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It was my first rodeo. The idea was to have untrained cowboys from other sports compete in the traditional events.
A young middleweight boxer, a bearlike wrestler, a wiry pole vaulter, a scrawny basketball guard, and a rogue rugby player; we paced behind bars awaiting our gladiatorial walk up music.
A skillet of rattlesnakes were chicken-fried nearby. The smell of expectorated tobacco cut as hard as a barrel racer. Sawdusted cowflop paved our way. A din of bedlam, bells and boots twanged on fuzzy speakers, hiding looming dangers.
Rodeo, like rugby, is a collision and elusion sport of mismatched shapes and sizes. The bulls of the rodeo have mega Mallia hips and that’s no lie. We leaned on the rails, watching a boxer and wrestler turn into mush.
Counting all the hairiest situations I’ve been in, this was near the top.
I could not vacate the saddle fast enough. Eight seconds was seven too long. The impact of one buck and one sick landing was a wrap.
The meal that night was hallucinatory. Two impacts on my rodeo season stat sheet; I still have a bit of a neck crook.
Tackling Shannon Frizell is not as brutal a task as bringing down a bull. But it has serious similarities, starting with G-forces.
When a car crashes at 65 km/h, the force is about 35 G.
A study in New Zealand in 2013 led by Doug King with amateur players at Hutt Old Boys Marist club found rugby collisions average 23 G but can go as high as 200 G or more, equal to a Formula One smash. Many side-on tackles hit 90-100 G-force; those are the type that tend to be concussive to the brain.
Australia’s current pattern of high tackle counts will test how many Gs their forwards can absorb; the MCG is known as the G for a reason.
England (post Eddie) finished the 2023 Six Nations leading the competition in missed tackles: 147 (or 29 a Test) even though they attempted the second least. Brave Scotland were the busiest tacklers (attempting 181 and making 166 a game).
Wallabies head coach Eddie Jones. (Photo by Chris Hyde/Getty Images)
That tackle tally would equate to about one half of rugby for Eddie’s low possession Wallabies who have jumped in 50 tackle attempts Test on Test thus far: 289 at the MCG.
Rob Valetini has been on a year’s worth of bull riding: 53 tackles. Dave Porecki playing hooker minutes has made 45. Hobbled Allan Alaaatoa and heavily strapped James Slipper are in the thirties; young Tom Hooper made thirty tackles in one Bledisloe. Thousands of G-forces have battered the most vital Wallabies, and young Hooper, the experimental seven.
He is so fresh SANZAAR has no picture of him in the stat sheet. He’s averaging a tackle every three minutes. At this rate he’ll finish his career at a metre seventy, instead of one ninety. Even greenhorn cowboys don’t take that sort of early beating. They are saved by the bell.
The 2023 Rugby Championship beat the Wallabies up, robbed them of their first and easiest tight forward selection, put a year’s mileage on the tacking tyres in a month, and the flogging did nothing for flagging morale.
In fact, a player like Valetini, tackling twice as much as he carried, within a team tackling three times as much as it carried, cannot have benefitted from this Rodeo Championship
.
Little niggles turn into nagging hurts which become ticking time bombs of stiff or scarred ligaments, waiting to burst.
English clubs were irate during Eddie Jones’ tenure as national coach because of how rough his training rodeos were. Short on time, his Wallaby plan appears to be work hardening in games.
Nobody can draw a straight line from high tackle counts to physio table but chief among the reasons Dave Rennie is gone was astronomical injury counts. Could his successor unintentionally find his way to the same result?
In Dunedin, the head coach and his quiet assistants need to open the chute to more phased attacks before lobbing the ball back to the All Blacks for additional G-force bull riding. Fewer lonesome doves and more coordinated cattle drives.
This self-imposed gauntlet must ease or cease if the French caper is to be anything more than a crêpe on crutches.
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.