SPIRO: Where there's no Will, there's no way for the Waratahs

SANZAR made it clear in the ruling of the Appeals Committee on the cases of Silatolu Latu and Will Skelton that they are not going to tolerate so called “tip tackles”.

This is when the player with the ball is allowed to be crashed on his head or shoulder, or is forced to stick out a hand to try and soften the crash.

Both Waratahs submissions for overruling the original sanctions were rejected, unanimously. The original decisions of four weeks for Latu and two weeks for Skelton were upheld. These sanctions were ruled not to be “manifestly excessive”.

The significant finding related to Skelton. He was found, essentially, to be an accessory to the tip tackle. His defence was that he didn’t realise that Sam Whitelock had been lifted and driven by Latu. This defence was clearly wrong and it was rejected, rightly in my opinion.

The Appeals Committee, in ruling that Skelton was “reckless” in combining with Latu on the tackle, has entrenched the precedent that if there are several players in a dangerous tip tackle they all, to a greater or lesser degree, will be sanctioned for their actions.

In allowing the appeal of Latu and Skelton to go forward, and to take Skelton to South Africa with the Waratahs in the expectation that he would be a player rather than a passenger, Michael Cheika clearly revealed that he does not get it with the SANZAR clampdown on dangerous play.

This is exceedingly dangerous for the Waratahs, as the yellow cards awarded against them in their losing match with the Lions at Johannesburg indicated.

It could be even more dangerous for the Wallabies, if Cheika insists on them flouting the dangerous play laws, as he seems to have done with the Waratahs, during the 2015 Rugby World Cup tournament.

There is no doubt now, after what happened in the Lions match, that match officials are on to the Waratahs. At least, when the Waratahs are playing away from Sydney.

And there is equally no doubt that if the Waratahs don’t start playing within the laws of rugby they will be yellow carded out of the 2015 Super Rugby tournament. They have two more matches to play and one of them (the Cheetahs at Bloemfontein) is an away match.

Their last match against the Reds will be played at Sydney and given the SANZAR rulings on Latu and Skelton, the Waratahs can’t expect to be given the leeway they have received from officials in earlier matches this year.

The first of the two yellow cards handed out against the Waratahs came in the 27th minute of the match when Rob Horne lifted a Lions player and allowed his shoulders to come in contact with the ground. The Waratahs, it needs to be noted, conceded tries during each of the yellow card periods.

The South African referee Jaco Peyper looked at the Horne incident with the South African TMO Johan Greef, an official who has come under fire in the past for some controversial rulings.

After a couple of replays, Peyper said to Greef that he was seeing a yellow card. And Greef replied: “At least a yellow card.”

As Horne was leaving the field, the cameras swung onto Cheika and caught the Waratahs coach in a look of furious disgust. But around 12am on Sunday, SANZAR sent out an email with the heading: “Rob Horne cited.”

It is entirely possible that the citing commissioner will agree with Greef that Horne committed a red card offence. If this happens, the Waratahs will lose one of their most valuable players for a couple of weeks.

The second yellow card came shortly after half-time when Jacques Potgeiter shoulder charged a Lions player off the ball. The charge was clearly illegal. The player was nowhere near the ball. There were no arms in the tackle. The yellow card was an open and shut case, despite Potgeiter’s protestations.

Will Skelton did a similar sort of charge to the back of Richie McCaw during the Waratahs’ thumping of the Crusaders two weekends ago. He was punished with a penalty, only. Minutes later McCaw was given a yellow card for coming into the wrong side of a ruck near the Crusaders’ try line.

If there had been a South African or New Zealand TMO at Sydney, the possibility is that the Skelton would have been given the yellow card.

The point here is that Cheika is creating problems for the Waratahs, when they play out of Sydney, with this angry, madcap insistence on over-aggressive defence to the point of bordering on illegality on many occasions.

Where the Waratahs will go now without Skelton, who can genuinely and legally inflict massive damage on opponents, on attack with the ball and on defence, is something that Cheika needs to consider carefully.

In the absence of Skelton, the Waratahs found it difficult to dent the Lions’ defence. In a total of 102 runs, the Waratahs made only six line breaks. The Lions with only 67 runs made eight line breaks.

The Waratahs’ scrums, too, were under pressure for most of the game, without the massive bulk that Skelton brings to the pack.

