PHIL KEARNS made the surprising but true statement last week that matches between Australian teams in Super tournaments over the years have tended to be dour affairs. He obviously expected the ACT Brumbies-Queensland Reds contest on Saturday night to follow the same colourless pattern.
The statement was surprising because Kearns is an inveterate booster of Australian rugby. And it was true, as those of us who have had to sit through excruciatingly dull NSW Waratahs-Reds/Brumbies matches over the years will testify. On Fox Sports' Inside Rugby on Thursday night, Rod Kafer showed why this might be so. He produced clips revealing the unwillingness and seeming incapacity of the Reds, the Waratahs and the Brumbies to counter-attack when they've won a turnover.
In one clip, Kurtley Beale, for instance, was standing by himself near a ruck exhausted as the turnover ball was passed back to a kicker. Question: are the Waratahs players aerobically fit enough to play a counter-attacking game? There was Berrick Barnes dropping back into the pocket, like an American football quarterback, to kick away turnover ball. Question: why are the Reds adopting an alignment that makes it impossible to run turnover ball?
And there were the Brumbies kicking away their turnover ball. Question: why have the Brumbies given away their effective ball-in-hand game for a crude positional game based on the kicking of Julian Huxley? As it happened, Huxley was injured a few minutes into the Reds match. After he left the field, the Brumbies slowly and surely reverted to type. They started moving the ball around, keeping it in the hand, and break after break came as the Reds defence found itself run off its feet. The crowd loved it.
Reds supporters complained that their team ran out of heart. Wrong, the Reds ran out of breath. Three tries, two to the Brumbies and one to the Reds, were scored in the last nine minutes of play. Something similar happened in the last 12 minutes of the compelling Sharks (the best South African side) v Bulls match, too.
The ARU's high-performance manager, Pat Howard, predicted a spate of points in the last 20 minutes of matches played under the experimental law variations (ELVs) - if teams are aerobically fit and if they have the expansive game to exploit the exhaustion factor created by the extra time (up to four more minutes) the ball is now in play. The statistics indicate that the ball is now in play under the ELVs an extra four minutes on previous seasons.
The Brumbies scored six tries on Saturday, becoming the first Australian side this year to gain a bonus point for tries scored. We had to wait until the seventh round last year for an Australian side to gain a bonus point for tries scored.
This brings us to the Waratahs. Supporters are aching for a Waratahs side that plays in the style of the glory days of Mark Ella, David Campese and Nick Farr-Jones; and further back to Ken Catchpole; and even further back to the original Waratahs of 1928-29. In the professional era, the team has become overly cautious and unsuccessful. Even when the Waratahs try to play ball-in-hand rugby, as was attempted against a willing, young Highlanders side in the driving rain last Saturday at Carisbrook, they lack the support play that allow sides such as the Crusaders and the Blues to finish off break-outs with tries.
The Waratahs are in fourth place with three other teams. They have conceded only 35 points. Only the Crusaders have conceded fewer points, 22, while the Sharks have given away 35 points, as well. However, the Waratahs have scored only 52 points. Seven other sides have scored more points. Can the defence of the Waratahs hold out against the stampeding play of the Brumbies at the SFS on Friday?
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