I just sit back and wait for a red card in an important game – for example Super rugby has had a problem with coaches not working hard enough to bring tackle heights down and avoiding reckless contact. It’s clear at test level when teams like the Boks are able to avoid cards for these sorts of offences.

Come the world cup final sam cane throws a loose arm – straight red and good buy world cup.

Yeah you don’t see teams trying this on with the bok very much.

Also – saw the hit and it wasn’t in any way the same situation. Open field kick return – McKenzie passed and was hit within a split second by the defender who was of a similar size to him and he was also sighted and braced for the most part.

The hit happened as part of the course of a game – the player who made the hit hasn’t done it 4 times out the last 9 games – all of those times early in the match and clearly very, very late.

This is actually the key point to this discussion.

It’s not about if the hit was late or very late, it’s also got nothing to do with the use of arms or not.

It is about a consistently applied, premeditated tactic. The coach basically said in the interview he approves of it. You use a far larger man to attempt to hurt or injury a far smaller player in an effort to intimidate them or simple injury them so they leave the field. It was pretty much standard practice all the way up to 1990’s.

The bar has been set now in Super rugby that this sort of tactic is fine and will not be punished. The solution is simple and the same one as it was in the old school days. It’s also really bloody ugly and not befitting a supposedly professional sport.

You sort it out by hurting Finau or another Chiefs player in the same way they are trying to hurt you as retaliation , or go really old school and hurt them first. The net result is going to be an ugly mess at some point this season and the fault will be on the Super Rugby reffing for encouraging and allowing this sort of stupidity.

Do you want this as a part of the sport? Should it be considered a legitimate and acceptable tactic to bash the smallest bloke on the field with one of the biggest when he can’t see it coming. The answer should be a resounding no – you have to ref with the players welfare as the top priority – not happening at the moment.

Yeah the standard has been set appalling low by Super rugby – the only real response to this is either to sort Finau out – easy enough to do in a clean out – or apply the same rules back to the chiefs. Either outcome is basically a disgrace in the context of a professional sport but Super rugby has created this situation.

Of course not – check Eben Etezbeth’s highlight reel.
You can hit hard *and* fair. These hits also look way harder becuase they are on smaller men, with a run up and the blokes getting hit didn’t see him coming and had relaxed their body so weren’t braced for the hit. Finau has made loads of fair hard hits – they just aren’t as spectacular cos the guy getting hit has the chance to brace himself.
Your not wrong in terms of the risk/reward though – if he can making those hits and not get punished then it’s worth it. You just might not want a player committing to a 50/50 hit in a big game – say a world cup final? If the player stays well inside the rules then you take the ref out of the equation and give yourself a better chance of winning the game. I’m pretty sure you won’t see those sorts of shots from Finau if he makes the AB’s squad because I’m sure the coaches have worked out cards are bad and will make sure Finau knows not to try it.

I agree – but every ref has to apply the laws on the fly and under pressure. In super rugby they are letting a lot through this year in order to keep the game moving. There are always things that get missed but I do think you can avoid these sorts of issues if you make it a priority to coach your team to stay well inside the laws.
Springboks are a good example – they are the hardest hitting and most physical team in world rugby and they are able to consistently avoid yellows and reds and win tests because of this (World Cup final for example).
By contrast the two super rugby nations have had problems with cards at test level. The wallabies have been card magnets in recent seasons and the AB’s have also consistently attracted red cards over the last few seasons – I think a one red card in one game in each of the 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, and 2023 seasons.
It’s also a bad look for a code that needs to encourage its players to show their skills and take risks while also winning parents over in the battle for juniors.

Red and yellow cards lose you games – hitting the 10 late might work OK in super rugby where the interpretation of the laws is weighted in favour of flow but at test level Finau would likely have been carded at yellow for any of those three hits. Put him in a black jersey and your placing your team at a much higher chance of having to play a man down – is it worth the risk for the reward of the playmaker playing deeper and with his eyes more the defenders in front of him than on the passing options outside him due to risk of personal injury?
That’s Razor’s call to make – perhaps he feels this sort of thuggery can be coached out of Finau (was it coached in?) but at present he looks to be a much higher risk/reward prospect than many of the excellent alternative options available at the blues or canes.

Worth adding Finau has a record. He broke Connor Vest’s neck last year and didn’t see any consequences.
He is a big strong man and I’m sure his coaches are in his ear about his role in bringing a bit of edge to the game – but he routinely oversteps the mark in terms of his recklessness.
In the case of the Lynagh tackle he breaks several foul play laws – he jumps into the tackle, the tackle is either late or quite possibly he chose to tackle a player without the ball. He is sighted the entire time and clearly made a deliberate erchoice to complete the tackle with the full knowledge the player he was tackling no longer held the ball and at that point was not braced for contact or in a position to anticipate the tackle.
It’s a lot more dangerous than it initially looked – he also ended that players game and deprived his opponents of a key player for the rest of the match.
Should have been at least a yellow and could easily have been a red. He should also be suspended for at least a few weeks. For context consider if the exact same situation had been reversed and Mackenzie was hit extremely late by a reds player and then left the game and that player was given only a penalty.
It was a really good game and I thought the reffing was consistent and not bad (barring not straight line out calls which are largly being ignored in all games at present).
The late hit was a significant error though – if only for the precedent it sets – the risk reward for blindsiding a much smaller player with a leaping body hit is not proportionate if you can remove that player from the game and get only a penalty.

