- Video
-
Club Roar
Captured a great grassroots sporting moment? We want to see it!Content Collections
The Roar Community
- Join
- Login
Kurtley Beale gave an interesting interview a few days ago to Brett Harris. Harris plays good cop at The Australian to the tough cop of Wayne Smith.
The gist of what Beale had to say was this. “It’s a matter of us sticking to what we know best and playing to what we know and that’s to throw the ball around and to score some tries.”
The context was the flak that the Sharks and especially their coach Jake White received, along with the Brumbies, after their kickathon in Canberra last week.
Tough cop Smith wrote a piece for The Australian which said that the ARU was right not to give the Wallabies coaching job to White, a position I endorse. The last thing Australian rugby needs is more teams playing what PlanetRugby calls ‘kick-tennis’.
The Sydney Morning Herald‘s Stephen Samuelson joined the anti-White brigade with an article making this remarkable claim: “If there is any justice by the rugby gods, neither the Brumbies nor the Sharks will win the Super Rugby title.”
Samuelson went to make the excellent point: “These teams’ no-risk style of play is holding the competition to ransom and leaves open the fundamental question: exactly what does professionalism mean?”
Exactly. If rugby players want to be paid handsomely, and they are, they need to realise that their sport is part of the crowded entertainment market. They have to put bums on seats and eyes on television sets. They won’t do that by boring the pants off viewers.
White makes no concessions to the entertainment aspect of rugby. I would argue, too, that the kick-tennis game is ultimately not the easiest or best method to win tournaments.
This brings us back to the Waratahs and Kurtley Beale. He told Harris that he believed the Waratahs can win the Super Rugby title by playing in an attacking style, as they did against the Hurricanes when they were down after conceding two tries, then stormed back to be in control of the match by half time.
The Waratahs may not win the Super Rugby title. Only one team in the tournament does this each year. But the running style that Michael Cheika has ruthlessly imposed on the side gives them their best shot at winning for many years.
Beale made one other important point. “Kicking is not bad. If you kick well and you kick at the right time, it can be a good thing… Watching that [Brumbies-Sharks] game there were a lot of kicks, but dissecting it there were a lot of opportunities to run the ball as well.”
Exactly. Jake White has a rule that when the ball is kicked deep to the Sharks, they must kick it back. It is virtually forbidden to run it back. The Brumbies played with a similar rule in Canberra.
There was Jesse Mogg, with the pace of a whippet, fielding the ball in his own half and booting the ball back to Frans Steyn, to do the same thing ad nauseam.
I call this non-coaching. Of course running teams like the Waratahs, Crusaders, Hurricanes, Highlanders and Chiefs kick the ball. But, and this is the crucial point, they have systems to run the ball back when the chance is on, and sometimes when it isn’t.
It is noticeable to me how hard the New Zealand wingers and fullbacks work to get themselves in a position to run the ball back. Also, it is equally noticeable, aside from the Cheetahs, Waratahs and Force, just how slack Australian and South Africans fullbacks and wingers are to get into position to launch counterattacks.
Up to the last round, the Cheetahs led the tournament in tries scored from inside their own half, with 12. The next best were the Blues (11), Hurricanes (10), Force (9), Waratahs and Chiefs (8) and Crusaders (5). Against the Reds, the Crusaders scored several more from inside their own half to bump this tally up.
And how many tries have the Sharks and Brumbies scored from their own half? They both have three to their name.
Brett McKay, a fellow Roarer whose rugby nous I admire, makes the point that the Brumbies (45) and Sharks (42) kicked between them 87 times.
The Crusaders kicked 34 times to the Reds’ 27, the Chiefs and the Blues 21 times apiece. This partly explains or exonerates, Brett suggests, the Brumbies and the Sharks.
I don’t think so. The Brumbies and Sharks kicked for no other reason than to kick the leather off the ball and hope that a mistake would give them an advantageous field position.
The other teams kicked, the Crusaders more than most, but there was more of a purpose than merely forcing the other side back. The Crusaders and the other teams were looking to establish a chance to run the ball back against a broken line. And on many occasions they did just this.
This running back game does not happen by serendipity or fluke. I once noted to Robbie Deans when he was coaching his all-conquering Crusaders that they had an uncanny knack of converting turnovers and duffed kicks into devastating counterattacks.
My implication was that the Crusaders were playing off-the-cuff rugby.
Deans gave me a hard look, as if mystified. He said, “Those try-scoring plays off kicks and turnovers are the result of hours and hours of training and coaching.”
And he was right. You just had to look at the way the Crusaders automatically spread their line or kept their width, depending on where they were, to see that there was a rehearsed method to what they were doing.
This is my argument against Jake White. He does some parts of coaching very well, especially set pieces and defensive skills. But he virtually ignores attacking play, by far the hardest part of rugby and the most rewarding for players and spectators.
The Brumbies and the Sharks have a chance to redeem themselves this weekend. The Sharks know that at Christchurch, the Crusaders are virtually unbeatable. So why not take the game to them?
They have a terrific back three that can splinter teams if taken off the leash. They have running forwards, too, who can steamroll their opponents.
The Brumbies play the Cheetahs, a team with a poor defensive record. They need to be told to put away the kicking boots and run.
This is advice that won’t have to be given to the Waratahs. They will find the Lions a resilient side, with a rare ability and willingness to be expansive and successful with their ball-in-hand game.
The game should be a treat for a hopefully large crowd. Whoever attends will be able to watch two real rugby teams trying to defeat each other by scoring tries.