SPIRO: The Waratahs are back, big time

It has taken five matches in Super Rugby 2015 for them but, at last, the NSW Waratahs are back to their championship form. They are back big time!

Their 28-13 victory against the confident (over-confident, perhaps?) Brumbies provided the visitors to Allianz Stadium with a master class in how to play aggressive on attack and defence, ball-in-hand rugby. Aside from several scrums that the Brumbies disintegrated, the Waratahs were dominant all over the field.

Most importantly, too, the Waratahs were dominant in using plans and tactics that unsettled the Brumbies. There was, for instance, a rare bomb that dropped just under the Brumbies posts and through the hands of Matt Toomua and Joe Tomane.

On other occasions the Waratahs exploited the defensive patterns and tackling accuracy of the Brumbies back four. Most of the damage here was done by Israel Folau, who played a blinder. Folau broke tackles, passed brilliantly and generally caused havoc whenever he touched the ball.

For reasons I don’t understand there has been a lot of media and coaching chatter about Folau moving into the centres. There is no doubt that he would be effective there. Like Sonny Bill Williams, Folau is so big, fast enough, great under the high ball and tough going into the tackle that you could play him anywhere on the field (probably not the front row, though) and he would have an impact.

Fullback, though, is the right place for him right now. All the other positions require playing in certain zones. Fullback is the only position in the side which is not directly marked, and which has everyone marking you.

It is a position a gifted player like Folau can exploit to play virtually anywhere on the field in attack. Ben Smith, the Highlanders and All Blacks champion fullback, even pops up when the forwards are driving forward in short, sharp mauls towards the opposition try line.

Folau could do that, too, as well as make the thunderous breaks wide out that broke open the Brumbies wide defence.

You could see what the Waratahs’ game plan was. They smacked the ball up hard in the middle of the field with their big forwards and when play opened up they used the passing game of Bernard Foley and (especially) Kurtley Beale with long balls to get possession out wide to set up Folau and Taqele Naiyaravoro, who was most impressive in his bursts down the touchline.

But what was the Brumbies game plan? It seemed to centre around a dominant scrum and a driving lineout. The trouble here was that once these two tactics were thwarted the Brumbies had no further plays to worry the Waratahs defence.

Where was plan B?

Yet before the match, Stephen Larkham, rather arrogantly I thought, suggested that “we haven’t been tested to our full potential yet”. When the test came from the Waratahs, there was no further potential from the Brumbies to express.

By half-time, the Brumbies had made 85 tackles to the 16 made by the Waratahs. You can’t win big matches on a dry field with these sort of statistics. The half-time score was 20-13 to the Waratahs, after a dynamic start by the Brumbies with Toomua going through the rush defence to score a strong, individual try.

In the second half, the Brumbies were scoreless. The Waratahs kicked on with a penalty and a brilliant ensemble try that was started by Folau deep inside his own half and was virtually ended by Folau with a neat pass to send the pocket battle ship Waratahs hooker Tolu Latu scuttling across for a try.

Latu impressed generally with his scrumming, although the Waratahs had problems in this area from time to time. His tackling was accurate and runners were cut down around the ankles to allow diggers like Michael Hooper to have a crack at a turnover.

I reckon that Latu has the potential to take over from Stephen Moore in a year or so as the Wallaby hooker.

Another Waratahs forward to impress was Will Skelton. Michael Cheika is making him an 80-minute player by forcing him to play out the full game time. Skelton, too, won several lineouts which seemed to stymie the Brumbies’ attempts to disrupt the Waratahs’ lineout. His barging runs and off-loads became more stressful for the Brumbies to handle as the game wore on.

Skelton was undoubtedly the best second rower on the field.

The only Waratah who disappointed was Nick Phipps. The reason for this is that Phipps seems to have had a touch of the Burgesses in that he stands and stands and occasionally keeps on standing over the ball waiting for the forwards to align themselves in some ordained pattern.

The problem with this is that without the quick recycling, the Waratahs runners were knocked over like pin balls. Phipps, also, is losing some of his zip in his running. But this emperor penguin posturing needs to be taken out of his game if the Waratahs and, later on in the year, the Wallabies are to prosper.

This game was excellently refereed by Craig Joubert. He was firm enough to tell Nic White early on, when the halfback starting querying a penalty decision, that there was “no use debating”. But he let the forwards have a go in the rucks and mauls, with the result that there were a number of turnovers achieved by both sides.

He was right, too, with his yellow card to Scott Fardy when the loose forward batted away a Waratahs pass that was going to be converted into a try.

George Gregan, the analyst presumably, went on and on in the television commentary about how Fardy was trying to catch the ball. Nonsense. The ball was well away from him. So he stuck out a long arm to knock the ball forward to prevent a Waratahs try.

Someone at Fox Sports needs to take Gregan aside and tell him that he should not behave like a Brumbies cheer leader when the broadcasts are going throughout Australia, and to South Africa and New Zealand.

David Pocock came on early on in the second half and promptly gave away a penalty. He was out-played while he was on the field by Hooper, who made a terrific tackle on Henry Speight to stop him scoring a try.

We can, I think, work out what words, allegedly expressed twice, were uttered by a Waratahs player that Pocock objected to on the grounds that there may have been some gay players on the field. If this conjecture is correct, it is hard to see what his problem is.

In general, players should leave what happens on the field on the field.

As I say, this is being written on Sunday when the words Pocock found so objectionable as to raise the issue with Joubert twice are not known.

Two slow-starting teams, the Waratahs and the Crusaders, burst into winning action over the weekend. The Crusaders scored more tries and points than the Waratahs. But, in my view, the Waratahs’ overall performance was better in that the opposition of the Brumbies was much tougher than that offered by the Cheetahs.

I am still not convinced by the Crusaders. But the Waratahs are a different matter. They are finals bound and probably as the top side in the Australian conference.