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The best team won the Super Rugby final competition. By the skin of their teeth to be sure, but regardless of the ‘what ifs’ and 50/50 calls, at the 80-minute mark the karma bus was parked in the right spot.
Was Nemani Nadolo’s left foot touching the line or was it hovering a centimetre over?
Richie McCaw may have got away with plenty over his career, but was he justly penalised at the death, or hard done by?
And did the Crusaders, having worked hard to get ahead in a game which was teetering on being unrecoverable after 20 minutes, make a huge tactical mistake in those last crucial minutes?
Renowned Roar scribe Spiro Zavos suggested so, sheeting the blame squarely on captain Keiran Read for the ball being kicked back to the Waratahs, instead of employing a ball-in-hand strategy for the final stanza.
Which seems a little harsh to me, given that we don’t actually know if those were his team instructions, or if replacement halfback Willi Heinz acted on impulse.
Certainly my reaction when Heinz kicked the first time, after the Crusaders pack had secured the kickoff, was one of disbelief. A long ‘wipers’ kick to a corner perhaps, but a shallow box kick was surely the wrong play in this situation, made even worse when it sailed into touch on the full.
Almost miraculously the Crusaders won the ball back at the lineout, courtesy of an appalling throw under pressure by Tolu Latu, and an athletic catch by Sam Whitelock, who almost had to pluck it out of Brendan McKibbin’s hands, so crooked it was.
Whitelock though must have wondered what the purpose was, because Heinz duly kicked it away again, with one of those mid-range box kicks which doesn’t gain a lot of territory yet isn’t contestable either. Kurtley Beale accepted it with ease and the rest, as they say, is history.
A couple of points spring to mind. In retrospect, if Whitelock had not caught Latu’s throw – just let it go, or perhaps dropped it – referee Craig Joubert would have set a scrum, Crusaders feed. A slow formation and set, and a couple of resets, would have chewed up pretty much all of the remaining time.
But what was Heinz doing on the park in the first place? I don’t pose that question to deride him as a player – since 2010 he has notched up 57 Super Rugby appearances for the Crusaders, is a Canterbury NPC captain, and has a good skill set and bit of zip about him. But he was the wrong guy in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Since the advent of expanded benches and non-injury replacements, we have seen coach after coach at all levels of the game, empty their bench in the second half.
Sometimes these are pre-ordained, tactical switches, where a starting prop knows he has 55 to 60 minutes to give it everything, before he is tag-teamed by a ready replacement, who in turn knows he has only a short time to make an impact.
This seems fair enough, particularly for engine room positions, where fatigue is clearly a factor.
But for key playmaker positions I don’t see the same need and, in fact, late substitutions can create as many problems as they solve.
Firstly, one assumes that the best player is selected to start the match and he is on the park for that reason. Andy Ellis is in career-best form, and has enjoyed an excellent season, consistently sharp in his passing and support play. Had Steve Hansen not already made an investment in the younger Tawera Kerr-Barlow and TJ Perenara, Ellis would still be a deserving back-up All Black no. 9 to Aaron Smith.
He played well again in the final, beautifully laying on a sweeping pass for Nadolo’s try and, unless he suffered an injury that wasn’t apparent on screen, there seemed no good reason to take him off.
The term ‘fresh legs’ is often thrown about, as though a new player will automatically offer more in the last phase of a match. But a professional backline player, who is conditioned well enough to play for 60-70 minutes, is surely conditioned enough to play for 80 minutes.
Also, it isn’t easy for a replacement to insert himself into a game at a late point. He doesn’t have a feel for the flow of the game, isn’t able to work his way into it and, as seems the case with Heinz, might overplay his hand trying to do too much in the short time he has.
Some players do have a knack for making a positive impact from the bench – Beauden Barrett and Will Skelton are two who readily spring to mind. But Heinz is no Barrett or Skelton. I wonder what coach Todd Blackadder was expecting him to do that Ellis couldn’t?
Ironically, Waratahs coach Michael Cheika pulled exactly the same rein, substituting his halfback Nick Phipps with Brendan McKibbin in the closing stages. Phipps had another fine game, and one wonders what McKibbin was offering?
The big difference for Cheika is that his side won, so there can be little meaningful or relevant post-match scrutiny. Winners are grinners, pure and simple.
The Waratahs won the match because they played with positive intent and some amount of skill, and put enough points on the board early to reflect their dominance. But the Crusaders, as brave as they were, contributed to their own defeat by kicking away a game they finally had control of.
Leaving Blackadder to ponder if he had not slavishly followed the mantra of emptying his bench, and instead kept Andy Ellis in play, would his side now be 2014 Super Rugby champions?