Eddie Jones is stupid to trash rugby's best club tournament

Okay, bring on rugby’s motor-mouth, England’s cocky coach, Eddie Jones: “I watch most of the Super Rugby games, but some of the games put me to sleep. I don’t think the standard’s great this year.”

Try telling that to the Brumbies, Australia’s best team, who were thrashed by New Zealand’s best team, the Chiefs a couple of weeks ago. The Chiefs played one of the great Super Rugby games in the history of the tournament.

And pass the word on to the Waratahs who had their ten-match winning streak in Sydney against the Brumbies broken 26-20 in a tempestuous, thrilling match on Saturday night at the Allianz Stadium. The Brumbies showed with an abrasive game plan and good execution at crucial times why they are the leading Australian team in the tournament, and a possible title-winner – despite their defeat by the Chiefs.

Try telling that to the Chiefs who lost at home to the Lions in their first game of the season.

And to the Stormers who also lost to the Lions in Johannesburg in a thriller at the weekend.

Try telling that to the Jaguares, a team chock-full of Pumas that was crushed by the Crusaders at Christchurch on Friday night.

Try telling that to the Sharks who played a terrific game of physical rugby against the Blues at Eden Park only to be overwhelmed by the power and fitness of the Blues at the end of the match. The Shark had won ten matches in a row against the Blues. Now they face the Highlanders at the weekend at Dunedin at their closed-roof new House of Pain.

I know, I know that the Sunwolves were totally demolished by the Cheetahs 92-17 at Bloemfontein.

There are three points to make here. First, when the teams played their first match of Super Rugby 2016 at Tokyo the scoreline showed a victory to the Cheetahs, 32-31. One of the prime factors in determining outcomes in Super Rugby is travel. The scorelines reflected the difficulty of playing away from home in Super Rugby.

On Friday night, the Cheetahs play the Rebels at Melbourne. They are a pathetic travelling team anyway but I know what team I’m going to pick in The Roar’s tipping competition, the Rebels.

If you read the New Zealand write-ups, the Hurricanes made “light work” of the Rebels at Melbourne to win their fifth game on the trot. But this commentary overlooks the really tough opposition the Rebels mounted in the second half of the match and the quality of the Hurricanes’ play, in both halves.

One outstanding feature of their play was the greatly improved play by Beauden Barrett at number 10. For most of this season (and indeed throughout his career) he could be criticised for not taking the ball to the line a pace or two with shoulders squared.

The defence was able to read his passing play and exert pressure on the Hurricanes outside backs. But someone (was it Steve Hansen or Wayne Smith?) has been talking to him. Barrett ran on to the ball with square shoulders and energised his back line and, importantly, made two incredible breaks that demonstrated the fact that he is one of the fastest backs in the Super Rugby tournament – when he “gasses it.”

Anyway, the scoreline against the Rebels looks worse than it really was. And I expect them to defeat the Cheetahs who will, if this fearless prediction is correct, go from rooster to feather duster in the space of a week.

Second, blow outs in points for and against are hardly a novelty in Super Rugby.

The 109 points that the Cheetahs and the Sunwolves accumulated at the weekend is not a record aggregate. We go back to February 2010 when the Lions (65) were defeated by the Chiefs (72), for a record aggregate of 137 points.

The winning margin at Bloemfontein of 75 points is well short of the record. In 2007 the Bulls defeated the Reds 92-3, with a winning margin of 89 points. The Bulls 41-Reds 22 at Pretoria’s Loftus Versfeld stadium at the weekend is merely a comfortable victory in comparison to the 2007 thrashing.

The third point is that Super Rugby is the hardest home-and-away tournament in world rugby. Part of the reason why the Sunwolves were competitive at home was that the Cheetahs had to fly halfway around the world to play them. And on the weekend, they had to do the hard travelling and endured having a T20 cricket score recorded against them.

My understanding is (and diligent The Roar readers will point out if I am wrong) that the Crusaders are the only non-local Super Rugby side that has more wins than losses against South African sides in matches played in South Africa.

And (again diligent readers will provide the fact checking) my understanding is that no South African side has more wins than losses in matches they have played in Australia or in New Zealand.

From Eddie Jones downwards, self-proclaimed experts have been denigrating the rugby integrity of the Super Rugby tournament. Jones the coach’s stupid trashing of the Super Rugby tournament follows, for example, the nonsense spouted by the other Jones motor-mouth, the splenetic Stephen Jones.

For years, virtually every article about Southern Hemisphere rugby by Jones the scribe denounced Super Rugby as airy-fairy cheating nonsense that lacked the physicality and set piece excellence of Northern Hemisphere rugby.

This line of argument reached its nadir when England’s best ever side won the 2003 Rugby World Cup right at the end of extra time against a Wallaby side that featured over-the-hill former greats.

Unfortunately for Jones the Scribe that victory by Sir Clive Woodward’s England side was the first and only Rugby World Cup triumph by a Northern Hemisphere side in a tournament that started in 1987. One out of seven is not an impressive outcome for NH rugby.

And at last year’s Rugby World Cup tournament all four semi-final teams, Australia, NZ, South Africa and Argentina, were from the Southern Hemisphere, with three of the countries representing the three conferences in the 2015 Super Rugby tournament.

Because the tournament presents such difficult problems for teams to win, especially away from home, coaches of great ability and insight have emerged to work out ways to be successful.

Graham Henry with the Blues, Rod Macqueen (the greatest coach of the professional era) with the Brumbies, Eddie Jones with the Brumbies, Japan and now England, Heyneke Meyer coaching the Bulls to the South African conference’s only Super Rugby tournament victories – although changes to the tackle/ruck area have Meyer’s innovations redundant. Then there’s Wayne Smith and Robbie Deans with the Crusaders long-lasting dynasty and Dave Rennie and the Chiefs and their discovery of the forgotten kingdom of Total Rugby.

