B52 Brumbies v Waratahs: This is the big one!

I was struck watching the Waratahs-Reds match at Allianz Stadium last weekend by the lack of intensity and passion exhibited by both sides.

The days are long gone when this NSW versus Queensland contest, which stretches back to the 1880s, was the rugby equivalent of league’s State of Origin.

It was all a far (battle) cry from the vicious tactics of taking players out off the ball, the stomping, the smashing of opponents on the ground (especially if that opponent was the great David Campese!), and the continuous fights, on and off the field.

In past eras the bloody conflict on the field was matched with off the field rhetoric often degenerating into swaggering bravado from players, officials and the media.

On Saturday night, though, there seemed to me to be more Japanese reporters interested in Ayumu Goromaru in the media room than rabid Reds journalists.

It is hard, I guess, to maintain the rage for Reds players and supporters when their team is so pathetic. As a supporter, if you believe your team isn’t prepared to spill blood for the cause, why should you spill your guts.

And that is the key to the obvious truth in Super Rugby 2016 that the Waratahs-Reds contest has been replaced as the big game on the Australian rugby calendar by the Waratahs-Brumbies clash.

Part of the blame for this decline by the Reds can be sheeted home to the administration of the franchise and, specifically, to the continuing appointment of Richard Graham as the team’s head coach.

I will preface my remarks about Graham with the proviso that he is a decent bloke who has handled the pressure of being a constant loser in his coaching career with a degree of patience and good cheer, with hardly a criticism of anyone on his team or of the media.

But as the ancient sports adage states: “Good guys finish last.”

Graham owes his position as coach of the Reds to a coterie of mates who have pushed his cause, either on selection panels or to influence selection panels. Readers of The Roar might remember when I made this argument about Graham’s influential friends in court, John Eales (no less) took me to task for suggesting this sort of thing.

The fact of the matter is that the mates were wrong and the critics like myself were right when we argued that Graham was the wrong person to be the Reds coach and that it would all end in tears.

For me, Graham is Australia’s equivalent of Sir John Kirwan. Both coaches had powerful backers. These backers were mates. And the backers refused for years to acknowledge that both coaches did not have what it takes to be a successful Super Rugby coach.

A great part of coaching lies in selection. Kirwan became notorious for not selecting players who could immeasurably help the Blues and selecting other players who were clearly not up to the contest.

And Graham does the same thing. Why, for instance, didn’t he start his star recruit Ayumu Goromaru at fullback against the Wallabies? Goromaru came on later in the game and played splendidly and kicked some good goals.

Former Wallabies coach John Connolly was brought in last season to provide some elder statesman guidance for Graham. But all the evidence suggests that Graham wasn’t prepared to listen to much of what Connolly had to tell him.

This week Connolly was making the point, once again, that Graham has got his centres combination the wrong way around with Karmichael Hunt at inside centre (instead of outside centre) and Samu Kerevi at outside centre (instead of inside centre).

Connolly is spot on with his call. The outside centre role has become more of a defensive organising position. Hunt, with his league background, understands this role better than Kerevi who is an explosive runner capable of imposing huge stresses on the defences in the middle of the field.

And then there is the Reds penchant for standing so deep when trying to run the ball. Several occasions against the Waratahs, Reds attacks were smashed back about 20 metres when the lateral attacks became easy pickings for the aggressive Waratahs defence.

The Reds have a chance for redemption of a sorts when they play their first home match for 2016 at Suncorp Stadium on Saturday against the Force, another team with a poorly performing coach (Michael Foley) who is, like Graham, a pleasant sort of chap.

These two teams are playing for the chance not to be regarded as the weakest Australian team in Super Rugby 2016. It is a measure of the decline of the mighty Reds that the Force must be rated a good chance to beat the Reds, even though their away record is abysmal.

I would give the Rebels a chance, too, to win their away match against the hornless Bulls at Loftus Versfeld Stadium in Pretoria.

The Bulls were monstered by the Stormers 33-9 (three tries to none, four penalties to three) at Newlands. Referee Craig Joubert was tough (and rightly so) on the Bulls’ transgressions. I expect the New Zealand referee Ben O’Keefe to officiate much like Joubert.

If this happens, then the Rebels, who were impressive in defeating the Force at Perth, should start their Super Rugby 2016 campaign with two away wins.

Now for the match of the round for Australian supporters, the Brumbies versus Waratahs at Canberra, on Friday night. The big one! A match some pundits are predicting will replicate the Super Rugby final on August 6.

SANZAAR has give the match a sort of finals context by appointing a South African referee, Marius van der Westhuizen, as the presiding official rather than an Australian referee.

Westhuizen, 32, is a young referee. He came up through the World Rugby Sevens, then Super Rugby in 2014 and is now a Test referee. I have no doubt that he is being groomed for higher refereeing honours at the 2019 and 2023 Rugby World Cups.

His main task will be to sort of the Brumbies’ game of attacking every opposition ruck and maul for possible turnovers. Against the Hurricanes, the Brumbies were repeatedly penalised for this tactic, or the misapplication of this tactic.

