The Waratahs made up for last week’s loss against the Reds with a solid, if not emphatic, bonus point win against the Rebels in Melbourne.
In a spiteful and reasonably fast-paced encounter, the Tahs came away with two tries to Tom Carter, one to Sekope Kepu and another to Bernard Foley. The Rebels’ only try came from Bryce’s whistle after a solid attacking maul was pulled down, but more on that later. The Tahs had the general ascendancy through the first half and went to oranges up 22-6. The Rebel sc(r)um held up pretty well and apart from the general feel of the game, the only really telling statistic was the 39 tackles missed by the Rebels. It wasn’t all bad news for the Rebel defence, as Cooper Vuna actually made a couple and even forced a turnover. It wasn’t anywhere near enough, though, and handling errors, poor discipline and constant Waratah pressure stopped them getting any real momentum in the match. Whether the media teacup storm affected Tom Carter’s game I don’t know but if it did it was certainly for the better. He came away with two tries and offloaded to Foley just before his bonus point effort. Carter was also in a decent amount of niggle with Adam Byrnes and seemed to get the better of him as Byrnes was shown the White Card by Lawrence after what looked a little like an attempted eye gouge. The Tahs had almost all of the running (with 57 per cent possession) and some scoring opportunities that were close but not quite there. Two of the best involved Pretorius – one in the first minute coming down the left wing and another in the second half off a great run from Dave Dennis. It’s hard to blame the B.I.G. though, as he was a constant sniping threat around the fringes and involved pretty much everywhere. Even though they were down on the Tahs’ line on a couple of occasions, the Rebels never really looked like cracking through until they went for a maul off a lineout and Bryce blew a penalty try when it disintegrated. Perhaps it was warranted but the call seemed early and to send TPN for a ten minute breather at the same time added to the punishment. One or the other would have made more sense. For the Rebels, Mitch Inman was a stand-out in the centres while JOC was covered quite well – perhaps the two are not entirely unrelated. Gareth Delve was his usual bustling self and it was good to see Adam Freier playing again. The Rebel pack definitely held its own against the Tahs at the set piece and was never outshone at scrum time. Pretorius, Carter, Foley and Palu were solid for the Tahs, as were AAC and Halangahu. That the stand-outs were mostly backs says to me the Rebel defence was just giving too much space and slipping off too many tackles. As for my MOTM, it had to be Tom Carter. Waratahs 35 (Carter 2, Kepu, Foley tries. Halangahu 3 cons. Halangahu 2, Foley pens) def Rebels 19 (penalty try. O’Connor con, 4 pens.) Ref: Bryce Lawrence. Crowd: 16,491.
