Opinion
Thursday night’s Bledisloe game was a ball tearer.
OK, 76 points were scored, suggesting the defence wasn’t so staunch, and nine tries were scored, four of which were scored against an opposition with a man or two in the bin, so maybe the attack wasn’t as good as I thought at first.
The two teams however were fairly evenly matched and it’s not so much that the better team won on the night, it’s more a case of ‘well, one team had to win’.
How did we lose though?
Well, I’m sure everyone knows it was the time wasting that gave the Kiwis an extra shot and, inevitably in these situations, the Wallabies couldn’t hold out.
But how much time was really wasted? When does a slow routine become wasting time? Was it even the time wasting that was the biggest problem?
21 points were scored by the All Blacks when we had men binned. Poor discipline led to many more points than time wasting did.
Australia lost three lineouts inside the attacking 22m zone. In such a high-scoring game, how many points did we leave on the field due to this ongoing problem?
Another problem for Australia is clearing from our end after a kick off. New Zealand secured and positively used all the kick offs they received. Australia failed three times from eight kick offs, one leading to the first try and one meaning that the last two minutes were played five metres from our own line.
There are so many places you can waste time – or, for that matter, play faster when you’re running out of time. Around the 30-minute mark, New Zealand were asked, “Let’s go please black” by the referee as they were going into a scrum.
This was their only time warning all night.
The Wallabies had by then been asked once at a scrum, twice at lineouts and twice at rucks, in one way or another, to hurry up. My favourite however was after Jordie Barrett’s missed penalty, 23 seconds after Barrett kicked the ball, “We play it please, come on gold”.
By comparison South Africa missed a shot at penalty in their first half, Argentina executed their drop restart at the 26-second mark. Australia went on to be asked to refrain from tardiness on another five occasions, 11 times in all for the match.
Referee Mathieu Raynal speaks to Nic White and Bernard Foley (Photo by Cameron Spencer/Getty Images)
On average over both games, conversions and penalty goal kicks were taking about 1:10, with the Boks and Pumas being slightly quicker, Australia right on that average and New Zealand 11 seconds slower at 1:21.
On average it then took teams 30 seconds to kick off. Australia were slowest here by three seconds, with one outlier when they took their time with two men in the bin and didn’t restart for 46 seconds, however there was no warning forthcoming on this occasion.
It probably equalled out by NZ showing it could be done in 18 seconds when they only had a couple of minutes to catch up – and didn’t they catch up!
And that catch up came about due to a penalty kick for touch. Across the two games the time taken from the penalty mark being given and the kick to touch for all teams was 15 seconds. Argentina took 27 once, South Africa took 26, 27 and 31 seconds on occasion, Australia – when down to 13 men – took 29 seconds on one occasion. None of these longer times were acknowledged by either referee.
The referee in Thursday’s game when bringing play back for a penalty was on the mark usually in about seven seconds, as opposed to Sunday morning’s referee, who took about ten seconds, showing by his briskness that he enjoys a quicker style of game.
In Argentina the referee gave warnings on only three occasions for the whole game, all at rucks within the first five or six minutes, then silence on this front.
New Zealand were warned once. Australia however took 11 calls to speed up their game.
Would John Eales or Richie McCaw have just let the game go by without having a little talk to their teams?
Eleven is a lot of times to not improve an area of your game that the referee, the arbiter of all time, has asked you to improve. So, at the death, when kicks for touch had been taking about 15 seconds all night, the referee at the 17-second mark warned Australia quite explicitly to speed up.
Then he called and blew time back on when he was standing two metres away from our 10, who will no doubt be visiting his ear specialist Monday morning.
Eleven seconds later, that’s one second for each warning, the referee set a new benchmark – one which was not met on four occasions in Buenos Aires.
Or does it really all come back to a moment earlier in the game, when the boot was on the other foot and the referee was calling “wait, wait”, but the 10, who obviously didn’t hear, made his quickest conversion of the night?
Join The Roar rugby editor Christy Doran, former Wallaby Matt Toomua and a cast of regular and special guests as they look at the biggest issues in the game on The Roar Rugby Podcast. If you’re looking for great odds on the next game check out Aussie bookmaker PlayUp. Chances are you’re about to lose. Set a deposit limit.
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