Australian rugby in 2017: The stumbling Super Rugby powerhouses

From a Super Rugby perspective, it’s fair to say the 2017 season was an underwhelming one for the five Australian sides.

The Brumbies topped the Australian conference with just six wins from 16 games, while the Reds, Waratahs and Rebels all finished in the bottom group of six teams, and with fewer than four wins each.

Disgruntlement about the conference format was always hovering in the background. However, I’ve no doubt at all that the performance – or, the underperformance, more specifically – of the Australian sides was a major factor in SANZAAR’s hand being forced into a competition restructure three years earlier than they wanted to, and just two seasons into their expanded 18-team competition.

The reasons for the restructure, and the results thereof are by now well known, and won’t be revisited here.

Nope, a two-part review of the Australian Super Rugby season on the field will be pain enough…

RECAP: The bold predictions for 2017 – as made in the first week of February
With cricket still being played around the country and an outgoing editor begging for Super Rugby season predictions, I relented and had a guess about the four conferences. The Lions topping Africa 2 was the only one I can really claim any accuracy for. It was February, for goodness’ sake.

For the Australian conference, I don’t think I could’ve got it more wrong. I had the Queensland Reds revival topping the conference and just edging the NSW Waratahs, I generously had the Melbourne Rebels a chance of snaring a wildcard spot, and the Brumbies and Western Force battling it out at the bottom.

Australia (as guessed at the time): Reds, Waratahs, Rebels, Brumbies, Force.

Queensland Reds

Yep, they got me good. I had them finishing atop the Australian conference, and therefore in the top four overall, but their reality was much, much lower than that: third in the conference, and 13th overall.

At the time, I said: “Can the Reds revival come in one off-season? Quite possibly …it might actually be guys with a season now under their belt, like Andrew Ready, Lukhan Tui, and even Karmichael Hunt who have the big impacts. And if that level of player has strong season, the Reds’ revival will be complete.”

(AAP Image/Dave Hunt)

Yeah, nah. Andrew Ready is actually the perfect illustration of the Reds in 2017; experienced enough that he should have flourished in more senior company (Moore, Smith, Higginbotham, Cooper, et al), Ready instead was so disappointing this season that he lost his place in the side, struck disciplinary trouble off the field, and was actually exiled from the main squad for a period of time.

Meanwhile, on the field, the Reds started the season well with a hard-fought win over the Sharks, but then lost in Perth to the Force; at this point, fans would’ve taken an up-and-down season like the first fortnight was.

They blew a big halftime lead against the Crusaders at home, and then followed it up with an Africa-South America tour that didn’t go well at all. Worse was to follow, with heavy away losses to the Hurricanes and the Brumbies. They reset somewhat with a win at home over the much-improved Kings, and by their Round 9 bye were sitting around mid-table with ten competition points from two wins, but separated by six straight losses.

A close loss to the Waratahs at home was followed by a belting away to the Chiefs, but then the Reds beat the Rebels down in Melbourne in a thriller; a late Samu Kerevi try getting them home in what was a surprisingly entertaining Australian derby game.

After their second bye in Round 13, the Reds season began unravelling properly; a one-point win over the Brumbies in an absolute stinker the only high point in a run home that saw losses to the Force, Blues, and Highlanders.

Their ‘old heads’ did what they could to lead the way – 37-year-old George Smith won the Reds’ Player of the Year by a considerable margin – but the playing group behind them were largely disappointing. Nick Frisby lost his spot in the side, Cooper was up-and-down, Kane Douglas and Kerevi inconsistent, and even Hunt had games easily forgotten.

And as tends to happen, it all played out off the field, with playing group rumblings resulting in the axing of coach Nick Stiles, who frankly deserved more from the players in his first full season in charge.

2018 will reveal just how good a coach and mentor of young men Brad Thorn is, and he’s started with the huge call to banish Frisby and Cooper from the squad; their services no longer required. With Smith’s return in doubt, and Stephen Moore’s retirement brought forward, it seems the Reds’ revival is still some time away.

NSW Waratahs

With the squad the Waratahs had in 2017, it’s still puzzling to me how they managed to play so poorly this season. I had the ‘Tahs pushing the Reds for the Australian conference, and on paper, it just seemed obvious.

At the time, I even said: “The ‘Tahs have added in some key positions, and on the whole, look to be starting 2017 in a better place than this time last year… I don’t think Waratahs fans will be disappointed this season.”

(AAP Image/Craig Golding)

Oh, but they were disappointed. In fact, I think even non-Waratahs fans were disappointed, even if they didn’t let onto the fact, for all their sniggering at NSW misfortune. But the point remains; a side with as much experience as they had, as much Test experience as they had even before some of their young bucks debuted in 2017, the Waratahs finishing fourth in the conference and 16th overall was disappointing to the extreme.