Foz might be looking at this with one eye (which is understandable).

I can go back through that game and every other one in the world cup and find plenty of more blatant uses of hands on the ground in turn overs that weren’t given. It’s at best very line ball and I would think most refs wouldn’t have given it (Kiwi and Aussie refs esp based on their record in this in Super rugby).

Absolutely agree with you here – Aus and NZ rugby would be best served by focusing on performance over result.
If the overall standard of performances increases it doesn’t matter too much if where teams place (of course we as fans will care about our teams – but from the perspective of the value of the comp to nationals sides performance is more important than result).
We need to be seeing games where the intensity and more importantly the accuracy of play under pressure is better. Games need to be reffed in a way that requires similar standards of discipline and execution to test rugby as well. Super rugby teams need to be tackling like the springboks (low and hard) so the wallabies and AB’s players avoid cards, break down need to reffed as strictly as tests so teams learn how to build attacks rather than living of just spinning turn over ball wide etc.
The biggest thing is accuracy though – accuracy and discipline in contact areas – esp ruck entry and tackling but also in skill execution.
A performance where these aspects of play are excellent but a team loses is a lot more important than a game where you win by 40 points but the game itself is loose and the discipline and accuracy are poor.
I should add there were games of Super rugby last year that were played that way – esp at the back end of the season. There was also some absolute rubbish – esp in game where teams rested starters. As a Tahs fan the away game against Auckland immediately comes to mind as being of standard not much better than a training run. So there is plenty to work on in terms of performances being consistent and of a high standard.

This is a more interesting point that it first looks – a good question is how long in possession were teams before scoring thier tries. France vs SA for example I think the Boks might have had the ball for less than 20 seconds on two of their tries?

Likewise NZ rarely score thier tries via construction these days – most of the time they come from turnover ball or split kicks. This is true for every big team except ireland who are really the only team in world rugby who actually play with the ball these days (I mean this in the sense that they try to use ball movement and running to create breaks while in possession).

It’s a pretty similar story to soccer really – as the sport becomes bigger business the centre of gravity moves to where the money is. NZ has a deep rugby culture and tradition and will always attract the best talent in the country which means they will always have elite players. I would reckon in 10/15 years most of the top tier will be playing in France though.

Interesting to see how the nations championship concept interplays with this – my guess is that the rugby championship will stay as is – can’t see the Europeans been too keen on changing the 6 nations either. I do wonder if they might bring Japan and Fiji into the rugby championship and make it a single round comp – basically a ‘southern’ 6 nations.

Yeah he has two strikes next to his name now 😛

It’s worth a lot of money to all the unions involved – but it does cause all sorts of issues re injuries – the last couple of tours have also being dogged by acrimony and PR messes (rassie) – so the extent to which they continue to justify their existence will be measured in dollars, pounds, euros, and rand.

Yeah there is more than a little bit of history between Britain and the peoples of SA – some friendly and quite a lot of not so friendly.
Thanks to Aparthied and geography SA sit’s half way between the deep south – Aus and NZ which will always be a different rugby world to the North and Europe.
To a large extent your history lies with the south (more so NZ than Aus but there have been some great SA v Aus tests over the last 25 years). I suspect your future is locked in up north though. Sadly I doubt the economics will allow SA teams to becomep art or our domestic rugby calendar down here again though – which I should add is our loss.

100% the NZ administration are the main cause of their own issues at this point. The celtic unions and the European cup were the main winners from that error of judgement. NZ rugby are now in the unenviable position of being in bed with disasterous mess that is the ARU now as well, so they also have that millstone around their neck going forward as well.

Yeah the bulls getting turned over by Benneton of all teams must also have been a shock to the system.
Your right about the Rugby Championshop vs 6 nations though. The current setup tends to offer the Boks and to a lesser extent argentina the best of both worlds as you get to develop your players in the superior euro comps (and learn how to win against their test players) then check them against the bench mark of the ABs in NZ each year (also a chance to test the players and ideas against your primary rival). It might be a little bit simialr to how the old Super Rugby system tended to offer a lot of structural advantages to NZ in terms of letting get familiar with and learn rhe best way beat their rivals in Aus and SA before they actually played tests.

If he is it’s just going to be by bitter kiwi fans – it’s more likely they will carry the grudge against Barnes anyway – he may officially have passed Suzie as public enemy no 1 in NZ.