But the tactic worked. Even with the penalties, the Hurricanes could not get their free-flowing game going. The assault on their rucks and the line speed of the Brumbies defence meant that attacks that last year worked brilliantly could not even get into first gear, let alone full speed.

The Australian referee Andrew Lees resisted the Brumbies’ attempts to get him to condone their ruck tactics. He has been proved right in this with the Brumbies admitting, days later, that he was “spot on” in his calls.

The only criticism that can be made of Lees is that his sin-binning of the serial offenders, David Pocock and Matt Toomua, late in game was about 30 minutes too late. The sin-binnings should have started in the first half when the Hurricanes were in a position to perhaps gain some parity on the field and on the scoreboard with the Brumbies.

The breakdown battle is further complicated by the fact that the two No.7s, Pocock and Michael Hooper, have been Wallabies rivals for the fetcher role.

The truth is, though, that the Brumbies present virtually all their team, rather like the All Blacks, as potential fetchers.

The Waratahs, on the other hand, use Hooper less as a fetcher and more as a runner and defender in the wide channels.

The Roar ran a fascinating article a couple of days ago by Nicholas Bishop on David Pocock, how he operates and how the All Blacks played him out of the game in the 2011 World Cup semi-final.

It will be fascinating to see if the new coach of the Waratahs, Daryl Gibson, who learnt his rugby in the Crusaders camp from coaches like Wayne Smith and Steve Hansen, can come up with a similar gameplan to neutralise Pocock the way the All Blacks did in the 2011 World Cup – and, actually, in the final of the 2015 tournament.

Gibson has named the same side for the Brumbies’ match that started against the Reds. It was notable to me in the game against the Reds that the monster Will Skelton was used a lot as the first receiver to smash the defensive line.

He has kept the impressive young No.8 Jed Holloway rather than starting with the veteran Wycliff Palu. Holloway ran for excessive metres against the Reds. He gives the Waratahs pack a lot of pace around the field when he works with Hooper.

Palu will be kept, no doubt, for when Skelton is replaced. This way, the Waratahs have a battering ram to smash into the Brumbies defence at all times during the game.

Gibson is very much a coach under scrutiny. He is a New Zealander who has said he has an ambition to coach the All Blacks. I don’t know whether Australian rugby should be prepping possible All Blacks coaches.

If Robbie Deans could not be accepted by the Australian rugby community as a fair dinkum Wallabies coach, I don’t see any future national coach being anything other than an Australian. And if this is the case, one of the premier coaching jobs in Australian rugby, the Waratahs gig, should – in my opinion – always go to an Australian.

Anyway, right now Gibson is the coach of the Waratahs and all the coaches in the Super Rugby tournament will be looking at his tactics and strategy on how to defeat the Brumbies.

The Brumbies have insisted that the tactics that enabled them to defeat the Hurricanes 52-10, thereby making them the B52 Brumbies, will be maintained.

They will attack every ruck and maul. They will maintain the integrity of their scrum and lineout, both of them excellent against the Hurricanes. They keep the drive and speed in their mauling, making it an explosive rather than a slow-grind tactic.

And they will continue to play wide, even when they are deep in their own territory.

It was this wide game that disconcerted the Hurricanes, almost as much as their kamikaze tactics in the ruck and mauls. The Hurricanes clearly came prepared to run back the Brumbies’ kicks, especially out of defence. They had their wingers back in the deep field.

When the Brumbies ran the ball from inside their 22, they only had to get the ball wide to find overlaps galore. The Hurricanes never adopted to this rejection of Jakeball.

We come back to coaches and their influence on the success of their teams, on and off the field. Jake White was an instant success with the Brumbies’ victory against the British and Irish Lions and Super Rugby finals spots.

But it was at a cost to the heart and soul of the franchise. Supporters voted with their feet against the dull style from a side that had pioneered the expansive, clever, tough game in the professional era. It was unsuccessful, too, in that the Brumbies did not win a Super Rugby title with Jakeball, either under White or Stephen Larkham.

The expansive game played against the Hurricanes, which resulted in seven tries to seven different players, flick passes and brilliant new set moves, has given the Brumbies such a potent attack that already many experts, including New Zealanders, are acknowledging that on August 6, Super Rugby grand final day, the Brumbies will be one of the contesting sides.

Opta Facts, though, has these sobering statistics: the Brumbies have won only one of their last five games immediately following a match in which they have scored 50-plus points.

Also, the Waratahs have won each of their last four matches against the Brumbies, keeping them to fewer than 14 points on each occasion.

To be honest, I am a believer that history doesn’t repeat itself, only historians. Facts like this are interesting. They can be indicative. They can also be irrelevant.

I will hang fire on the Brumbies and the August 6 Super Rugby grand final. But this is the big one for the Australian Conference. The winner will be the leading Australian team, with a great shot at going all the way to Super Rugby glory.

Fearless prediction: the Brumbies will defeat the Waratahs on Friday night.