SPIRO: Pulver predicts 3 Aussie sides in Super Rugby finals

Last year, Bill Pulver, the chief executive of the ARU, made the fearless prediction that the Waratahs would win their first Super Rugby title.

And what do you know? Bernard Foley kicked a long-range penalty over the black dot, almost on time in the final at ANZ Stadium against the Crusaders, to fulfil the prediction.

At the launch of the 2015 Super Rugby season, Pulver was asked by the host Greg Clarke for a prediction for this year.

Pulver refused to nominate an Australian side winning the tournament. Instead he made the fearless prediction that there would be three Australian sides in the finals.

MORE FROM THE SUPER RUGBY LAUNCH:
>> Rebels captain Scott Higginbotham
>> Waratahs captain Dave Dennis
>> Reds coach Richard Graham
>> ARU CEO Bill Pulver

But which Australian sides? Pulver wasn’t answering.

He pointed to the 120 Super Rugby matches (in the regular season) in the tournament and that 20 of them were local derbies.

The Super Rugby tournament was, he insisted, “the toughest and most exciting” in the world. No argument from me with this. Last season, too, “was the most successful Super Rugby season ever for Australian teams, with more wins collectively throughout the season than ever before”.

This platform of success for the Australian sides in 2014, together with the improvements that sides like the Melbourne Rebels and the Western Force can look forward to after strong performances from their local NRC teams, created the environment, he argued, for his ‘three Australian teams in the 2015 Super Rugby finals’ prediction.

Six teams will make up the finals. Each of the three conferences in Australia, South Africa and New Zealand provide one guaranteed finalist, the top team in their conference.

The other three finals places depend on the points accumulated by the various teams. If the Pulver Prediction is to happen, either the South African conference or the New Zealand conference will have only one team in the finals.

How likely is this? More likely for the South African conference than for the New Zealand conference. But the fact that a weak conference actually helps the best two teams in it, giving them six relatively easy inter-conference games, helps towards a 2-2-2 split in the finals.

Anyway, as an exercise in meeting the fearless prediction challenge (and I note that I am the only Greek in Bondi Junction who doesn’t gamble) I would nominate the three most likely Australian sides to make the finals, in order of likelihood (remember, though, my poor record with predictions!): the Brumbies, Waratahs, Western Force.

I was impressed with Stephen Larkham’s answers at the launch. He said the Brumbies had lost nine players since last year. But they had 13 Wallabies in his projected starting side, with two other Wallabies in contention. In 2014, in his first year as head coach, the Brumbies were third in the tournament in tries scored and third in line breaks.

Under Jake White in 2013 the Brumbies were 10th in both categories.

The implication I took from this use of the statistics suggested that Larkham is trying to returning the Brumbies to the all-court model established by Rod Macqueen, and away from the Jakeball game imposed by White. Nothing but good can come from this plan, if it is successfully implemented.

The Brumbies have recruited Sean Doyle from Ulster and Lausii Taliauli from the Australian Sevens program.

Michael Cheika for the Waratahs made the point that they did not see themselves ‘defending’ their Super Rugby title. They were starting out again with all the other teams on the journey to win the title.

Last season the Waratahs scored 540 points, with 60 tries, the most points and tries scored by any Super Rugby team in 2014.

No Australian team has won back-to-back Super Rugby titles. My guess is that it is going to be hard for the Waratahs to win the tournament in 2015, with everyone gunning for them and (more importantly) understanding the Cheika game better.

Force coach Michael Foley was adamant that the best aspect of the 2014 season for his side was the fact that they won six games at home, nine wins in all and five in a row for the first time. A couple of players, including Zac Holmes, had done well in the NRC. ‘The Honey Badger’ Nick Cummins was back.

The Force play their final warm-up match against a team brought together by Tana Umaga, the Asian Pacific Dragons. My ears pricked up when I heard this. When I was in Singapore earlier last year and the question of whether Japan or Singapore would win a Super Rugby franchise came up, the Asian Pacific Dragons was mentioned as the likely team to represent whatever franchise won their bid.

Reds coach Richard Graham made the point that he had 20 Wallabies in his squad, although one of his better players, Quade Cooper, was out for 12 weeks from an ‘innocuous’ training exercise.

Graham also pointed out that Adam Thomson, a former All Black who has joined the Reds, has the second-best try-scoring record for any forward in Super Rugby tournaments. I don’t think Australian teams should be investing in over-the-hill overseas players, even one with the skills of Thomson. The money should be spent on developing local talent.