SA deserved to win this world cup because they mastered the details and refused to lose.

Once can be luck, twice is unlikely but three times is a pattern. It seemed to me that as a group they knew how to ride the ups and downs of those games and when and where to apply pressure as well as how to hang tough when they has too.
Winning the hard way is a skill they have mastered – one that in the end no other team was as good at.

An interesting side point here is the idea of North vs South.

SA are a ‘northern’ side now – obviously not in location, history and to some extent culture – but definitely in terms of where they play (or to turn it around Scotland, Ireland, Wales and Italy are now maybe ‘equatorial’ teams having come half way south to play a good amount of thier rugby south of the equator). An East/West split might be a better descriptor but it could pretty quickly become outdated as MLR and the South America super style comps develop in the coming years and those teams (hopefully) move from developing to developed sides capable of pushing or beating established nations.

Even more interesting is that SA have added value to the URC without dominating it – their sides are definitely contenders but they aren’t dominant – Munster win in the URC and the performance of the SA franchises in the European cup have added a lot without the competitions becoming lop sided.

Aus and NZ have some big challenges ahead in terms of their competition structure – Aus needs 5 sides structurally but can fill them out with adequate talent inside thier existing development systems (my feeling is that this could be remedied with reform as Aus rugby has a large talent base – even with the erosion from AFL – given they have access to a lot of same talent league draws on). NZ are starting to show some issues in this space- the highlanders were bad this year and the presence of the Drua and Manu Pacisfika (if they stay afloat) is likely to reduce the available talent for the ABs rather than increase it – esp for the Drua where players with strong Fijian links like Narawa might in future choose their ancestry and family history over the ABs jersey they have tended to pick in the past.

Lots to consider – but in the short term I think fixing the reffing is the first critical step (as well as the Aussie teams becoming more professional in S&C and setting higher internal standards around skills execution and accuracy which seems to be a fundamental issue).

Applying the rules strictly means teams need to be better in order to win and that means they will play better at test level. Maybe taking a leaf out of the URC reffing style might be an idea?

Overall i agree cross pollination is going to have to be a key part of addressing the drift between the pacific south region and the rest of the world.

Cane will be remembered as a decent but not exceptional AB – think Taine Randal. He has had a good career and seems like a good bloke – but you need to be truly something special (as well as being involved in something special) to be remembered much once your out of the game for a couple of years.
I doubt in the end the red card will mean much – people are more likely to remember Pollard’s goal kicking or PSDT enormous efforts. For example no one mentions Jonah Lomus inability to influence the outcome of the 95 final but people do remember Stransky and Pienaar performances.

There is a lot of that around at the moment in the NZ media.
There’s a few interesting observations to be made about that world cup final as well. NZ put a record score on SA in their first match of this season – a couple of games later they conceded a record score to SA. Straight away that tells your something about the relative ability of the coaching set ups to recognise and correct tactical issues.
This was also affirmed when foster identified that discipline/accuracy would be a critical factor in the ABs overcoming the boks.
Instead of that recognised issue being corrected the ABs doubled down on it in the final. This is especially significant because the cards were all from issues of accuracy in contact. As a point of comparison PSDT and Eben Etzebeth both huge men were able to execute massive hits on men far smaller than on numerous occasions without at any point seeming to run the risk of cards.
The one bok card was clearly the result of a set of circumstance rather than technique as well in that Kolisi’s head was always below the should and it hit both the ball and the first tackle and still ended up only half striking the other players head.
The boks coaching team (and the irish) have clearly taken on board the lessons around the importance of cards and adapted the way they are coaching the tackle. NZ might have tried this but the results say it didn’t work.
These are the sorts of takeaways/articles I would be more interested in hearing about.
I also think there is an article to be written about super rugby reffing where they are very indulgent in terms of lee way given to players for inaccuracy (both at the break down where you can get away with far more than at test level) and in the tackle.
I think both of these factors played a role – NZ were still set up to be primarily a counter punching team reliant on quick turnover ball to create broken field/fractured defence strike opportunities. At super rugby level (esp against the off the pace Aussie teams) you get those turnovers and poor kicks on a regular basis – at test level where the required accuracy for executing an in play turnover is policed more strictly they never really came. Likewise the head contact rules – in super rugby you can create a pretty nightmarish highlight reel of NZ players (and to a lesser extent Aussie ones) being let off without even penalties for head contacts that are truly frightening – in one instance a players neck was broken and there was no sanction in game or afterwards. This has meant the low hanging fruit of chest to chest tackling as a way of getting physical parity/dominance has a lot of appeal. Why change your technique to something more like Ireland’s or SAs if it works and you get results. Move to test level and your getting carded left right and centre (as ABs and Aus have been).
You can blame the refs and keep losing or you can learn from teams that do it better – or even be proactive and try to get ahead of the trend (something Aus and NZ have both been known for in the past but not recently).