Can the Waratahs beat the Brumbies to the finals with bonus points?

It was only a matter of seconds after the final whistle blew on the thrilling Highlanders – Crusaders match that my telephone rang.

“What a match!,” my friend yelled out to me. He was clearly still excited by the intensity and skill of the two teams.

Then about three minutes later, I (and a number of others in a group of enthusiasts) got the following email from another friend: “Just watched Highlanders play the Crusaders. I am struggling to remember a better game of Super 12/18 I have ever seen …

“As good as the Highlanders were in attack, their defence was better. In wave after wave both sides had heroic tacklers. Israel Dagg must surely be the best back in the world. The referee had an excellent game. Was very Test and was close to exploding many times.”

I wrote back to my friend and the others on the discussion group: “I took the Highlanders to beat the Crusaders in the tipping contest on The Roar … I was not convinced the Crusaders have the firepower in the outside backs to complement the ensemble game they, despite the electrifying brilliance of Israel Dagg.

“They started brilliantly by exposing the Highlanders’ defensive system of not contesting the rucks. This system gave the Highlanders numbers in their defensive line. But it also allowed quick rucked ball for the Crusaders to exploit. Those two saved tries by the Highlanders early on won the game for them.

“They then adjusted their defensive patterns to put more pressure on the rucks and used the outside-in rugby league umbrella defensive pattern to great effect.

“The point about all this is that the Highlanders made these adjustments in the heat of battle. This points to the terrific coaching staff they have and, most importantly, the ability of their players to think with clarity amidst the fog of war.

“I doubt whether the Australian teams are capable of this sort of change in plans about how they are going to play the match. The Rebels – Brumbies contest was pedestrian by comparison.”

If some Brumbies supporters think I am too hard on Australian sides and the Brumbies in particular, here is Sir Graham Henry making similar points to those I made. “The New Zealand sides are a cut above the others, which is disappointing because you need the other sides to have a good competition and increase the interest. The Brumbies have been exceptionally disappointing. They have the most experienced side in the competition, with two-thirds of the starting team starting Wallabies. I thought they would have been finalists.”

I have expressed the same thought previously about the Brumbies being or should being the Australian Conference top team. And they could still be. They did defeat the Rebels at Melbourne.

But it was an unconvincing 30-22 victory. The Brumbies scored five tries but conceded three. This tally meant that once again they failed to gain a bonus point.

This lack of bonus points could prove to be fatal for the Brumbies. In 11 matches they have achieved the inglorious tally of exactly one bonus point!

No team in the Australasian Group has scored fewer. The Western Force, the bottom team in the group with ten points, has scored two bonus points.

The bottom team in the South African Group, the Southern Kings (ten points on the table) have not recorded a bonus point. But this hardly exonerates the Brumbies. The two new Super Rugby teams have scored more bonus points than the Brumbies – the Sunwolves have three and the Jaguares five.

Both these teams, incidentally, played splendidly in this round. The Sunwolves conceded a try on time to concede (they should have won the match) a 17-17 draw at Singapore to the Stormers. This is a game hey had in the bag when they were seven points up and inside the Stormers 22 for four minutes of the last five.

The Sunwolves turned down two relatively easy penalty shots in favour of driving lineouts. They also did not take any field goal shots, even after they had been awarded a penalty and were within spitting distance of the posts.

What was going on in their minds? This was some of the most stupid decision-making I’ve seen this year. It certainly robbed the Sunwolves of what should have been a famous victory against a strong South African side.

The Jagueras, for their part, conceded far too many penalties, the last being when their scrum imploded (the wonder of it, an Argentinian side with an imploding scrum!). The resulting penalty allowed a dead-eyed Patrick Lambie to kick the Sharks to a 25-22 victory in Buenos Aires.

Getting back to the bonus points-deprived Brumbies, they seem to have an easier route to the finals than the Waratahs. They have a bye next week and then they play the Sunwolves (h), Reds (h), Blues (a), Force (h).

I would expect this easy series of matches to give the Brumbies the top position on the Australian Conference. For they really should win all these matches. If they do this, they will gain an additional 16 points on the ladder, without taking into consideration any bonus points they might accrue.

The Waratahs, on the other hand, have a tough run home. They play the Crusaders (a), Chiefs (h), Sunwolves (a), Hurricanes (h), Blues (a). They do have an advantage in that they have played both of their byes.

The Waratahs play the Chiefs and the Hurricanes at Sydney, which is a slight plus for them. The Chiefs were relentlessly brilliant against the Brumbies at Canberra. You would expect them to play strongly at Sydney.

But I’m not so sure about the Hurricanes as a solid away team. They were monstered by the Lions two weeks ago at Johannesburg, admittedly after five players had somehow (we are not sure) failed on a curfew.

