There is an old joke about the gridiron coach at Notre Dame telling the media: “Prayers work best when players are big.”

But if the Chiefs (48) thrashing of the Brumbies (23) is a pointer there should be a modern variation to the Notre Dame prayer: “As long as you have some small, brilliant backs.”

The late great Jonah Lomu fulfilled the big is best mantra by showing that a huge, fast and skilful winger can be the deciding the factor in the outcome of a match. Lomu’s impact on rugby changed the game.

Instead of backs being significantly smaller than the forwards, they became in some instances, especially on the wings and the mid-field, as big as some of the forwards.

By being being so big and so strong, Lomu seemed to widen the rugby pitch because that narrow channel down the sidelines became much wider. He could not be shoved into touch.

We see this effect about widening the field currently with Julian Savea (when he is fit) and Nemani Nadolo who monstered Lions defenders, Lomu-like, at Johannesburg as the Crusaders defeated the rampant Lions 43-37.

The Crusaders scored six tries to four, with Nadolo having a hand (or a bump!) in several of them as he smashed through a defence that could not handle his size, power and skills. This is the Lomu effect in all its brutal reality.

I have always argued that the sign of a great player is that he makes his position the most important position on the field when he is in vintage form. Jonah Lomu did that. Richie McCaw did that. John Eales did that. Dan Carter did that. Victor Matfield did that. Stephen Larkham did that.

The Chiefs brilliant trio of lightning quick, incredibly skilful and braveheart small backs – Brad Weber, Aaron Cruden and Damian McKenzie – do not as individual players attain the glorious heights of the great players.

Not right now. But as a trio they are the equivalent of a Lomu-like back as they demonstrated when they cut loose (or are allowed to cut loose) as they did against the Brumbies at Canberra on Saturday night.

The three small Chiefs backs equalled and probably matched the power of one massive back as they ripped the Brumbies defensive lines to shreds.

The most impressive feature of this onslaught by the braveheart trio was that it was achieved at Canberra, a graveyard for the Chiefs in the past. Before this match, the Chiefs had played 10 matches against the Brumbies at Canberra and had lost nine of them.

It is not unknown for players to shine on their home ground. But to be so brilliantly effective in an away match and against an opponent that has traditionally been too strong and too well-organised against your frtanchise in the past is a terrific achievement.

The Weber/Cruden/McKenzie trio are a latter-day equivalent of the Ella brothers in their glory days.

Oppositions were over-run with a seemingly endless stream of Ellas running at them and around them, by the use of running angles that exposed massive gaps in the defensive lines and by a speed of foot and thought that bewildered the larger and lumbering opposition.

The Chiefs trio did the same thing to the Brumbies. And like the Ella brothers, the Chiefs trio complement each other’s strength.

Brad Weber is quick to the rucks, has a fast, flat pass and blistering speed, as he showed when he scored his try.

Aaron Cruden, like Mark Ella a number 10 he most closely resembles in his manner of playing, always seems to have lots of time to make his telling passes or his sinuous breaks. Cruden plays close to the advantage line in the tradition of the Randwick flat-line attack that Bob Dwyer always espouses as the holy grail of back play.

He has that gift, too, of appearing to have plenty of time to do what he wants to do which is, as it was with Mark Ella, to set up runners bursting through gaps.

There was that play against Brumbies that revealed his magical skills. He took the ball to the line. Looked up and saw James Lowe un-marked on the wing. He quickly dropped the ball on to his left boot (he is a right foot kicker) and kicked-passed the ball to Lowe for a seemingly easy try.

As Virgil wrote, ‘Ars celare artem’ (True art is to hide art). The great players, like all superb artists, make the difficult look easy.

On his play this year, you would have to say that Cruden should be the first choice All Blacks number 10, with the potential to emulate (in his own Ella-like style) some of Dan Carter’s great deeds.

