Tahs can build off Super Rugby draw

While draws are always a matter of contention and debate in any football code. The massive distances between Super Rugby participants often means that the arrangement of matches can seem to make or break a team’s season before the season actually begins.

Looking back on 2016, for example, it’d be hard to argue that the Tahs’ momentum wasn’t sapped by having two byes in the first seven rounds.

In a game that’s played on the international scale of Super Rugby, the ideal draw manages to strike a better balance between stasis and movement.

On the one hand, you want a draw that gives players ample time for rest and recuperation, as well as a draw that allows teams to play to the strengths of their home ground.

At the same time, you want a draw that allows players enough well placed tour time to allow them to maintain the momentum needed for a code in which every game always feels somewhat decentred from the competition as a whole.

In 2017, the Tahs seem to be much more fortunate when it comes to that crucial balance between momentum and recuperation.

In a stark counterpoint to the beginning of 2016, New South Wales won’t get their first week off until the eighth round of the 2017 Super Rugby season.

At the same time, they kick off the season in the best possible way – with a home game at Allianz against the Force – before moving into a two week tour of South Africa, during which they’ll play the Lions and the Sharks at Emirates Airlines Park and Growthpoint Kings Park respectively.

Apart from the benefits of bonding on tour, the strength of South Africa over the last couple of years means that this immersion experience will be a great opportunity for the Tahs to steel themselves for the season ahead, while playing a finalist in the opening rounds is always a good way to induce discipline and focus.

To make things better, they return to Allianz in Round 4 for another home game, this time against the Brumbies, before moving down to Melbourne to play the Rebels, after which they’ll return to Sydney once again to take on their first New Zealand team, the Highlanders.

In many ways, the identity of Australia within the Super Rugby has waned over the last couple of years.

Desipite the very close Waratahs victory in 2014, the ongoing questions about the Force’s viability and the spectacle of the Reds minus Quade Cooper has tended to bolster the feeling that we are turning into the middle term in a competition played out between New Zealand and South Africa.

Yet the Tahs’ draw for 2016 seems to offer a strategy for countering that, providing us with short bursts of exposure to South African and New Zealand teams in the opening weeks that either take place at Allianz or are bookended by stints at Allianz.

It’s the perfect schedule for the team to regain some of its vision.

With Israel Folau less streamlined than might have been desired in the Wallabies’ victory over Argentina at nib Stadium on the weekend and even Bernard Foley making one or two lapses in judgement, it’s clear that the Tahs need to make sure their most iconic players are on point as the 2017 season starts to come into focus.

Key to that is finding a way to take advantage of this draw in terms of game plan and strategy.

On the one hand, the players have to bring the attitude with the South African teams, but they also have to bring a very different kind of attitude to the local clashes with the Brumbies and the Force in Rounds 1 and 4.

In many ways, those clashes will be just as critical for boosting morale, since local rivalries – and the sense of being part of a local sporting community – are a massive part of a team’s ethos and identity, something you don’t realise until you watch a code that’s as radically international and disparate as Super Rugby.

It’s my bet that if we can secure the win over the Brumbies at home we’ll head into the following week’s clash at Emirates with the entitlement, attitude and spirit we need to win over the Lions. At least, we can’t win without it.

In a code in which momentum – and especially momentum at the beginning of the season – is so critical for overcoming fatiguing physical schedules and travel requirements, nailing these first two matches could be just what the Tahs need to make more of an impact in 2017.

Even a good win over the Brumbies and a close game with the Lions will be enough to do it.

We’ve got a good draw – let’s hope we now make the most of it.