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Opinion
It always felt like the Western Force and the Canberra Vikings should meet in this year’s National Rugby Championship final well before a ball was kicked, and so it will play out when the two teams run out on to McGillivray Oval in Perth tomorrow.
The Force have been together all year playing Global Rapid Rugby of course, albeit with a few additions to cover for their Rugby World Cup reps, and Canberra trotted out their standard Super Rugby-laden squad that really should have won an NRC title by now.
NSW Country, Queensland Country, Brisbane City and certainly the Fijian Drua looked like challenging at different stages, but none of them managed the consistency that Canberra and especially the Western Force maintained through the tournament.
So now they face off in the decider, and both sides are much improved from a month ago, when the Force won pretty handsomely, 45-28, in Perth in Round 4.
It will be nothing if not entertaining. Both sides like to throw the ball around and both have got plenty of speed out wide. Canberra’s back three of Tom Wright, Tom Banks and Mack Hansen, starting this week in place of Toni Pulu, have 17 tries between them.
(Mark Metcalfe/Getty Images)
But the two Force wingers, Jonah Placid and Byron Ralston, have 16 tries between them, with Placid’s nine leading the competition.
And that’s the way the game will be played. Andrew Deegan has been the supply chain for the Force’s speed men while the Vikings have used the centre pairing Irae Simone and Len Ikitau in much the same way the Brumbies use Simone and Tevita Kuridrani to link with the outside backs.
The Force are strong at the breakdown, but getting sucked into a ruck contest would be playing into the hands of the Vikings, with Pete Samu and Will Miller causing the Fijians all kinds of trouble in the second half last weekend.
Who’s going to win?
It’s a really good question. The Force having the home ground advantage will be huge, and I suspect the crowd on the McGillivray Oval Hill will be too.
I reckon it’ll be high-scoring but with less than ten points in it. And both teams can definitely win it.
(Paul Kane/Getty Images)
Cream of the young crop
Queensland Country No. 8 Harry Wilson took out the NRC rising star award this week from Brisbane City skipper but Brothers teammate Fraser McReight, and with Sydney flyhalf Will Harrison third.
It speaks for the quality of the Junior Wallabies squad this year that six of the seven nominations came from within that very promising playing group.
And that speaks for the importance of the NRC in the development of this group of players. Particularly with so many of them – upwards of 20 now – contracted to Super Rugby programs next season.
Having now graduated from an intensive under-20s program this year to club rugby, being tested at another level and playing so well at that next level up is a step in the right direction.
This is the right format, so keep it
And the ability for the cream of the under-20s to make that next step up at a level much closer to what they’ll likely experience in Super Rugby is crucial for their development.
For all the angst around Australian rugby at the moment, this is a pretty strong case that the pathways as established in recent years are starting to have a positive impact.
And yet the whispers remain that next year’s NRC could well be the last in this eight-team national format as we know it, with the thinking being that some kind of hybrid, half-pregnant competition including existing clubs can be established.
As if the record of well over 70 NRC players graduating to Super Rugby the following season isn’t proof enough that this competition is doing exactly what it’s supposed to, it seems that good old-fashioned Australian rugby self-interest could yet claim another scalp and undo all the good work.
It’s madness to me. I don’t understand how that’s possibly a good idea, particularly given how important the next few seasons are going to be for the development of this cohort of exceptional young talent, with the Wallabies losing a generation of senior players.
What the NRC needs going forward isn’t self-interested types protecting their own patch. It needs investment in youth and investment in the best of the club players around the country so that it doesn’t have to be a decision whether to play or not because they’ll lose out financially.
Seven teams around the country, with two each in Brisbane and Sydney plus the Fijian Drua, is the right fit.
So just confirm that format for the future. What Australian rugby needs right now is certainty, not some kind of half-baked solution designed only to appease a minority.