Monday’s Rugby News sees the results from the weekend, Kafe dishing out the shit, the latest from the Singapore Sevens and the loss of a Shute Shield club.
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What?! We won a game?!
I was not looking forward to writing the news this weekend. I was fully expecting I’d have to trawl through yet another winless round.
Yet, as Hoss astutely reminded me on Friday, you stick by the teams in good times and bad, and this weekend I was pleasantly surprised with (at least some) of the results.
Starting over in a rainy Cape Town, the Rebels went down to the Stormers, who handed them a 34-18 loss. The Stockade had an okay run of it, leading for the opening quarter and pulling it back to a converted try in the last twenty minutes.
But, rugby is an eighty minute game and the hosts were far too good for the rest of the match, and were deserved winners.
However, now we get onto the highlight of the weekend: with several changes and big name losses from the last week, most of us thought the Reds were going to be bullied by a Lions outfit that had kept the Tahs scoreless last week.
I asked the Super Rugby teams to prove me wrong in my predictions for this weekend. And proved me wrong, the Queenslanders did.
They ran out 27-22 winners, dominating the first half and weathering the storm of the Lions fightback in the second half. It was a gutsy performance in Brisvegas, and the boys deserve praise for getting the bacon and giving us something to cheer about.
But then, my own team took this momentary high and totally smashed it.
The Brumbies, in their defence had arguably the toughest task of the weekend against the Crusaders.
But that still isn’t going to excuse their performance. In this 8-21 loss, they served up stupid rugby decision after stupid rugby decision. The on-field decision making was just plain dumb by the Ponies, and it was really exemplified when the Crusaders were down to thirteen men, and they couldn’t capitalise and score any points.
Now I know what it felt like to be the Welsh at the 2015 World Cup.
Don’t worry though, we’ll get to examining more basic fundamentals of the game in a minute.
In other results, the Hurricanes put forty on the Sunwolves, the Jaguares made history in winning for the first time ever in New Zealand when they knocked over the Blues 13-20 at Eden Park, and the match of the round saw a thriller between the Bulls and Highlanders in Pretoria, which saw the visitors win 28-29.
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Ruthless Rod
You know that your team played like shit when even the head of Rugby Australia‘s national coaching panel said you sucked.
Former Pony Rod Kafer, who joined the governing body’s ranks last year, didn’t hold back on his thoughts on the Brumbies loss to the Crusaders post-game on Fox Sports.
This was actually slightly cathartic to watch, to finally see a member of that panel not try to sugar coat a god awful performance.
Kafe said that Australian players lacked the “core fundamentals” of knowing how to actually win.
“The one thing that our Australian teams want to go to all of the time is to set piece, they don’t want to play the game,” Kafer said on Fox Sports, which was reported in the Sydney Morning Herald.
“You’re sitting there, two guys in the bin, you don’t want to go scrum. You don’t want to have the first scrum and then get a penalty and then go to a lineout.
“Either go scrum, scrum, scrum and have a crack or two (metres) out from the line, five (metres) out from the line, tap the ball and let’s rumble, get the forward pack excited.
“You’ll find space just getting the ball in play, if you pull it into a set piece the space disappears. It’s a lack of understanding about the core fundamentals of how you win games of rugby.
“We talk about heads up rugby and having an understanding of how we want to play, yet we’re not a country who wants to play heads up rugby.
“We want to go to structure, we hear our people talk about it all the time, structure, structure, structure. It’s not working for us.”
Brumbies coach Dan McKellar admitted post-game that this had been a frustrating season so far for his team.
“If you go through our key positions, we average less than 20 games. It’s tough and you’ve got to learn and the key is learning but at the same time winning,” McKellar said.
“Experience is key and summing up different situations within a game and understanding what’s required at that point in time. The frustration is not taking those key opportunities.
“It [composure] can be coached, game management can be coached and that’s something we’re working really hard on with our boys, understanding different scenarios and situations within a game and decisions that we make in and around that.”
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Tripped at the finish line
Well, at least some Aussie teams are playing with a bit more pride.
The Mens Sevens came roaring back to life after a bit of a slump, making it all the way to the Singapore Sevens Grand final.
In what was the first outing for Tim Walsh as head coach, the boys looked unbelievable, knocking over a LOT of heavyweight teams, including Scotland, Wales, New Zealand and England on their way to the final.
However, champion honours was not to be, as a try one minute into extra time was all that could separate them with the fast finishing Fiji.
The boys went down 28-22, but while they didn’t grab they win they certainly grabbed the respect of the Fijians, with Fijian skipper Jerry Tuwai heaping nothing but praise onto the runners up.
“I’m speechless,” Tuwai said to Fox Sports.
“Australia are a very good side and took us to the wire.
“We gave everything for this final.
“Winning this tournament will boost our morale going to London and Paris.
“To all the people in the stadium, thank you very much for the support and back home thank you very much for your prayers, support and belief in this young team.”
The result sees a lot of changes on the overall leader board, with Fiji leapfrogging South Africa into first place, while the Aussies also climbed the ladder into the top four, closing the gap on third placed New Zealand to just twelve points.
WORLD SERIES STANDINGS
1. Fiji – 145 points
2. South Africa – 141
3. New Zealand – 120
4. Australia – 108
5. United States – 93
The next World Series will be in London in June.
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Booted Out
Back in February, rumours begun circulating that the Penrith Emus were going to be cut from the Shute Shield if they didn’t improve their performances.
Well, according to Sporting News the SRU is set to announce today that the Emus time in the competition will be no more.
It’s a real slap in the face to many rugby supporters in Western Sydney, and to the many folks who have been trying to keep the club afloat.
They were first introduced into the competition in 1995, and reportedly, hopes were high that the fledgling club would become a centrepiece in Western Sydney Rugby.
The club has been struggling the last few years, with it’s first grade side picking up only one win in the last four seasons. It has been no secret that Penrith has long received little to no support from any governing bodies, so much so that they have increasingly become a symbol to many of the treatment of grassroots in Australia.
Emus president Jim Hook has said that throughout the whole process he has been kept in the dark about the future of the club.
“I know nothing about it,” he said.
“I know nothing more than what’s out there. They (the SRU) could have a meeting this week, I don’t know.
“It would be a pretty horrific decision if they went negative. It’s not just Penrith, it’s the development of the game in Western Sydney.
“We’ve been set some KPIs in terms of fielding teams, and we felt we’ve been meeting them.”
“I can tell you that Penrith are under extreme pressure and are working really hard to develop rugby in Western Sydney.
“At the moment we’re seeking support from Rugby Australia, New South Wales and the Sydney Rugby Union, because we believe that the two million people in Western Sydney deserve to have a rugby team to represent all the population.
“We’ve had no support, we’ve had to survive on a shoestring.
“The problem is that as amateurs, the reality is that people move on.
“It’s a tough environment as a coach and as an administrator, and without any real assistance.”
Should the decision go ahead, the remaining rounds slotted for Emus games will see a 28-0 bonus point victory allocated to the opposition team.
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