Hump Day News – In from the side

Ousted RA chair blasts ‘arrogant and dopey’ board after major Super Rugby sponsor bails

Reported here on Fox Sports Harvey Norman has pulled its sponsorship of Australian Rugby. The beleaguered sport has been going through death by a thousand cuts, the once mighty code buckling under the weight of a poorly performing national team and a floundering domestic competition.

The trophy cabinet is bare, television ratings are bottoming out and we haven’t even mentioned Eddie Jones yet. So the news that Harvey Norman is jumping ship couldn’t have come at a worse time. “The Harvey Norman contract with Rugby Australia expires at the end of December, the decision has been taken not to renew,” a Harvey Norman company spokesperson said. The article states the retail giant has already pumped around $5 million into the code.

McClennan also took a shot at the board for losing Harvey Norman’s sponsorship. “Look at what the boneheads have done,” McLennan said “They are arrogant and dopey”. Cadbury, the key sponsors of the Wallabies, are also said to be “deeply concerned” by McLennan’s demise in the role. With talk of more bloodletting of the board being on the cards, incoming chairman Daniel Herbert and Waugh have a heck of a battle on their hands turning the sport around.

Now while I have some sympathy for McLennan’s description of the RA board, especially with the story about offering the underperforming Jorgensen $1.6m over 3 years, I still think his comments are a bit rich after the disaster he oversaw with sacking a decent coach, Dave Rennie, and bringing in an absolute disaster, Eddie Jones. It would be interesting to see what description fans have of this guy.

Rebels rally behind Tupou after slow start

Reported by Nathan Williamson here on rugby.com.au, Melbourne Rebels prop Sam Talakai has backed fellow tighthead Taniela Tupou to deliver as they look to eradicate their poor starts against the NSW Waratahs this Friday. Tupou has floated between the bench and starting in his opening month in Melbourne after making the move down from the Reds. He has started just twice in the first five games of 2024, only lasting 32 minutes against the Reds a fortnight ago but Talakai was adamant Tupou was close to returning to his bulldozing best.

“He’s had a tough month and let’s not forget, the last 3-4 years he’s had a lot of workload on his shoulders whether it’s at the Reds or playing big minutes for the Wallabies, especially in a World Cup campaign coming back from his Achilles injury,” Talakai said. “We’re just going to be there for him and help him find his mojo because once he does, we know that he’s devastating”. 

The Rebels are focused on turning around their slow starts after allowing the Hurricanes to build a 33-0 lead before half-time. It’s been a consistent theme for the club, who have conceded 12 tries in the first 30 minutes of their four defeats. “This season, what’s just killing us is the accuracy in our game and teams understand and are attacking us at the start of games with a clean plan,” Talakai said “For us, it’s not about talking about what we can do, it’s about delivering on those actions on field.”

Now while it’s great to see someone stand up for his teammate, I’m not sure that apart from that last quote Talakai actually says anything that makes sense. For me personally Tupou has always been a player who I don’t think has ever delivered or lived up to the hype that the media have written or said. Yes, he is a good player who on his day can provide a strong scrum and some good strong runs. However, he’s not a game winner and while he’s a big guy, there are a lot of other top line props at both Super and international level who are more consistent, play longer and do more damage. I always felt Tupou was a victim of reading his own press and seemed to think he was tougher and meaner than any other player and then acted like it was true. But it just wasn’t. For me this year he has been a complete waste. Last week he competed in a few scrums, but none of them were destroyed by his effort, he made one or two runs, but none led to a score and for the most part seemed to be out of shape and waddling from play to play before he went off. Now maybe Talakai is correct and Tupou is just a short time away from being the game winning prop he’s made out to be, but I’m not holding my breath on this and if the NH comes calling, I’d be more than happy to see him go.

Referee Corner

I thought it might be an interesting conversation to have about some of the decisions or games from a referee’s perspective each fortnight when I write these posts. I think there are still a lot of misconceptions, lack of understanding and some confusion on the adjudicating of the games and just maybe I can clarify on this for people. Of course, I’m just as likely to increase the misunderstanding for some, especially when I challenge the biases we all have. However, that’s all part of rugby. Now these ideas and opinions are mine and gained from my 58 odd years involved in the game as either a player, coach or referee. I’m not claiming them as being the gold standard, or even totally correct. And I’m certainly not claiming them as being any official stance from either Rugby Australia or World Rugby. As I said to the coach last weekend, I make mistakes too and that’s all part of it.

There were a lot of comments last weekend about the standard of refereeing and how after a couple of good weeks we seemed to go backward, and the referees didn’t seem to have the control of the games in a way that they may have done in the previous games. In some ways I do agree with this, and I certainly felt that a couple of referees did struggle at times in some of the games. For those interested, here is a great video from BOK after his game, explaining the game from his perspective. It is a bit of an eye opener for those of you who haven’t seen or talked with referees about the game.

As I’ve mentioned previously, rugby is a hugely dynamic game with multiple things occurring at multiple times. The laws are very comprehensive and there are multiple laws for almost every aspect of the game. The reason for the multitude of laws is because they are designed to allow for a fair contest of the ball by both teams and so that there aren’t times when a team is prevented from competing due to the laws (apart from the rolling maul). The laws are then applied in a way that is directed by the game’s governing body, and certainly this year they seem to have decided to give more leeway to the attacking team than the defending team, which has resulted in a very messy ruck. On top of this the laws are applied by the referee in a tactical manner that allows infringements that don’t affect the game at that time to be ignored. This last bit, along with the laws on advantage are directly related to the experiences of the referee, which are all different and so are very subjective.

So why would one weekend seem to be so different from a previous weekend? I think there’re a couple of things here.

Firstly, I’m not sure it was so different as what we may have thought once I looked back at some of the games. I think one of the biggest issues was that some of the teams we support received different results than what we had expected or wanted, and in situations like this we often look for the point of difference. So maybe the Reds supporters looked a bit harder at the referee this week than they did in the last few games, because this week they seemed to play pretty badly and in previous weeks due to the good results the referee wasn’t under the microscope.

Secondly, a referee’s decisions are often dictated by the players and their attitude and the way they play. Every decision, except the initial kick off at the start of each half, is based on something a player does. If the players never transgressed during a game, then the only time a referee would make a call would be for lineouts and tries. There’s be no scrums, no free kicks, no penalties and no cards, just great running and passing rugby. Well, except for the odd scrum for when a maul or ruck was halted, and play had to restart. So, when I look at a game where the referee seems to be struggling, I tend to look at how the players are playing.

I thought in the Reds/Force game players from both sides were being pretty liberal with the laws, and while Damon Murphy may not have made the best decisions on the field for every transgression, both teams were not helping him at all. Then, when I looked at the Drua/Waratahs match where the conditions on the field with the humidity caused many mistakes to be made, Doleman had a hard time keeping the game flowing like he wants to do. Doleman is a very tactical referee and so allows things to occur as long as the game is allowed to flow, and both teams were making mistakes that didn’t allow that.

There’s a lot of talk about how referees aren’t in touch, don’t know what’s happening or make decisions on guesses. Personally, I laugh at all this. The process for vetting, training, assessing, managing and selecting referees is pretty robust and there’s no way that a referee who didn’t make the grade would be allowed to get to this level and then remain there. Sure, there are referees coming through who are a bit less experienced and are likely to make more mistakes because of that, but they’ll be managed and if they don’t step up, they’ll be sent back down the grades. For me a referee is never a defining reason for either a win or a loss and anyone who considers this isn’t looking at the match but looking at excuses.