If you listen to the latest Ruggamatrix podcast, you’ll hear Djuro Sen having a go at me for having a sideways pop at them following the latest Wallabies loss. I gotta say I’m not too fussed by it (which is unfortunate because we could do with some stink to liven things up at the moment), but just in case my silence was taken as concession, I’d better reply!
First, I’m really not sure where Djuro got the ‘linear timescale’ and scoring idea. As Link says in the podcast; possession and dominance will sway both ways in most games – which is precisely my main point.
For the rest of the segment on the podcast (which starts about 3 mins in), I agree with most of what Djuro and Link were saying. Where we part company is around the fine print of the “80 minutes” idea. Djuro believes that the key reason for the loss was because the Wallabies had “clocked off” towards the end of the 80 minutes, letting the All Blacks into the game. If they’d “played the 80 minutes” then they would have been deserved winners. I think this is an over simplistic, unrealistic summary of the game.
An undeniable fact is it doesn’t matter when you score your points, just as long as you’re ahead at the hooter. You need to create and take the right number of opportunities over the 80 minutes to have yourself ahead at the end. Another undeniable fact is that the Wallabies had created those opportunities through their play, just not taken the points through goal kicking. In the week following the Sydney Bledisloe, Ruggamatrix and many other commentators had said that missed kicks hadn’t lost the game.
So my point is that in this particular game (unlike many others in recent years) I don’t think the Wallabies threw it away in the last 10 or 20 minutes. They’d done enough to build a commanding lead which they could defend and ‘close out’ against what would undoubtedly be an All Black resurgence (as Link says, games ebb and flow). The bit that went wrong was missing the points on offer through kicking; not the commitment or ability otherwise. In other words, they’d played the 80 minutes, just not kicked their goals.
Do champion teams have champion kickers? Yes.
Do champion teams tend to come back strong in a game, around the 80 minute mark? Yes.
Can champion teams defend a lead and ‘close out’ a game? Yes.
I’m not saying this was a champion team performance, just that as a team they did enough to win that game over 80 minutes, including up to the 80th. This is a significant point to recognise when looking for improvement in a developing team that has not been doing this in the past. Not to recognise it, is to miss an important part of the game. Anyone can look up the match score, the interesting bits are the how and why.
In any event I look forward to the next episode of Ruggamatrix as I do every week, but just because the Aussie battler Casho’s away, don’t think you can vent elsewhere Bronc!