You would think that the Waratahs will win this match. If they lose to the Crusaders next weekend at Christchurch, which is likely, the Waratahs will probably need to win all their other matches to knock off the Brumbies. Some bonus points would be useful, too.

The Waratahs, for their part, are starting to play well at Sydney, after a terrible first month of results. The victory over the Bulls 31-8 at the Allianz Stadium on Saturday night was clinical in that they scored four tries (the last by Angus Ta’avao on time) and they conceded only one.

The bonus point the Waratahs picked up in this match is their sixth for the season. Only the Hurricanes on eight have tallied more bonus points. The Chiefs, Highlanders, Stormers and Jagueras are behind the Waratahs with five bonus points each.

At the beginning of the season I was critical of the introduction of the new bonus point system (adopted from the French championship) whereby a team has to score +3 tries or be within seven points of their opposition to get a bonus point.

I argued, wrongly as it turned out as the New Zealand teams in particular have demonstrated, that attacking play would be stifled. Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa.

What has happened is that the attacking sides are getting bonus points for tries scored if this attacking flair is matched with a strong defence. This sort of balance between rewarding good attack and good defence is a good thing for the Super Rugby tournament.

Under the old bonus points system, for instance, the Brumbies would have gained a bonus point in their victory against the Rebels by scoring five tries to three. They would not have been punished on the points table for conceding three tries.

Rugby is a game of offence and defence. The new +3 tries system reflects this balance.

The match against the Crusaders next weekend, then, looms up as a defining point for the Waratahs. If they beat the Crusaders, they have the chance to go into a 5-point or 6-point lead (with a bonus point) over the Brumbies who are taking their second bye.

The Waratahs coach Daryl Gibson will surely be looking closely at the tape of the Crusaders – Highlanders match and the way Matt Faddes, a converted Sevens player, ripped the Crusaders centres defence to shreds.

What Faddes could do against the Crusaders, surely Israel Folau can trump it. Folau played another terrific game at centre for the Waratahs against the Bulls. If the Crusaders do not rectify what went wrong against the Highlanders on defence, you would expect Folau and the Waratahs will have a field day.

This gets us back to Sir Graham Henry’s point about the disappointing Brumbies.

We need to remember that Stephen Larkham is not only the Brumbies coach, he is the attack coach for the Wallabies.

The attack of the Brumbies leaves a lot to be desired, however. The back line is too deep, for one thing. How Larkham can allow this when he himself was a doyen of the flat back line attack as a great player is beyond me.

And what does it imply for the Wallabies attack, especially as Michael Cheika seems to be set on bringing back the old gang from Europe for The Rugby Championship Tests?

I’m wondering, too, whether the Brumbies tactics of using Tevita Kuridrani as a battering ram at centre is the right strategy for the player and the team. It seems to me that inside centre might be better for Kuridrani.

Something needs to be done about the Brumbies backline alignment and personnel to get back to the scintillating play they showed in the opening rounds of this year’s competition. Having a flatter and more square-shouldered attacking back line alignment would be a good start.

Earlier this year, I was chatting to Bob Dwyer. He told me that Morgan Turinui had come back to coach at Randwick and that he was an outstanding talent as a coach. “Morgan will certainly go on to coach the Wallabies,” Dwyer assued me.

When Dwyer told me this, my mind went back it must be a couple of decades ago,when I was walking through Queens Park, near Centennial Park, on a sunny Saturday afternoon. St Joseph’s First XV were making a rare sortie in the eastern suburbs of Sydney to play the Waverley First XV.

The coach of Waverley spotted me and came over for a chat. “Watch out for our centre, young Morgan Turinui,” he told me.

Turinui carved up Joeys, rather like the Ella brothers did for Matraville High School on an earlier memorable occasion.

I followed Turinui’s career with some interest after that. He played for the Australian Sevens side as a teenager. And later, he played for the Wallabies. His talent never blossomed into the greatness he was capable of.

After his retirement as a player he has stayed in rugby as a coach. This week the Rebels announced that Turinui had joined the franchise as their attacking coach, forthwith.

Better late than never, I guess. The Rebels cruelled their chances of being the top Australian side this season by some lacklustre attacking play. They are the only side of the top three Australian sides with a minus for-and-against record, – 23. The Waratahs are + 67 and the Brumbies + 30.

Last week we were talking about how three Australian sides, the Brumbies/Waratahs/Rebels, won’t go into the one finals spot seemingly open for an Australian side in the Australasian Group.

The victory by the Brumbies over the Rebels and the Waratahs win over the Bulls means that the equation has narrowed slightly to a two into one won’t go sum.

Which will be the one into one side? I’m still picking the Brumbies but with much less enthusiasm than I had had last week.