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The final round of Super Rugby wasn’t brilliant from a tipping front, but it did throw up the qualifying finals that were largely expected.
The Chiefs were always in danger of dropping their last game to the Hurricanes, and the Waratahs were always expected to put four tries past the Reds.
And that meant that while the Highlanders’ big win over the hapless Blues locked them in for fourth spot, while the respective final-round losses for the Brumbies and Stormers became irrelevant for competition standings.
Just on the Stormers, the only man more relieved than Michael Cheika about the Waratahs’ thumping of the Reds is likely to be Stormers coach Alastair Coetzee. Until that point, his decision to rest virtually his entire first-choice side was threatening to bite him on the arse good and proper.
And here’s one other little digression: the two form teams of the competition probably can’t meet in the final.
Unless the Brumbies can cause what would be an upset in Cape Town, the Highlanders would go into the semi-finals as the lowest-ranked qualifier, and thus would play the Hurricanes in the semi.
Way back in late-April, I put forward my projections for the run home over the remaining seven rounds, and it all turned out to be pretty accurate. A hell of a lot better than my tipping form, certainly. Probably should have just entered my tips seven weeks ago, in hindsight.
Anyway, back then the predictions around who would beat who and when, and a little bit of bonus point guesswork, meant that those forward projections threw up a final six comprising:
Hurricanes: 13 wins, 64 points; Stormers: 13, 56 points; Waratahs: 12, 56 points; Chiefs: 12, 59 points; Highlanders: 11, 55 points, and the Brumbies in sixth: 10 wins, 55 points.
I had the Bulls seventh, Crusaders eighth, and Lions ninth, for what it’s worth.
So I had all teams bar the Canes finishing with more wins (and thus, points) than they did, but it was all pretty close in the end. So it’s fair to say the top six finishing the way it did has been coming for some time.
The big winner in all this is the Waratahs. In fact, I’d go as far as saying that everything has come up Milhouse for them.
Whereas this time last year the Waratahs went unbeaten from mid-season and were clearly the best team in the competition come finals time and even into the decider, this year they still haven’t put together a complete 80-minute game.
They’re not the best team in the competition – you might even argue they’d battle to make the top three – but they are the best Australian team, and thus have earned their home semi-final.
This isn’t to be critical. If the mark of the very good teams is their ability to win games they perhaps aren’t entitled to, then the Waratahs are indeed a very good team in 2015.
They have certainly won well in the last fortnight; they put the Cheetahs away in what was essentially a training run, and though they had to be patient for the first 50 minutes, they did eventually put four past the Reds too. Their defence against the Cheetahs was well off, and they just weren’t able to string together the phases and build pressure in the first half against the Reds. Yet they still got the job done, and that’s been common in 2015; getting the job done without playing their best rugby.
One shining light has been the welcome return to form of Israel Folau. I was somewhat surprised in the Cheetahs game to see Kurtley Beale’s game pilloried as it was, because he combined with Folau perhaps better than at any point this season.
Then with Beale a late scratching on Saturday, it was really encouraging to see Folau making – and capitalising on – his own half chances against the Reds. He beat five defenders for the match, and several of those came when he looked well covered.
The Waratahs’ renowned physicality returned against the Reds, too, and it will be needed as much as Folau’s ability to sniff half a gap, if the Tahs have designs on going back-to-back – and suddenly, that looks very real.
A week off and a home final against the Stormers or either the New Zealand teams will have them feeling confident, and having already done it this season, they will fancy their chances against the Hurricanes in Wellington in a final.
Paul Cully’s suggestion in Fairfax Media yesterday that Michael Cheika “would have bitten your hand off” if you offered him a home semi at the start of the season was bang on, and it was notable even only a month ago that Waratahs started talking publicly not of finishing top two, but of securing a home final.
The cards have fallen in the best possible way.
After running all season in a tight spot, and not really capable of breaking clear of the field, suddenly the rails run of the Waratahs is about to really pay off. It has been timed just about perfectly, and you would certainly rather be getting better as you approach the finals, than getting worse.