The Rebels defeated the Brumbies last year in a memorable match. Scott Higginbotham, the Rebels captain, said that this was the year the franchise was looking to make their first-ever finals series. Radike Samo (“he’s probably in his 40s but still a great athlete,” Higginbotham joked), along with Sean McMahon and Higginbotham will form one of the better back rows in the tournament.

We will see if the Rebels have the real stuff when they play the Crusaders at Christchurch to kick off the 2015 Super Rugby tournament on Friday 13 February.

Later in the evening, the Brumbies host the Reds at Canberra. And on Sunday February 15, the Waratahs host the Force.

The outcomes of these games will gives us good clues on how the various Australian sides will perform throughout the tournament. And whether the Pulver Prediction has legs.

SANZAR appoints a couple of splendid new referees to a strong list
The SANZAR list of referees looks to be stronger than previous lists. A couple of referees from last year have been dropped. And two especially interesting newcomers, Ben O’Keefe (New Zealand) and Jaco van Heerden (South Africa), have been promoted.

The list features five South Africans: Stuart Berry (4 Tests), Jason Jaftha (1 Test), Craig Joubert (54 Tests), Marius van der Westhuizen and Jaco van Heerden.

Van Herdeen is 32, younger than some of the players. He refereed a Currie Cup final in his first season in first-class rugby. He played rugby while studying law at the Pretoria University. He is an advocate to the High Court of South Africa.

Van Herdeen is following in the footsteps of the legendary V.H. ‘Boet’ Neser, the referee in all four Tests between the Springboks and the All Blacks in South Africa in 1928. The Test series was squared two Test wins each. Neser won praise from the New Zealanders for his even-handedness in his decisions. He was a great sportsman himself, captaining South Africa in 1924-25 against Lord Joel’s English side. He won a Military Cross in World War I, and became a distinguished High Court Judge.

The New Zealand list is: Nick Briant (2 Tests), Mike Fraser (4 Tests), Glen Jackson (9), Ben O’Keefe and Chris Pollock (19 Tests).

O’Keefe is the son of a referee. He refereed the 2014 Junior World Championship between England and South Africa. He is a practising eye doctor and, therefore I guesses, impervious to the old call of ‘ref, get yourself some glasses!’

The Australian list is: Angus Gardiner (3 Tests), Rohan Hoffman (3 Tests), Andrew Lees (2 Tests), Matt O’Brien and Steve Walsh (60 Tests).

I disagree with SANZAR over their cavalier disregard for neutral referees. The pressure of refereeing for a local side created a lot of the pressure that disrupted the careers of the discarded referees.

But having said this, this is the best referees list SANZAR has produced.

The influence of Craig Joubert in the fitness of the squad and his determination to follows the Neser Legacy of refereeing for the open game is obvious with the style of his fellow referees. I particularly like the way, following the Joubert method, tacklers are being penalised for deliberately falling into the wrong side of the ruck to prevent a quick recycling of the ball.

This one innovation has done a lot in the last year or so to allow teams to play an open and expansive game, the hallmark of Super Rugby, in a winning manner.

And let’s hope our referees can prevent the French disease of diving
I was watching the Toulouse vs Bath match recently when I noticed the Toulouse winger Yoann Huget take an outrageous dive.

The referee George Clancy is not a favourite of mine and he did not win back any admiration for his handling of this despicable incident.

There had been a clash of players, several of them went down, a yellow card was awarded for some foul play and in the video presentation of what had happened it was clear that Huget had dived.

Clancy saw this, while judging on the yellow card incident, and did nothing about it. Not even a warning to the player.

Some days later the European Professional Club Rugby organisation ruled that Huget had received a formal warning for an action “contrary to good sportsmanship … in that he deliberately feigned an injury in contravention of Law 10.4 (m)”.

Diving is becoming the French rugby disease. Several French players, including Morgan Parra (twice), performed dives during the Rugby World Cup 2011 tournament.

It is becoming prevelent in France, I fear. A game later in the week involving Racing Metro showcased another prodigious dive.

There is nothing more objectionable to fair play in rugby than this tactic. It needs to be stopped in its tracks with really tough punishments for offenders.

If someone in this year’s Super Rugby tournament decides, for instance, to test the waters with a dive, I hope he will be hit with a stunning punishment from the old and new referees. The proper punishment for rugby dives is a hard, very hard landing.