Momentum changer: How the Waratahs turned yellow into playoff gold

It was probably the key game of the 2005 Six Nations, and it is still one of the most vivid games of all in my memory: France versus Wales in Paris, in the vast echo chamber of the Stade de France.

Jean Prat, known as ‘Monsieur Rugby’, had passed away the day before. One of the pioneers of the modern game, and a captain of his country, Prat had been awarded the highest order of merit for military and civilian services, the Légion d’honneur.

France had all the emotional ammunition they needed to drive the Celtic invaders back into the English Channel.

We were almost blown off the park in the first half firestorm that followed – almost. Our scrum creaked and groaned under pressure, huge 6″4′ inch Aurélien Rougerie threatened to overrun diminutive Shane Williams on our left wing, and French scrumhalf, Dmitri Yachvili, conducted the mounting crescendo symphonically, like a rugby version of André Rieu.

It was 15-3 with only 28 minutes of the game gone, and it could have been far, far worse. Wales coach Mike Ruddock was sitting in the middle of the crowd with his laptop.

He told me afterwards: “I wanted to disappear into it at times during that first period, to be just another fan, rather than the man with his head silhouetted above the parapet.”

Fortunately for the team, Mike rejected the drift back into anonymity. He stayed cool, stuck out his chin and delivered the right halftime message.

And then, something strange happened. Outside-half Stephen Jones picked up a loose ball on our 22, with France threatening to deliver the coup de grâce, and ran the ball all the way back to the French 22.

Just over one minute later, Wales had scored a first try of the game in what felt like a 14-point reversal.

We followed it with a second only three minutes later. Suddenly it was Rougerie pirouetting clumsily as Williams tormented him with his balletic feet, and our scrum began to churn forward. The scoreboard read France 15-18 Wales, and there had been a decisive shift in momentum.

Although the game subsequently levelled out, we hung on to win 24-18. Those “ten minutes of madness” as France coach Bernard Laporte called them afterwards, won us the match and proved to be the crucial turning point in the first Welsh Grand Slam season in 27 years.

You can see that first try here (at 3:37 on the reel):

That game left an indelible mark on me. It taught me about the value of momentum on all levels – emotional, physical and tactical.

Although the academic branch of sporting science still refuses to grant the idea its unconditional stamp of approval, players and coaches know it is a real thing.

Ask the baseball batter in the middle of a purple patch who cannot stop hitting home runs; ask the basketball shooter with a ‘hot hand’; ask Larry Bird or the Atlanta Hawks reserves watching him from the bench, after he scored 60 points against them for the Boston Celtics back in 1985.

The research points to the occurrence of a ‘trigger event’ which provokes a sudden change of the state of feeling, motivation and physiological arousal in teams which have been under the pump.

An elite sub-set of veteran athletes understand how to sustain those momentum swings when they are favourable, or interrupt them when they are negative. Experience helps greatly in that respect.

Trigger events are often associated with the courage to take a calculated risk to interrupt an opponent’s ‘flow’ – it might be a dramatic play, a timeout or the loss of an important player from the other team.

Some teams are more sensitive to momentum and the 2018 Waratahs, like the Welsh Grand Slam team of 2005, definitely fall into that category.

I counted no less than five regular season games where a short salvo of tries concentrated into a ten-minute purple patch (particularly in the period just before and after halftime) turned the odds sharply in favour of the Tahs.

The most notable was the Round 5 game against Melbourne. The Rebels were enjoying a comfortable 20-3 lead when NSW scored three tries between the 39th and 49th minutes, and five tries in total in less than 20 minutes up to the hour mark.

The pattern was repeated against the Highlanders on Saturday evening. The men in blue were 23-6 down after 50 minutes before blasting 21 points in a ten-minute spell to go ahead in the game for good.

The Waratahs depend upon sudden bursts of high performance triggered by their key backs – Kurtley Beale, Israel Folau and Bernard Foley. The standard of performance will rise sharply to world-class during the quick-fire changes of momentum engineered by that trio.

During the first half, the defence was no better than it had been against the Brumbies in the last round, but ten minutes of Beale’s ability to attack the line and pick the right pass, Foley’s visionary support play and Folau’s finishing power in space had more weight.

On Saturday evening, the trigger event (as in 2005) was a turnover with the opponent threatening to score and put the result to bed. It was an interception by Taqele Naiyaravoro close to his own goal-line, which ultimately led to the loss of one of the Highlanders’ most important players, Waisake Naholo, at the other end of the field.

With the Highlanders poised to deliver a knockout blow at 23-6 early in the second period, Naiyaravoro screwed his courage to the sticking point and got in the way of the final pass.

The response of the experienced player next to him in the line, Foley, was just as important. Foley didn’t just trot upfield after the giant left wing, he lengthened his stride and strained every sinew to reach the point of contact.

When Foley got there, he fought off the attention of two of the Highlanders’ best back-line breakdown spoilers – Naholo and Ben Smith – all by himself.

Foley’s cleanout sustained the initial attacking momentum, which was promptly reinforced by Beale’s half-break and offload to Sekope Kepu.

Kepu could only be brought down by two head-high challenges from Naholo, which rightly earned the All Black wing a yellow card.

Two minutes later, Beale once again straightened the play, with Foley picking the critical support line on his inside: (at 2:50)

If any criticism can be levelled at the Highlanders during the ten-minute period when Naholo was off the field, it would be their failure to adjust their coverage of the backfield space adequately.

For the Tahs’ second try (at 3:30-3:55 on the above reel), Smith took Naholo’s place but the other wing, Tevita Li, was unable to pick up Smith’s fullback duties. That gave Beale and Folau all the room they needed to create and finish the break.

The go-ahead score for the Waratahs (at 4:20 on the reel) repeated the same theme.

With Smith stuck out on the right wing and Li spread wide to the left, Aaron Smith was handed the thankless task of trying to tackle Folau in open space.

Either Aaron had to drop deeper or Ben had to rotate towards the ball, but the lack of organisation meant that neither occurred and Foley was once again on hand to score the winning try.

The Waratahs will be a dangerous opponent for any of the three other teams remaining in the Super Rugby semi-finals.

Their standard of performance in a number of areas is consistently average, but their ability to reverse negative momentum and capitalise on positive shifts is right out of the top drawer.

None of Beale, Foley or Folau perform bread-and-butter duties like defence and kicking particularly well, but their play in the creation (Beale), support (Foley) and finishing of opportunities (Folau) after a trigger event is truly world-class.

The selection of the back five forwards – a combination of ball-handlers and turnover specialists – tends to support those periods of positive momentum, just as it did for the Wales Grand Slam team of 2005.

As result, the best team in Australia may look, and even be, second-best for long periods, but are still a chance to win the game given a ‘hot hand’ for ten or 15 minutes.

The Waratahs nearly managed to tip up the Crusaders in Round 13. Can they do it twice in a row away from home – first in Johannesburg, then again in Christchurch or Wellington? It is a long shot, but they still have, in boxing parlance, a puncher’s chance.