Is Liam Gill the best all-skills Aussie number 7?

The power of one can work positively and negatively as the cases of Richard Graham and Liam Gill in the performance of the Queensland Reds this season suggests.

Under Richard Graham the Reds were a dispirited team playing without a pattern and, seemingly, without too much regard for a losing outcome.

The turnaround in performance and passion since Graham left the Reds has been impressive. The team has drawn with the Auckland Blues, a team that put up a mighty but losing 23-29 performance against the Chiefs.

Then the Waratahs were given a fright before Bernard Foley, the iceman, kicked the winning goal.

And on Saturday night the Reds defeated last year’s champions, the Highlanders, 28-27, in a thrilling (and here we embrace Sean Fitzpatrick’s cliche) game of two halves.

The Reds led 22-6 at half-time. The 17,119 crowd rose to their feet as the players left for the field with a standing and justified ovation for the home side.

With 22 minutes left to play, Highlanders scored a converted try, 28-13. Ten minutes later, the visitors scored another converted try, 28-10. A third converted try to the Highlanders, three minutes later, created a score line of 28-27.

The last nine minutes were agony for the Reds and Highlanders supporters. The Highlanders had lost two tries to careless play, an offside that need not have happened if a supporting player, Shane Christie, had checked his run for a few paces and a choke tackle by Joe Wheeler that was obvious and unnecessary.

A third potential try was lost with minutes left in the match when the Highlanders broke away with the Reds try line exposed after they had knocked-on and the Reds had made several passes from their re-gather.

Throughout the match the New Zealand referee Glen Jackson was quick to call out, “advantage over,” after the non-offending team had made a secure pass in this situation. In this case, fortunately for the Reds, Jackson delayed his call and a time-consuming scrum was called.

The match was essentially won for the Reds with their blistering first half. A team not noted for its try-scoring scored three times. During the match, the Reds ran for 616m against the 503m for the Highlanders. The majority of those Reds metres were recorded in the first half when the side embarked on thrilling movements that saw runners breaking out of their own 22 to take the attack deep into Highlanders territory.

There were champions all over the field for the Reds. Samu Kerevi was in smashing form and, hopefully, Michael Cheika is looking to bring him into Wallabies squad, something he should have done last year.

Karmichael Hunt was tough and enterprising at fullback playing far and away his best game for the Reds.

At the time it hardly registered but Jake McIntyre’s drop goal before half-time turned out to be a decisive event in the outcome of the match. I have always believed that when there is nothing on for a team that has spent some time on attack, then take the drop goal option.

How many game did Jonny Wilkinson win with this tactic? Not forgetting, either, the pair of drop goals in the 2015 Rugby World Cup tournament, the first against the Springboks to sink their hopes in the semi-final and the second against the Wallabies to extend a small All Blacks lead in the final.

McIntyre is clearing maturing as a play-maker. There are lots of rough edges to his game. He stands too deep even when there is a turnover. His kicking is erratic. But his poise and judgment in kicking that drop goal suggests good things to come for him.

Nick Frisby, too, is developing strongly as a all-purpose half back, with a strong passing game, a determined defender and a scuttling, effective runner.

The improvement in Frisby’s play, along with the genuine class with Nick Stirzaker, makes it difficult to understand why Michael Cheika is so determined to bring Will Genia back from obscurity and injury in France to play for the Wallabies against England.

Cheika needs to move on from the 2015 Rugby World Cup squad.

This brings us to Liam Gill. It is no coincidence that the resurgence of the Reds has coincided with his return to the team. If the end of Richard Graham is an indication of the power of one in a negative mode, the return of Gill is a sign of the power of one in a positive mode.

On his performance against the Highlanders, together with performances in the past, the claim can be made that he is the best all-skills number 7 in Australian rugby.

He is strong over the ball like David Pocock. His impact smashing into rucks when the opposition has the ball is as ferocious and as effective as Pocock. He has Michael Hooper’s pace and athleticism around the field, on a defence and on attack. He is better in the lineout than the other two champions. And he is a better linking player, as he showed with his try against the Highlanders.

Australian rugby has four flankers, David Pocock, Michael Hooper, Sean McMahon (who Cheika has identified as the outstanding Australian in Super Rugby this season) and Liam Gill who would be starters in virtually every Test side (aside from the All Blacks, perhaps) in world rugby.

It is a pity that Gill is leaving Australian rugby at the end of the season for a European tour of duty. He is still a young albeit very experienced player. In four year’s time, he still will be under 30 and, hopefully, part of a Wallaby back row that could terrorise any team in Rugby World Cup 2019 at Japan.