“The NSW Waratahs ground their way to victory,” was how the Sydney Morning Herald described their narrow win over the Force in Round 1, and that would prove to be their method in 2017. They headed to South Africa thereafter, and despite ‘training very well’ as Michael Hooper now-famously uttered, they returned with no points.

A 16-point loss to the Brumbies at home followed in Round 4, and something similar looked likely in Melbourne in Round 5, only for the Waratahs to score 26 unanswered second half points, including a David Horwitz try with 38 seconds left on the clock, to beat the Rebels 32-25. Losses to the Crusaders and Hurricanes saw the Waratahs go into their Round 8 bye with two wins and five losses, and only the Rebels and Sunwolves below them.

The Waratahs scored after the final siren against the Kings in Round 9, but that wasn’t enough to prevent the first use of the word “crisis” or the phrase “most embarrassing defeat in club history” in the wash-up of their 26-24 loss to the Southern Kings. Darryl Gibson got a first glimpse at the crosshairs that he somehow survived in 2017, but will most certainly find himself in without any immediate improvement in 2018.

Four second-half Bernard Foley penalties saw the Waratahs home, in what was described as a spiteful clash with the Reds in Brisbane, but continuing their roller-coaster existence, the ‘Tahs lost 40-33 to the Blues in Sydney after trailing 26-0 at halftime. The second bye followed, but at three-and-seven, their season was quickly disappearing.

(photo: Ashleigh Knight)

Faced with the daunting task of winning their last five games to make the playoffs, the Waratahs started their run home well enough, with a 50-23 win over the Rebels. But that would be it for their win column in 2017.

Consecutive losses to the Highlanders and Chiefs in New Zealand, the Jaguares in Sydney, and the Force in Perth in what may be their last ever Super Rugby match, saw the Waratahs plummet back to fourth in Australia and third-last on the competition table.

In any other season, this would have been cause for deep scrutiny and attention, yet the Waratahs’ woeful year was largely forgotten in the mess that became of the end of the Super Rugby season. Some very lucky players and coaches need to start the 2018 season a hell of a lot better than they finished 2017.

Brumbies

So yes, technically I got it well wrong about the Brumbies – well, about everyone, if we’re honest – but let me say this in my defence: the Brumbies’ six-and-nine season was about what I thought they’d finish with. What I didn’t envisage was that six wins and 34 points would be enough to top the Australian conference. And by some margin.

Back in February, I wrote: “I think the Brumbies will struggle this year… I can’t see the Brumbies dominating the breakdown any time soon [without David Pocock].”

Like many, I just wasn’t sure how they could compete regularly without Pocock, Stephen Moore, Matt Toomua, and Christian Lealiifano; even less so when the lost Argentinean scrumhalf Tomas Cubelli the week I wrote my bold Super Rugby predictions for 2017. But six wins and seven losing bonus points – the most in the competition by a good margin – shows they were in the mix all season.

Losses to the Crusaders in Christchurch and Sharks in Canberra seemed to confirm the first instincts, with the loss to the Sharks confounded by a missed drop goal to break a deadlock, only for Curwin Bosch to turn on the magic after the siren to produce the match-winning try for the visitors.

Twin wins over the Force and Waratahs delivered the first wins of the season, with the Brumbies showing an ability to graft pretty well for a side lacking experience relative to other Australian sides. They then led the Highlanders for 72 minutes in Round 5, before shelling another game late in the piece, and went into their first bye atop the conference courtesy of the three losing bonus points.

(AAP Image/Paul Miller)

A big bonus point win over the Reds in Canberra seemed to confirm that the Brumbies were a better side than most imagined at that stage, but they then fell into a bit of a slump, losing to the Rebels in Melbourne, the Hurricanes in Napier, and then twin losses at home to Blues and Lions either side of the second bye; both of them games they really should have won. Remarkably – worryingly, from an Australian perspective – the Brumbies still held the conference lead by the end of Round 12.

With just six points separating the Brumbies from the Reds, Waratahs, and Force, a strong run home was needed to take the conference title and claim what was already likely to be the only Australian place in the playoffs.

An unbeaten hemisphere lap saw the Brumbies take wins over the Kings in Port Elizabeth and with a bonus point over the Jaguares in Buenos Aires, and a 32-3 smashing of the now-helpless Rebels secured their third Australian conference title in the last five seasons.

Final round losses to the Reds and Chiefs killed their momentum for the finals, where the Brumbies were beaten soundly by the Hurricanes, 35-16, in Canberra in front of a disappointing crowd of fewer than ten thousand people.

In some respects, it was the perfect illustration of the Australian Super Rugby campaign: disappointing in the end, and watched by fewer and fewer every week.

NEXT WEEK: the Australian Super Rugby year in review concludes with the Melbourne Rebels and Western Force.