2. Speaking of silly penalties…
Of all the places to give away a bunch of silly penalties, Loftus has to be the worst. Let’s not start on Francisco Pastrana (who is the worst ref in the comp, largely due to his inability to communicate with the players or his touchies), but you just can’t give Morne Steyn a chance. The Tahs did just that, and they lost. It’s sad, because they actually played pretty well.
I’m not sure they really deserved to win though. They never really achieved parity with the Bulls in the tight stuff, and their lineout was poor. In my match review people were very keen to point fingers about the lineout, and then go on to say how X player was ‘unfit for the Wallabies’. To that I have two ripostes. Firstly, if you dropped blokes for having a bad day at the office in a particular area then you would have almost no-one left. The Tahs aren’t the first team to struggle against the Bulls at lineout time, and won’t be the last. Juandre Kruger is a very, very good lineout technician. And secondly, laying blame for a dysfunctional lineout is not easy. The Tahs lost six, and only one of them was via an overtly dodgy throw. The Tahs lineout has been generally good this season, so I don’t think it is too much to worry about.
The unsung hero for the Waratahs on Saturday was Rob Horne. He has got his mojo back at 12, and is the glue that holds together the backline- it’s no co-incidence that Foley and AAC have gone ahead in leaps and bounds since he has returned from injury. I reckon he will be back in gold at some point this year (not the Lions, maybe not even the RC), much to the chagrin of just about everybody. But if he keeps this form up he will deserve it.
