Waratahs 32 Hurricanes 16
At last for long suffering Tahs fans: forwards dominated in the physical contests, the right backs were in their right positions chancing their arm, many good attacking decisions were made – and all against a form team – plus an unbeaten season at home. It doesn’t get much better than that.
There was a buzz around the ground before the game last night and a lot of it was about what Tahs team would show up to play – the wimpy team who played in Invercargill or the happy hour team from Hamilton. There was also the Quarter Final aspect to the game – only the winner would play in the semis.
It didn’t take long for the good guys to show up and they entertained the 30,000 plus crowd to some, dare I say it, Queensland type rugby – the recent kind. The forwards were responsible for the good ball that launched the backs but everybody was in attack mode and offloading the ball like a hot potato. Too often this leads to helter-skelter inaccurate play but the Tahs retention rate was influential and the Canes were deprived of good ball until too late in the game to make a difference.
A lot was expected from the Canes who had been unbeaten in their last 5 games and the 18-6 Tah lead at oranges looked too light for what we expected to come afterwards. But the visitors didn’t fire too many shots, except giving bumbling friendly fire, until the Tahs starting protecting their lead in the last 20 minutes. Then the Canes looked good and they scored their sole try when the Tahs had Turner in the sin bin.
Some stray thoughts, in no particular order:
• The Tahs were playing in a different diamond pattern strip to be auctioned for charity and Mumm had the same pattern on his headgear. It took me a while until I realised that 5. Douglas and 8. Mowen had the same headgear; so no wonder I thought Mumm was having a blinder. Fortunately Mowen changed his at half time.
• It was good to see some percentage chip kicking that was regathered and resulted in tries. For sure Beale’s 2nd try was from a very ropey off break kick that clean bowled Jane through the gap, but we are seeing more of that from the Tahs recently to unlock defences.
• How the world turns. The Tahs looked better when they kept the ball; when they kicked long it was inept. Is there a lesson learned too late there?
• MOTM 11. Mitchell is in his best form ever and worried the Canes every time he had the ball. 15. Beale and 14. Turner continued their good form and made for a potent back 3 compared to the fizzers the Canes had.
• 13. Horne was dynamite on attack and defence and underlined how much he has been missed for most of the season. 12. Carter continued his good form from Hamilton and his defensive combination against their illustrious All Black midfield opponents was telling. It wasn’t until the 2nd half that I realised that Conrad Smith was playing.
• There weren’t many stellar performances from the Canes but Nonu started looking like Nonu in the last quarter and pin-baller David Smith buzzed around the park when he came on and was hard to stop. 7. Lowe looks like a keeper; he can play.
• I should mention a few Tahs forwards but it was the pack dynamic that was the key, not individuals. One missed that attribute two weeks ago.
It was a good end to the regular season by the Tahs. Some people are moaning that it’s unfair that the Bulls are resting almost their whole starting team against the Stormers who should win easily against a scratch team and get a home semi-final instead the Tahs.
But the Tahs have only themselves to blame: had they got a bonus point win against the Highlanders , or just won it and not let the Bulls get a penalty late in the game in Round 3, the Bulls would not be picking a scratch team this weekend. The Bulls earned their right to be pragmatic.
WALLABY WATCH (by Gagger)
Put his hand up: Drew Mitchell is looking like the form winger in the comp, as his try tally would suggest
Did himself no favours: Buggered if I could pick one
Bolter watch: Rob Horne had a blinder in both attack and defense. Time to invent a hamstring transplant procedure
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First Half: Australian Barbarians 18 – England 13 18-13 to Oz A at oranges. Oz scrum is pants as expected, Oz backs more spontaneous and penetrative, as expected, with Rabbit O’Connor brilliant, as expected. So far he has all the points. Oz A could pull it off if they can hold out the Pom forwards in the 2nd half but there’s a few young guys to come on for a run and they don’t have big CVs. To their credit the Poms are not playing their normal stodgy game; they are dishing the ball out. If they start going narrow Oz A could be in a bit of strife in the 2nd 40 minutes. Second half: Final score 28 all The Oz bench did not front up so well in the 2nd half and England bovver boys ground them down. England was too powerful for Oz in the end. With 10 minutes to go they started to play a narrow game and the Oz forwards couldn’t cope especially in a series of scrums near their line when Oz got Weeks carded. England were unlucky not to get a penalty try then but they got a barge try anyway. Had they started that kind of game earlier they would have strangled Oz A. After the barge try they caught Oz A napping and scored in the corner and they were ahead, but then Barnes slotted a penalty to draw the game, then missed a long one on the final bell to win it. There were lot of positives for the Oz backs but not the T5 forwards. Ben McCalman had a few storming runs and was the pick of the backrowers. Valentine but for one of his silly protests when he should have been picking up the ball looked better than Burgess and Barnes launched his young backs well. JOC was the stand out player on the park but he went off early in the 2nd half. Cummins had a few good moments but dropping the pill a couple of times in space blotted his copybook. Chambers looked good at 13 and will play for the Wallabies one day. The Poms won’t have too many of their players breaking into the test squad least of all Charlie Hodgson and Matt Banahan, the flat track bully. Their best feature as expected was their pack work – scrums, mauls and barges which made the Oz forwards look like the babes in the woods that they were. Tait looked enterprising as he always does but some of the backs seemed surprised when they got the ball. Given the amount of T5 forwards who were missing is was a reasonable effort from Oz, but their scrums were right back to the bad old days. God help us if Cowan gets the 1 jersey for the test match.
This old blog is being used for test items
