Yep, its Tuesday again. Comes around quickly, doesn’t it? This week we re-cap the good, bad and ugly from the weekend, look over the Rugby Championship stats, stand back and stare at the NRC in awe, have a quick lesson in animal handling and have highlights a plenty!
The Good, The Bad and The Ugly
Good – Well finally the Wallabies put two decent performances together in a row. A win last week, and while we didn’t get the win this week, a draw in Bloemfontein is still no easy task.
Bad – Another Rugby Championship, another year without the trophy. It was awarded to the All Blacks after their defeat of the Pumas, leaving the Wallabies to fight it out for second place with the Boks.
Ugly – Cheika post-match. Judging by comments on the front-page match review and in the forums, I’m not the only one sick of hearing Cheika talk about the refereeing after matches (well the ones we don’t win anyway). In the wise words of a coach whose team benefitted from a controversial penalty call against Scotland in the World Cup – “You have to live with the ones you get and the ones you don’t. It is what it is and you just deal with it.”
Rugby Championship Round Up
Name calling*, shoe throwing, dibber-dobbers and hair pulling, cries of “it’s not fair, why did they get to do it” and “he likes them better than us”. No, it wasn’t the Primary School playground, it was the Wallabies playing the Springboks. The boys actually put on a pretty good display this week, only a late penalty giving the Boks the draw. There are still things to work on for next week, some of the defence was a bit sketchy and kicking (both in play and for touch) still not up to scratch, but on the whole a much more pleasing effort.
* We assume there was some sledging involved at some point
The race for the trophy is done and dusted and the last round will determine who gets runners up honours. If the Springboks get the win over NZ (yes, it is possible, not likely but possible) then they will finish second leaving the Wallabies in third, even if we beat the Pumas with a bonus point. Anything but a win over the Pumas will see the Wallabies finishing third, a task not necessarily as easy as it sounds.
So let’s take a look at what the numbers from the most recent matches tell us.
For once, the Wallabies look like they should have been beaten. Usually they look good in the stats but it amounts to not much, but this time they looked to be outplayed by the Springboks, in all areas bar the scoreboard (and turnovers conceded). Their tackle rate dropped back to around the 80% mark, which is pretty consistent with where we have been this RC.
And just out of interest, here are the numbers for all of the teams so far in all of the matches. The real stand out for me? The tackling percentage of the All Blacks is a long way ahead of anyone else. Possession doesn’t seem to have much of an impact of the result, its clearly more about how you use it.
NRC Wrap
What another fantastic round of the NRC! I know, I say it every week, but the competition this year is intriguing. This round saw three out of the four matches result in blowouts, which looks to be making the ladder even tighter.
The result on Friday night … who on Earth saw that one coming? I know some people tipped the Vikings, but a 61-point win? Seriously? And the way they did it was outstanding, the Vikings played some incredible rugby. Before the match I had the Fijians picked to finish top of the ladder … it’s amazing what one round can do.
Queensland Country affirmed that they are one of the favourites with a huge win over the last placed Rising, and went to the top of the table with a game in hand. With 3 of the top 4 teams having byes over the next 3 rounds, it’s likely that it won’t be until the final round that finals spots are clear.
And because the numbers are interesting, let’s see how the teams are doing in the stats department so far this season.
Now, I know that stats don’t tell the whole picture. In fact, they can be downright misleading. For example, one of the teams who looks very good in the stats is the Rising, who are on the bottom of the ladder. The Spirit stand out in most areas, while it looks like the Vikings do more in defence than attack, while still managing to score a lot of tries (Friday night helped a lot with that number). Unsurprisingly, the Drua have covered the most metres and given away the most penalties.
So this is what the ladder looks like just past the halfway mark. Like I said, it’s still anybody’s game.
Excuses, excuses
We’ve all heard a range of excuses for players missing games. Injury, missed busses, family commitments, birth of children etc. But this weekend there was a brand new one, one I’m sure none of you have heard before and probably never will again.
Welsh international and Opsreys Hooker withdrew from the weekends match against the Cheetahs … after being bitten by a lion. Yep, a real life, king of the jungle lion.
It’s good to see that Wikipedia has been updated accordingly.
