Happy Tuesday everyone! This week in the Tuesday Top 5 we hand out our usual report card, have a laugh with (at?) Fox Sports Rugby, sum up what’s happened in the first 3 rounds, take a look at the good, bad and ugly from the weekend’s action and do a little bit of analysis into 2 local derbies.
Report Card
Brumbies B- Not entirely convincing but did enough to get the win. They really dominated the set piece with a solid scrum and damaging maul. Patchy in defence but they protected their line relatively well. Scrappy attack and too many pointless kicks (much to the great displeasure of the crowd).
Force C They were in the match until the last 10 minutes, when poor discipline really cost them. Solid in defence, they showed some signs in attack but were pretty restricted. They were dominated in the set piece, but looked better in broken play. Some poor kicking in play hindered them, they gave the ball back to the Brumbies too easily.
Reds C+ They had a close one and had a decent lead for the whole match, until after the siren. But to be honest, the Crusaders tried their best to hand that one to the Reds on a silver platter. They had numerous injuries, terrible ball control, fell off tackles and lost a man to the bin, but the Reds were unable to take advantage of it, showing poor ball handling themselves.
Waratahs D The terrible box kick from Phipps set the tone. Missed tackles, poor discipline and sloppy handling, all topped off with repeated dumb box kicks.
Rebels C The best performance we have seem from the Rebels so far this season. They didn’t leak points and handling errors were way down on the past 2 weeks.
Fox Rugby, what were you thinking?
After the first try from the Brumbies the crowd were a little surprised to see Fox Sports side line reporter Natalie Yoannidis make her way on to the field while the conversion was being taken. She then bailed up try scorer Henry Speight for a quick on-field interview. The results were far less than successful with Speight’s answers being almost un-intelligible. He was out of breath, caught off guard and suddenly found a microphone and camera thrust in his face.
While it provided a lot of amusement for viewers, it has also drew a lot of criticism over social media, and it was definitely not a popular move with those around us in the crowd. Even other players are questioning it, with the Chiefs’ Brad Webber saying it is a “silly” idea. Nick McArdle defended the move, saying that they need to try and be innovative in their broadcast in order to keep up with other codes, but is distracting a player mid match, taking his focus off the game (even if momentarily) really the best way to do it?
Henry tweeted after the match saying “sorry guys there wasn’t a Fijian interpreter”. He obviously saw the funny side of it!
The story so far …
So, three rounds in and where do we stand? Have you changed your pre-season picks for Champion and Wooden Spooner?
Let’s have a look at what’s going on in the Aussie Conference.
Interestingly, the Brumbies and Reds have played the same 3 teams – the Force, Crusaders and Sharks. The only constant is that both lost to the Crusaders, and narrowly, however the Reds were at home while the Brumbies were in Christchurch.
4 of the 5 Australian teams have 1 win and 2 losses on the board.
The Brumbies are on top of the Aussie Conference, level on points with the Reds but with a better points difference (-1 v -7).
No Australian team has a positive points difference.
The top Australian team has 6 points. The lowest NZ team has 5 points. There are 9 teams with 6 points or more so technically the top Australian team is in 10th position overall.
The Rebels have the worst for and against in the comp, and have played 1 less game than anyone else bar the Bulls. They are also the only team with zero points.
Some interesting results
* Reds beat the Sharks, Sharks beat the Brumbies, Brumbies beat the Force, Force beat the Reds.
* Force beat Reds, Reds beat Sharks, Sharks beat Waratahs, Waratahs beat Force.
The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
The Good – Samu Kerevi charging through the line for the Reds showed it’s not all doom and gloom for Australian Rugby. He showed amazing strength in scoring one try and setting up Nabuli for the other.
The Bad – Ross Haylett Petty pretty much cost the Force the match when he put a late hit on Joe Powell. Late and no arms, definite recipe for a yellow card. While he was in the bin the Brumbies scored the winning try, and then added another to deny the Force the bonus point.
The Ugly – It’s hard to go past the gloriously terrible kicking display put on by Nick Phipps. I’ll let the footage speak for itself.
And that’s just in the first 9 and a half minutes. if you want to torture yourself further also have a look at the following times (of the video, not match time)
29.47 – Not a box kick but still not great
30.55 – Box kick
41.15 – Box kick
53.03 – Box kick
1:00.23- Box kick
I think he was (thankfully) replaced soon after.
Do I want to watch it?
It’s a question that keeps getting asked when it comes to Australian teams playing. Let’s face it, this year there has been a real mixed bag of games; some not so bad, that includes the 4 wins from 14 games and then there are the others. Some have been straight out pollution for our eyes, and then there are two game that were just sad.
But last week we found out you lot are a fickle bunch, but understandably so. In the quest for good rugby we all tuned in to what the Kiwis are serving up. Results be dammed, it’s a good stuff to watch and they just go at it. So what is the key difference?
Well this weekend we got a big clue. Let’s compare some of the stats:
It’s interesting to look at those stats and see how close they are. But what do they tell us? Well it’s clear the Kiwis certainly kept the ball in hand more and made more metres. We know the Kiwis tend to kick more than other teams, but look at the turnovers. The Kiwi teams had a shocker. But this is not unusual. This weekend the 5 Kiwi teams combined averaged 21.2 turnovers while the 4 Aussie teams averaged just 14.5.
When you consider this, it leads to an interesting conclusion. The Kiwi are willing to take risks to get the reward whereas the Aussie teams are risk adverse and stick to the script. Yep – BORING!!! That’s why you lot were channel surfing last weekend. It’s about entertainment. Two teams going at it, ball in hand, running, high skills taking their chances.
But based on the stats above it tends to indicate that the gap between the Kiwi and Aussie teams is very small, right? Well a picture tells thousand words and we all know what conditions can do to influence the way a game is played. Even in perfect conditions we can only just keep up!