At fullback and often popping up as first receiver is the third member of the trio, Damian McKenzie. Here is a young player in his first season of Super Rugby who is out-playing the experienced Test players in the opposition.

He is courageous as he showed with a spectacular take when the Brumbies put up a high ball. McKenzie raced about 20 metres through to take the ball and then sprinted off through the Brumbies defensive line.

McKenzie has a good passing game as well. He can kick the ball a mile. And he has tremendous speed, especially over the first 10 metres or so. That try he scored at the end of the match revealed that. The Brumbies defensive line was well set but McKenzie flashed through it.

I was reminded of the joke that rugby league coach Jack Gibson made about one of his players, “He’s so quick he can turn off the lights and be in bed before they go off.”

From time to time in the match, when the trio struck, the Brumbies just could not cope with their trickery and skill. Weber’s try, for instance, was started inside the Chiefs 22. There was a chip kick. A scorching break out. Inside passes. Flick passes. And Weber streaking away to the posts.

Readers who have played squash will understand what I mean when I say that the Chiefs advantage over the Brumbies in the speed and skill of their play became increasingly significant as the game went on. In trying to cope with the pace of the Chiefs game, the Brumbies tried too hard and made mistakes. The more mistakes they made, the more chances the Chiefs had to run the Brumbies around and to tire them into more mistakes.

With 20 minutes to go the score line was Chiefs 29-Brumbies 23. It was anyone’s game, or so it seemed.

Then Lowe scored by Cruden’s magic kick-pass in the 64th minute. Brad Weber crossed for a try in the 66th minute. And Damian Mckenzie, with the flood-gates now open, streaked across in the 79th minute.

The final result 48-23 represented the most number of points conceded by the Brumbies in Canberra, and the most anywhere since 2011 when the Crusaders thrashed them at Christchurch.

The statistics of the game do not reflect the magnitude of the victory.

	Brumbies	Chiefs
Possession	49	51
Kicks	13	20
Offloads	7	6
Run Metres	362	493
Rucks Won	50	47
Penalties conceded	8	11
Linebreaks	10	19
Tackles	73	73
Tackles missed	22	16
Turnovers conceded	18	11

The statistics that leap out from this table are the 131 metres extra run by the Chiefs and the seven extra turnovers conceded by the Brumbies.

Before the match there was a lot of talk about the battle of the number sevens, David Pocock against Sam Cane. The old master, Pocock, against the sorcerer’s (McCaw) apprentice Cane.

Pocock forced a couple of turnovers in the first half. But, it seemed to me anyway, that the game got too fast for him.

He could not do much about the speed and skills, the high tempo game of the Chiefs backs and forwards. Towards the end of the game he was reduced to brute strength frustration of trying to wrench Michael Leitch’s head off his shoulders when the Chiefs put on a driving maul.

Scott Fardy’s all round flanker’s game provided better value for the Brumbies than Pocock’s muscle-bound effort.

Cane got one vital turnover for the Chiefs but his main contribution was his tackling, with Brumbies lowered to the ground like a scythe going through wheat (to quote the late, great and sorely missed David Brockhoff). The scythed Brumbies runners were easy game for the Chiefs poachers to steal the ball.

Hence the high number of turnovers conceded by the Brumbies.

The Pocock-Cane difference, lumbering power over the ball against speed around the field and multiple skills, an obsession with defence over a dedication to attack, was the the basic difference between the two teams.

The other major difference was that the Chiefs look capable of scoring from broken play and from inside their own 22 when the chance was on. The Brumbies seemed leaden-footed and leaden-thoughted by comparison.

There was a time during the Rod Macqueen era when the Brumbies franchise was a place of pilgrimage for rugby coaches from around the world.

Macqueen brought in innovation after innovation – from lining his runners across the field for kick-offs, to splitting lineouts, to having rehearsed sequences of play that took tacklers out of the defensive wall a brick at a time before the gap was created, to having killer set moves for one-play tries.

