Compare the Brumbies team to the Crusaders and the Chiefs. It’s probably the third strongest of the three. To question the Brumbies program (If they lose) or even compare it to the Reds is deflecting lol.
The scrum is an interesting one - while we definitely had flaws and it was a major issue at certain points in the season, the numbers as a whole were pretty good - 3rd for scrum win %, second in % scrums won by penalty, and second lowest in % scrums lost by penalty.
I'm not writing them completely off but how many lost semi-finals would that be for the Brumbies? 2 or 3 in a row? I'm not sure that's much better than the Reds. And the Crusaders QF was actually more in the balance than the scoreline suggests. 6-day turnaround, No 2nd fly with travel it was never gonna work. I'm more critical of their performance against them in season. And we should have won that fiji and canes game. Ah well.
I'm not comparing them to any of them. Ultimately, the prize is to win the title yeah? And the Brumbs finishing in the semis each year shows they're not improving either? It's obviously more nuanced than that which is why I'm not sure the Reds actually went backwards.
Be interesting to see what stats say re # of scrums won by PK vs previous years - as while it is likely recency bias of watching us get bopped last weekend that is skewing my opinion, generally I don't feel like our scrum was a weapon this year like those numbers suggest.
This isn't the Brumbies page so we don't have to get into it, but it would be 4 in a row. To be fair losing competitive semi finals is a tad different to getting dominated in the QF
Yeah, look ultimately Reds weren't good enough during the season and certainly not in the QF. But I felt like it was 12 - 0 for a while and if we could have scored might have at least given the Saders food for thought. It was pretty difficult going when we were getting penalised pretty regularly without the same help in return (can't remember when our first pen was and yes I'm aware our scrum was getting minced). Not that I want to revisit the game call but an offside defender blocking Tate around the ruck when we were inside their 22 in the first half was very frustrating. Hard to fire a shot when the ref has the safety on.
There were some outliers in both directions, but the Highlanders game in particular really stood out as a game we were dominant in the scrums in - Fa'agase had the wood over Ma'u for ~50 minutes getting good pay and then Hodgman tapped in and turned it up to 11. Ma'u got about a minutes break about 10 minutes later before Kautai blew out his knee and then get punished for the rest of the game. Much of this with De Groot unable to do anything to balance the ledger on the other side of the scrum. That was the stand out, but I think we might have also got good pay in the second Force game and one or two others, in terms of wins by penalty. Annoyingly I don't have per match stats for that.
We aren't going to be able to do the top class stats as Optasports only started publishing Super Rugby info this year.
It's 5 semis + 2 SRau GFs in a row for the Brumbies isn't it?
Bugger
Contending each year but gotta break through eventually.
Look at the correlation between lineout success and LSL (Lukhan Salakaia-Loto) not playing. It's quite concerning for the Wallabies
It's somewhat concerning, but I don't think he's a terrible lineout forward and has shown strength there in the past (though mixed throughout his career). I have a feeling part of the issue is Salakaia-Loto coming in generally coincided with a lot of change elsewhere in the pack - there were multiple injuries at hooker, prop and in in the back row throughout that period. He was also coming off the least amount of time with the team given his wallaby commitments and early injury, but I'm not sure how much that would've set him back given his background playing with most of the pack.
That was one of the strangest things I found also, but I also think they chopped and changed the locks and back-row that much it’s hard to find the common denominator..