Hi once again. Gee Tuesday rolls around fast, doesn’t it! But yes, it is Tuesday, and that means it’s Top 5 time!! This week we grade our teams and take a gander at the good, bad and ugly from the weekend, recap the season that was, look to the future and check in on our little GAGR garden.
Report Card
Reds D: While the margin was substantial, at least the Reds kept playing for the full 80. Unfortunately some soft lapses in defence cost them big time. They had possession for a large chunk of the game, but were unable to do anything with it. Losing Hunt early no doubt didn’t help their cause, but they were (as is becoming the norm for them this season) inconsistent.
Rebels C: They were kept in the game by the boot of Reece Hodge, given that they were outscored 4 tries to 2, his 5 penalty’s made this a close game. They had their moments when they looked really good in attack, only to be let down by handling errors or poor passes.
Brumbies C-: Admittedly, I never expected the Brumbies to really be competitive in this match, so was pleasantly surprised. 12 changes to the starting line-up is a pretty sure-fire way to not win against the Chiefs, but the young guys they threw in looked ok. Jordan Jackson-Hope and James Dargaville were pretty tight in defence and there were at least 2 try-saving tackles made.
Force A: Sentiment aside, the Force played some very good Rugby on Saturday night. For the second week in a row they were clearly the best Australian team. Not only did they play with a fierce intensity and passion, but their skills were far superior to their opposition, their defence was completely solid and their decision making on the field top notch.
Waratahs – Hors Catégorie. Yes, I’ve been watching the Tour. For those unfamiliar with the term, it’s French and means beyond classification, as in a mountain that is too high to classify. Well here I am using it to say that the Waratahs were so bad, they are beyond my realm of classification – an F just doesn’t do justice to the crap they served up on Saturday night. I can’t help but wonder the thinking behind the long range shot from Folau when they were trailing by 11 points. Was it a sign of lack of confidence in their attack? Once again, their defence was close to non-existent, they looked like a bunch of guys who just wanted the season to end.
The Good, The Bad and The Ugly
Good – There’s no way I can possibly look past Matt Hodgson kicking the final penalty of the match on Saturday night. Not many players get to go out with such a fairytale ending, and if a player ever deserved to, it’s Hodgo.
Bad – The Waratahs. They were simply bad.
Ugly – 0 – 25. To add to this, the SUNWOLVES beat a kiwi team on the weekend. By a lot! The Sunwolves FFS.
Regular season over, so let’s look at the results
Well there you have it folks, another Super Rugby season done and dusted – well except for the finals of course. But let’s talk regular season. I don’t think I need to go into heaps of detail about how our teams fared – probably best to spare the poor readers from that kind of torture.
In a nutshell, here’s a visual aid to help us get a proper picture of the Aussie results this season.
So, each colour represents a team and the spots tell us the points margin of that round. A negative is a loss, positive is a win and a 0 is either a bye or a draw (the Rebels had 1 draw).
I know it looks very pretty, but what does it tell us?
Obviously most of the action is going on below the 0 axis, ie there were a lot of losses and a lot of big losses at that. The green line stands out in that there are some pretty serious spikes into the negative. Interestingly the Waratahs biggest loss was to the Force in the final round. So while they had some big scores against them (how many in a row over 40?) it also shows that they must have been scoring themselves, otherwise the margins would be bigger.
Only two teams were able to put successive wins together. The Brumbies did it twice and the Force in the final two rounds of the season. They are the teams who finished one and two in the Australian conference. While on the Brumbies, their line stays closest to 0 while in the negative, showing that most of their losses were by a very small margin (and frustratingly most were lost in the last few minutes of the match). If nothing else this gives us some faint hope that they can get the upset this weekend.
Apart from the one spike in round 13 (when they played the Rebels), the few wins the Waratahs did get were by small margins, their line barely peeks above 0. The Reds spend a lot of time below the line, and usually by a fair margin.
What can we take away from all of that? It doesn’t paint a pretty picture of the season, no matter how many pretty colours I use. But, putting on my overly optimistic hat, there is some cause for hope, however faint.
- The Brumbies have been pretty competitive, even though they have mostly played some rubbish rugby. If they get it together they are every chance to do well in the finals.