In the late 1990s and early 2000s the Brumbies and the Wallabies were the world-leaders in tactics, techniques, skills and successes. The result of this coaching excellence was that the Wallabies held every trophy in world rugby at one point in time.

I well remember New Zealand rugby writers and former All Blacks like Chris Laidlaw wondering if New Zealand rugby could ever match the intelligence and skills of Australian rugby.

Look at the situation now.

Where are the ideas coming out of Australian rugby? Where is the coaching equivalent of Rod Macqueen? Where is the playing equivalent of John Eales or Stephen Larkham, or at a lesser (but still high) level of Matt Burke, Ben Tune, George Gregan, Phil Kearns and so on?

I have said this before and say it again. The ARU should build a coaching program to produce the level of coaching prowess that is under-pinning the current New Zealand dominance of world rugby. And Rod Macqueen and Bob Dwyer (the guru of the Randwick flat line attack that is the basis of the New Zealand game) should be the leaders of this program.

Here is something positive the ARU can do for Australian rugby. Make it happen!

The Western Force demonstrated in Dunedin that they need to get fitter to get better
On the Rugby 360 program Rod Kafer and Greg Martin expressed their dismay at the lack of skills, especially in the passing area, of the Australian teams compared with the New Zealand teams.

Martin pointed out that four of the top five Super Rugby teams as far as off-loads were concerned were New Zealand teams.

As David Campese once famous noted: “You can’t learn to play running rugby in five minutes.” To play effective running rugby, a team needs to have pace around the field, good set pieces and highly-honed skills, especially passing skills.

The New Zealand style that threatens to dominate Super Rugby and world rugby, including World Cup tournaments, is a style based around every team member being a good passer and catcher of the ball.

This passing obsession is part of the DNA of New Zealand rugby. In 1905 the All Blacks toured Great Britain and won all their matches, except for a controversial Test against Wales. The side was often described by rugby writers as “the all backs.”

This high-skilled ‘all backs’ game 110 years later is as effective now as it was back then when it was invented by Dave Gallaher and his team.

At the 2015 Rugby World Cup tournament the All Blacks went out on to the field at half-time in their semi-final against the Springboks and ran through their passing drills. They were concerned that the rain was affecting their handling and they wanted more practice in the conditions to try and eliminate their errors.

New Zealand teams, at all levels, from the primary school kids to the All Blacks, invest a great deal of their practice sessions to ball handling and passing skills. They do gym work. But they do more passing and catching work.

My guess is that it is the opposite way round for the Australian teams.

When Robbie Deans became the Wallabies coach in 2008 he tried to inculcate this passing style of rugby into the Wallabies by encouraging them to “play what was in front of them.” Remember he had just coached the Crusaders to a Super Rugby title where they won every match they contested throughout the tournament. So he knew how powerful the passing game could be for the Wallabies.

The players, though, did not have the skills or the enthusiasm to embrace the style Deans wanted them to play.

Moreover, the players in general were not fit enough either to play total rugby, which is the method he coached so successfully at the Crusaders.

This inability to get really match fit is the besetting fault of Australian rugby, aside from a general lack of pace around the field and an absence of highly skilled players.

We saw all this with the Force and their “gallant” (as the New Zealand newspapers described it) effort to defeat the Highlanders.

The Force scored 14 points at the beginning of the match. But then scored only six more points, from two penalties.

The context for those two tries, one of which was gifted to them by a careless pass from Patrick Osborne to Ben Smith, is that the Force had only scored five tries before this match.

This small total of tries (Damian McKenzie has scored more himself than the Force in Super Rugby this year!) is a reflection of the fact that although the Force this season want to play attacking rugby, they don’t have the skills or the fitness to do achieve this goal.

I wrote in my notes taken during the game: “After 22 minutes FORCE SLOWING DOWN!”

This was a reference to the fact that in their matches this season, the Force have been competitive for 40 minutes or so and then tended to collapse towards the end of the match. And here they were slowing down only halfway through the first half.