One other important point emerged from the match, too. The Lions worked a brilliant exit play to expose the Waratahs’ defensive system of playing small players like Bernard Foley on the wings.

Twice early on in the match, the Lions kicked a high cross-field kick inside their own 22 and travelling only about 20 metres forwards. They positioned four players out wide. These players smashed the catcher and in one instance actually beat him to the ball. They won the ensuing rucks and launched strong attacks into the Waratahs’ half.

The Lions are that rare South African side, a well-coached side, with smart plays, and a team that has a willingness and a capacity to run the ball with some effectiveness.

They play the Stormers at Newlands next weekend, a match that could decide the South African Conference winner. It is a must-win match for both sides. The Lions have a bye in the last round and the Stormers play the Sharks at Kings Park in Durban.

There is a possibility of only one South African side in the finals, with the Bulls going down to a steady and typically strong-minded Brumbies side at Canberra.

In theory, the Bulls could get to 46 points. They would have to record bonus point wins against the Rebels (coming back from South Africa) at Melbourne and then doing the same thing to the Cheetahs at Pretoria.

The thing about the Bulls is that they seem to believe that the best way to score tries is to kick the ball to their opponents. I have watched a lot of rugby. I have rarely seen championship sides win matches by allowing their opponents to have the ball for most of the match.

Against a side like the Brumbies, which traditionally has good systems to recycle the ball in phase after phase, and when playing with confidence show a lot of patience in their build-up, this Bulls side’s penchant for kicking the ball away just does not work.

It does work in South Africa, though. Forty-one per cent of the points scored by the Bulls this year have come from penalty goals.

The Bulls, away from home and without South African referees who tend to punish the attacking side more than the defensive side, have won only two of their last 16 matches out of South Africa. The reason for this is that penalties awarded to the Bulls in South Africa are often not awarded to them out of South Africa.

The Brumbies, aided by the Waratahs’ loss to the Lions, have fought their way to 42 points, the same as the Waratahs, with both sides lying fifth and sixth on the table.

The Brumbies play the Force at Perth next weekend, and then the Crusaders at home. This last match could decide whether the Brumbies or the Crusaders make the finals.

The Crusaders finally selected the right back line with Dan Carter at number 10 and big Robbie Fruean playing in the centres. How Todd Blackadder could play someone like Carter, arguably the greatest number 10 in rugby history, at inside centre remains a mystery to me.

With Carter pulling the strings and guiding the Crusaders around the field, the perennial finalists finally looked like a side capable of playing winning rugby in the finals, if they could make it there, in the way they demolished the Hurricanes.

Up to this weekend, the Waratahs’ final match of the season against the Reds at Sydney looked like a walkover in the makings for the home side. Enter Quade Cooper, though, for the second time this season and his brilliant display against the Force.

Readers of The Roar will know that I generally have seen less in Cooper’s play than his admirers do. But he was terrific against the Western Force scoring 22 out of the Reds’ 32 points, with two tries, three conversions and two penalties.

The combination of Will Genia, Quade Cooper and Samu Kerevi is one that Michael Cheika could and should consider trying for the Wallabies some time before the Rugby World Cup tournament.

Genia seemed to be relaxed and fluent in his play and distribution with Cooper calling the plays for him. Kerevi is big (108 kilograms), fast and without fear. He is the modern inside centre, a runner with the speed of a winger with the power of a loose forward.

I reckon a Wallabies backline with runners like Kerevi, Tevita Kuridrani, Henry Speight, Adam Ashley-Cooper and Israel Folau could be big enough, tough enough and fast enough to threaten any defence in world rugby.

Anyway, over the weekend the sides that had big centres like Kerevi tended to do better than sides that played the two five-eighths game as the Waratahs did with Bernard Foley and Kurtley Beale.

The Waratahs missed the size of Will Skelton in the forwards, too. They tried to compensate for this by running Wycliff Palu and Taqele Naiyaravoro. But Palu doesn’t have the power he used to have. And Naiyaravoro doesn’t seem to be fit enough to take the ball up more than a few times. A lot of his weight is around the stomach area, rather than the thighs and upper body.

You only really miss a player when he is not there. Skelton was not there against the Lions and the Waratahs were a side that could not assert any physical dominance over a tenacious and ultimately successful opponent. No Will, no Waratahs way, in other words.