the glory season of 2011, when the Reds won their first and only Super Rugby title. Then there was a falling out that no one will talk about. Bret Harris, rugby writer for The Australian, wrote about the incident without providing any details of what had happened and made the case that Fowler had a huge input into the 2011 triumph.

Fowler apparently provides some strategic and tactical thinking to Michael Foley and the other members of the Force’s coaching staff and the Force are now playing in the same manner (without the genius of Quade Cooper, of course) as the Reds did in 2011.

When the Force moved into attack mode they had the structure to mount wave after wave of surging attacks, which the Reds found very difficult to combat.

The Force scored two tries that involved 16 phases each. The last such try – virtually on time, with Jayden Hayward making a striking attacking run for a try near the posts to win the match – was superbly organised and carried out with the sort of intense precision that marks the Force as a rising team in the Australian conference.

It is curious and disappointing that the Reds gave up their chance of snatching a victory on time with a try after a series of attacks, which admittedly weren’t making much progress.

But what got into Quade Cooper’s head to try a drop goal, from a long way out, to tie the match? Tying one for the Gipper is hardly the spirit that will win the Reds a second Super Rugby tournament!

One other point needs to be made in this context. When Michael Foley was coach of the Waratahs, he was obsessed with ‘attacking kicks’. The result was that the Waratahs kicked themselves out of championship contention.

Has Foley ditched this method? Or has he been convinced by someone (Fowler, perhaps) that the game plan that suits the combative, chip-on-the-shoulder Force players – many of whom are rejects from other sides – is the ball-in-hand method, with hard square-shouldered charges into the opposition defensive line?

Whatever the reason, the Force were most impressive in defeating the Reds. They have now won a franchise-record four in a row. They have stopped a Reds winning sequence at Suncorp going back to 2011, when the Force last won there.

The Brumbies now top the Australian conference with 21 points in seven matches. The Waratahs are on 20 points but have played only six matches. The Force, also from six matches, are on 18 points. The Reds, in seven matches, are on 15 points. And the Rebels, after six matches, are on 11 points.

The Waratahs were impressive in defeating the Stormers at home in a match expertly refereed by the New Zealander Glen Jackson. Like the Force, the Waratahs were confident and slick with the ball in hand. They won without Israel Folau, as Bernard Foley and Kurtley Beale mixed and matched their five-eighth and fullback positions efficiently and effectively.

There were no macho theatrics from the Waratahs like those that played into the hands of the Sharks the week before. They played confident ball-in-hand rugby that split the tough Stormers defence many times. From the opening minutes, they showed their intent.

A former All Black and a very good coach and selector, Earle Kirton, once told me the best time to run the ball is at the beginning of the match, when the defence hasn’t organised itself properly.

The Waratahs, too, were good in the scrums and lineouts and with their mauling. However, they will need to improve their play in cleaning up around the rucks – Jackson could have penalised them several times for taking defenders out a long way from the ball.

Something to work on, as the post-match cliche goes. In the absence of the lethal Folau, Michael Hooper was doing more running with the ball rather than just fetching. For a side playing with a high tempo and intent on taking the ball into contact, there was a pleasing lack of mistakes in the Waratahs’ play.

There has been a growing sense among readers of The Roar that the Australian conference is the hardest of all. Wayne Smith made this case last week in The Australian. The weekend’s results support it, at this point in the tournament anyway.

Although the Brumbies are topping the Australian conference, it is not clear they are the best Australian side, and with a game in hand, the Waratahs and the Force could pass them on the points table.

This sets up a massive round next week, with the Waratahs playing the Force at Perth and the Brumbies playing the Reds at Brisbane. Will home ground advantage come into play? Or has the hoodoo been shattered?