The scoreline at half-time was 14-14.

There were so many stoppages for injuries, especially clashes to the head, that the match went on for nearly 120 minutes. This gave the Force time to recuperate, thereby delaying their inevitable collapse from exhaustion.

This collapse did not come until the 60th minute instead of the 40th minute as in early matches this season.

It is hard for a team in Perth, one of the most isolated major cities in the world, to attract high quality players from the eastern seaboard states.

But it should not be hard to actually present a team that is fit.

This is my big gripe about the Force. They have every incentive to present a team that at least plays out 80 minutes in every game. If they did this, they would win more matches than they do most seasons.

You can go a long way with a really fit side. Look at the way the Chiefs just run teams off their feet, including the Brumbies on Saturday night, although they are the best defensive side in the tournament, in the last 20 minutes of play.

Michael Cheika got the Waratahs fit, really match-hard fit, for the first time in the franchise’s history and they rewarded him and the fans win a first Super Rugby tournament win.

Here is a clue for coach Michael Foley, then. First things first. Get your team match fit. Once they are in this condition, they can at least attempt to play running rugby.

The Rebels deserved their narrow win against the lethargic Waratahs
The good Sunday afternoon crowd at Allianz Stadium (20,542) roared into life as the Waratahs tried to score the winning try from inside their 22 with time up.

But typically for the Waratahs this season, they moved their attack, with the help of a penalty, to just outside the Rebels 22 before they knocked the ball on.

The 21-17 victory for the Rebels was well-deserved. They played a splendid first half during which they motored to a 21-3 lead, the biggest half-time lead the franchise has ever enjoyed in its history.

But they fell into the trap of trying to defend the lead by running down the clock when there was about 30 minutes of play still left on it.

The Waratahs stormed back. They put on 17 unanswered points, even though they were not playing with any fluency and at time did not seem to know what they were trying to do.

Phil Kearns was polite when he complained there was no shape to their game.

Against this, the Rebels did have shape and a sense of what plays to do in certain situations. Even when they were hanging on for dear life towards the end of the match, they always had a sense of what they should be doing. Doing it properly was their problem.

At the heart of the Waratahs’ poor play, in my opinion, is the erratic passing of Nick Phipps.

He is inclined to stand over the ball before passing, a method that allows the defence to set themselves. He invariably passes at his receiver or slightly behind him. He hardly ever puts the ball in front of the runner as, say, Aaron Smith did so effectively against the Force.

As well as this, Phipps does a wind-up when he wants to put some pace on his pass. The result of this is that often his runners get the ball and the defenders at the same time. One particularly promising Waratahs attack in front of the Rebels try line was thwarted by a turnover penalty because of this fault in Phipps method.

Matt Lucas came on in the 65th minute to replace Phipps. He made an immediate impact on the Waratahs attack. The ball was put in front of the runners. There was pace on the wide pass but it came to hand at a comfortable catching angle.

Admittedly there were a couple of botched passes but he was a huge improvement on Phipps. And when he started to run, the Rebels defence became very stretched.

I reckon coach Daryl Gibson has a big call to make the next time the Waratahs play. And that is whether to give Lucas a starting role ahead of the incumbent Wallabies half back.

This is the sort of call that forward-looking coaches make. One of the reasons why Brad Weber is playing with such confidence is that even before Tawera Kerr-Barlow was injured the Chiefs coach Dave Rennie gave Weber a starting role.

Sometimes the best call is to go for the younger, more dynamic player especially when your team, as the Waratahs are, is struggling to make the sort of impact they are expected to make.

The Waratahs are now the third Australian side on the points table, a position they deserve and will become entrenched on unless there is more energy at half back and more skill, especially with their passing, from the entire back division.

And that includes Israel Folau who had a shocker of a game by his usual standards.

There will be no finals for the Waratahs if their play against the Rebels is going to be standard fare for the rest of the season.