Michael Cheika (Waratahs) had Super Rugby success and some success, too, at the international level.

Name any coaches with this lustre from northern hemisphere rugby? Sir Clive Woodward, perhaps, because of the terrific achievement of his 2003 Rugby World Cup truimph.

The worst indictment on coaching is that currently England, Wales, Ireland and Scotland have head coaches from either New Zealand or Australia.

If Northern Hemisphere rugby is so superior to Southern Hemisphere rugby why is that the tournaments in Europe are stacked with players from Super Rugby and that southern coaches predominate at the Test and club level in Europe?

Moreover, it needs to be stated as forcefully as possible that all the improvements in rugby, in terms of skills, plays, tactics, ball-in-play, scoring tries, expansive rugby that have destroyed the effectiveness of the England slow-plod game – the one that World Rugby and the pundits like Jones tried to enshrine – have come from the Super Rugby environment.

The last innovation from the northern hemisphere that I can think of (and again The Roar readers are welcome to add to this slim list) was the around-the-corner kicking style popularised by Barry John on the 1971 tour of New Zealand and Australia by the British and Irish Lions.

The coach of that team was the great Carwyn James, a Welsh coaching genuis who was so talented he was not wanted by Wales. James died a lonely man in Italy, a prophet without honour, aside from his triumph with the Lions, in his own country.

Super Rugby imposes such strains on all the teams and their coaching staff, in terms of winning and travelling, that the best survive and go on to dominate world rugby in Rugby World Cup tournaments.

The team that wins the Super Rugby tournament is almost always the best club side in world rugby.

***

There were two major talking points before the Waratahs-Brumbies match at Allianz Stadium on Saturday night. Could Israel Folau make a go of playing at centre? And could Michael Hooper raise his game to re-establish his credentials as the leading Australian number 7?

The answer to the second question presumes that David Pocock will play number 8 for the Wallabies, of course. Given the lack of outstanding genuine number 8s in Australian rugby, I think it is certain that Michael Cheika will opt for the Pocock option in that position.

Hooper played a terrific game. But he was let down, I believe, by the game plan of the Waratahs which seemed to be not to commit too many players to the rucks and mauls. The consequence was that the Brumbies smashed the Waratahs in the collisions, with Scott Fardy showing once again why he is a world class number 6.

When Hooper plays with the Wallabies with Fardy and Pocock he can concentrate on playing a bit wider than they do. He doesn’t get that luxury with the Waratahs. The problem for him is that he is not a natural poacher. His game is based on running and tackling, rather than getting turnovers.

The statistics in the Waratahs-Brumbies exposes this (I wouldn’t call it a weakness) difference in his game to that of Pocock and Liam Gill. The Waratahs conceded 21 turnovers (78 per cent) to the Brumbies 6 (22 per cent).

On virtually all the other statistics (but not tries), the Waratahs compared more than favourably with the Brumbies.

Carries: Waratahs 124 (63 per cent), Brumbies 74 (37 per cent).

Passes: Waratahs 170 (67 per cent), Brumbies 86 (33 per cent).

Missed tackles: Waratahs 18 (43 per cent), Brumbies 24 (57 per cent).

Offloads: Waratahs 21 (78 per cent), Brumbies 6 (22 per cent).

The Waratahs’ scrum in general held up well enough, even though the old-timer Benn Robinson was replaced in the first half.

The Bernard Foley, Kurtley Beale, Israel Folau combination was impressive. Folau had a head clash on the first play and was off the field for a time having a concussion check-up. But he came back and played impressively in the centre role.

Andrew Kellaway had a good debut at fullback. The case of Kellaway is interesting and reveals, I reckon, a weakness in Michael Cheika’s coaching methods.

Kellaway has been a stand-out in two Australian Under-20 teams competing in the annual World Rugby tournament. But Cheika never played him for the Waratahs. Along with Jed Holloway, who played only a handful of matches for the Waratahs under Cheika, Kellaway remained in the train-on rather than the run-on squad.

This Cheika tendency not to select teams with growth in them has left the new coach Daryl Gibson with big problems. The team he inherited had ageing stars like Wycliff Palu and Nick Phipps. Youngsters who should be replacing them have no experience of Super Rugby.

As well, Cheika’s game plan of repeated recycling of the ball has been studied by the other Super Rugby coaches (as Cheika discovered in 2015) and they have found answers to it.

Gibson is trying to modify and re-engineer the Waratahs game. With young players needing to be blooded, this is proving to be a difficult exercise.

Michael Hooper suggests that it is not the end of the tournament for the Waratahs with their four losses out of six games. “We dropped four in the year we won it, 2014,” he told reporters.

I am picking the Waratahs to defeat their bogey team the Force at Perth on Saturday night.

But the Waratahs, especially, and the Rebels (three losses) can’t lose more than two more matches before their chances of making the finals disappear.

One of the unintended consequences of making it harder to win bonus points for tries scored is that teams can’t expect to tally up to six or so bonus points, as they did in the past to cover up some losses.

Winning matches is the key to making the finals with the new 3+ bonus points system. The Waratahs need their new game to start clicking into gear on their road trip, always a difficult prospect, to have any chance of being in the finals.

Right now, we are looking at the finals teams from the South African Group featuring three from the Lions, Stormers, Bulls or Sharks.

In the Australasian Group, we are looking at the Brumbies being the Australian finalist and any one of the five New Zealand teams filling in the New Zealand finalist and next three placings.