- The Waratahs had an atrocious season but weren’t getting flogged. They were scoring plenty of points but sadly they were letting in even more. Clearly defence was a big problem for them. I’ve heard that it’s an easy fix, but we are still waiting. When it happens, they could be dangerous.
- The Force finished the season really strongly with some good wins. Their results look worse for the 4 losses they had that were by more than 20, but they won the same number of games as the Brumbies. At the end of the season they were playing the best rugby, by a long way.
Where does all that leave us for next year then?
Well the Brumbies are welcoming a new coach, with Larkham off to the Wallabies as full-time attack coach. They are losing some quality back rowers in the form of Fardy (off to Leinster) Alcock and Smiler (both to Japan) and in the backs Cubelli is heading (we assume) back home. But they will be bolstered by the return of Pocock and Lealiifano and have re-signed some quality young backs. So far there hasn’t been any confirmed signings from outside the current squad (Matt Lucas, strong rumour and have also heard whispers of Folau Faingaa), so we’ll be keeping an ear out there. All in all, not a bad looking future there.
The Waratahs are losing their defensive weapon, coach Grey, off to the Wallabies as full-time defence coach, Cam Blades is gone and Simon Cron is joining as assistant, with Gibson reportedly taking on more responsibility in the form of defence and the backs. They are also losing the experienced Wallabies Dean Mumm and Rob Horne but are welcoming back prodigal son Beale and young gun Tom Staniforth from the Brumbies. There are also rumours that they are losing their young number 10 Andrew Deegan who rarely saw the field for the Tahs after shining in the NRC. But will questions over leadership, both on and off the field, and rifts in the ranks (does the coach really have the full support of the playing group) dominate their off season?
I guess we could say that Nick Stiles’ first season as sole head coach was a little less than successful. It was pretty woeful really. Some questionable recruitment last season (billed as brilliant by some in the media) – of very experienced players did little to help them on their road to success. Many have also questioned the coach’s tactic of publicly shaming certain players, if it was meant to inspire them to perform better it didn’t work. Now they have let Rob Simmons go, and are losing young gun Magnay to Japan and Jake McIntyre to France, but it looks like they could get Genia for next season, so really, who knows how they’ll go.
The Rebels are losing coach Tony McGahan and are yet to name a replacement but they are filling up a roster for 2018 with some youth and experience. They have recruited ex-English lock Geoff Parling, sevens star Henry Hutchinson and ex-Waratah Horwitz, but are losing Debreczini, Meehan and Placid to overseas. With some doubt still over the axing of a team it could be a stressful start to the off season.
Coach Wessels did a good job with the Force this year, building the team well. They are well coached and look to be a close-knit group. Doubt over their survival in the competition may have hindered their recruitment somewhat, but they are retaining a lot of their current roster, including DHP, with some who are yet to sign expressing a desire to remain, such as Coleman who wants to stay at the Force but is in a sort of a stalemate with the ARU because he doesn’t want to be told where to play should the Force be axed. As with the Rebels, questions over their future remain, but that took an interesting turn on Saturday night, so we will have to wait and see how it all plays out.
So for four of the teams that it, that’s all, there aint no more, 2017 is now just a painful memory. Hopefully we will see them all again come preseason 2018.
The ARU and the Beanstalk
Time for the weekly update on the bean seeds I put out last week and how they are going compared to the ARU and a decision on the Force and Rebels.
So here’s how things stand with the ARU
*crickets*
Potentially the last game ever for the Rebels or Force – NOTHING.
Talk of Cox selling the Rebels to the VRU/Victorian Government/some sort of Syndicate (let’s face it, so many reports, I stopped trying to keep track) if the ok is given by the ARU – NOTHING.
Even when billionaire “Twiggy” Forrest announced he was going to do what he can to ensure the Force have a future – NOTHING.
And here’s how things stand with the bean seeds.
It looks like 3 of the seeds are having the same issues as the ARU and just don’t want to be seen in public. One is making a bit of a go of it, but I have been watching the little guy get a bit sick over the last couple of days. Maybe he’s channelling the ARU board when they heard Forrest’s speech on Saturday night (come to think of it, that’s when the bean started to look a bit sick). Hopefully he’ll still be doing ok for next weeks update.