Mention needs to made in this context of the splendid apology David Pocock made to Michael Leitch for his “sleeper hold” tackle on that player in the Brumbies – Chiefs match that has led to him being banned for for dangerous play for two weeks.

Pocock apparently did not know until after the match that he has Leitch’s head in such a dangerous situation. He called Leitch twice to apologise. For their part, the Chiefs coach Dave Rennie revealed that Leitch did not want to press charges against Pocock.

I think these reactions reflect well on both players. Pocock was remorseful. Leitch did not believe that there was anything malicious in the incident, despite the fact that he was reduced to lying prone on the field after it.

The New Zealand media, or perhaps more accurately Gregor Paul of the New Zealand Herald, are trying to make something more of Pocock’s remorse. “The Wallabies flanker,” he writes, Widely seen outside New Zealand as the best openside in the game, might be prone to being a bit cheap and nasty off the ball to better enforce himself.”

Paul goes on to claim that the Leitch incident was not a one-off: “In the World Cup final, 25 minutes into the game, Pocock’s boot made heavy contact with McCaw’s head. Perhaps it was an accident – the Wallaby openside appearing to lose his balance only to adjust his feet to stay upright and ‘accidentally’ bring his left boot down on McCaw’s face.”

I see this as a retaliation by the New Zealand rugby media over the incessant and stupid attacks on Richie McCaw by Australian and British commentators and journalists as a “cheat.”

McCaw had only three yellow cards in 148 Tests and, as Paul notes, “the worst of those offences was a casual foot trip.”

But McCaw enduring reputation as the greatest of the loose forwards in the modern era is not entrenched with rehashing the occasional Pocock incident in the past.

The fact about McCaw, Pocock, Hooper, McMahon and Gill is that although they play or in the case of McCaw played in the dangerous position of number 7, none of them have to answer to any criticism about the fairness of their play.

As Gill showed against the Highlanders, the essence of the great number 7s play is a disregard for his own body in pursuit of an advantage on attack and defence for his own team.

In every sense of the phrase, Gill gave a typically Reds-blooded performance that opened up the chances for himself and his team-mates to seize and win what could be a season-turning victory.

He is some player in the sort of form he showed on Saturday night.

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It is a curious fact that some teams find it difficult to defeat certain opponents who lesser teams handle with some ease.

The Highlanders just find it almost impossible to defeat the Reds at Brisbane. Their loss on Saturday looks like entrenching a self-fulfilling prophecy.

The Crusaders have a similar sort of record against the Force at Perth. In their first match in 2006 there the tournament-winning Crusaders drew 23-23. In 2010 they lost 24-16 and in 2013 they lost 16-14.

After playing splendidly in South Africa with victories over the Sharks and Lions (a team with the Stormers that looks to be best the best of the South African Group), the Crusaders played a miserable, negative, kicking game against the Force, who were similarly negative.

The more the Crusaders continued their attritional approach against the Force, the more errors they made and the more nervous and rattled they appeared to be. The more nervous and rattled they appeared to be the more confrontational the Force became.

In the end, the Crusaders scored a converted try to give themselves a 20 – 19 victory. But it was unimpressive stuff against a side that was dominated in the set pieces and which conceded an early, easy try.

The comparison between the Crusaders with their negative play and the Chiefs battle to get on top of the Blues is a reveraling one. It is also a sign, in my view, that the Chiefs rather than the Crusaders is the potential tournament winner from the New Zealand sides.

Down 25-20 the Chiefs threw everything into an attacking onslaught. After he scored his match-winning try, Cruden told reporters the secret to his try and the Chiefs’ victory, which was won with bonus points under some duress. “We were able to wrestle the momentum back and that turned into a few points for us. Things were starting to open up a little bit. I saw an opportunity on the short side and to be fair, Mitch Graham (a prop), threw a fantastic ball, turning backwards on his bad side.

“And that was the key – keeping the ball alive. In recent weeks that’s been a big go for us – offloading in tight situations.”

So the story of the round for me was that the Reds are beginning to look like a team that is capable, on their day, of beating most teams in the tournament. The test of this turn-around in form comes next weekend with their match against the Bulls at Loftus Versfeld stadium, Pretoria.

The Lions had a terrific victory over the Sharks and their battle with the Stormers at Johannesburg will decide the bragging rights for the top South African side.

The Hurricanes had a convincing (on paper, only) 40-22 victory over the Jagureas at Wellington. Their match at Melbourne on Friday night will tell us a lot about the prospects of both sides in 2016.

But the Chiefs, who have a bye, remain the team that is the favourite to win the 2016 Super Rugby tournament. Right now, that is.

A week in politics is said to be a long time. Two months in Super Rugby is a really long time when anything can happen.