Rebel alliance to take on the Empire
Trying to make sense of both a proposed 'rebel' rugby tournament and Barrett's decision to kick for goal, PLUS: a smidge of cricket and day one of the Podmore Inquest.
It was a big weekend for rugby, with the All Blacks and France playing out a thriller in Paris that would have been a nice way to bring down the curtain on the season. Alas, there’s still Italy.
The Wallabies are starting to show what they’re capable of ahead of the Lions and World Cup hosting whereas Wales can’t do a thing right, with Warren Gatland essentially inviting his bosses to sack him as they officially became that proud nation’s worst side.
“Let’s make sure we make the best decision for Welsh rugby,” Gatland said. “If that’s me moving on, if that’s the best decision, I’m fine.”
Elsewhere, Ireland scraped home against Argentina and the Springboks finished strongly as England faltered again, putting Steve Borthwick’s job under almost as much scrutiny as Gatland’s — though he has the luxury of Eddie Jones’ Japan up next to right things.
There was all this going on, yet the biggest story was hatched out of the USA and Middle East, where private money is said to be launching the biggest disrupter to rugby’s accepted order since Jonah Lomu went nuts in 1995, sparking a broadcast war that turned the game professional.
It’s not an easy story to wrap your head around, but this was how the UK’s Daily Telegraph framed it:
Plans for a breakaway global rugby league featuring the top 200 players in the world playing for eight franchise clubs at ‘Formula One style’ festivals across major cities are said to be in advanced stages, Telegraph Sport can reveal.
Sources claim that a “significant majority” of leading players have already committed to the new project that could see them forced to choose between club and country if World Rugby and the unions within each nation block the move.
It is understood the breakaway league is being funded by a small group of UK and US investors who want to reset the club game in a vein similar to the IPL’s impact on cricket amid mounting concerns about the long-term financial viability of the sport. They are targeting a start date of 2026 for the new tournament.
Hmmm. I’m suspicious of guff that says things like Formula One-style festivals across major cities, but there is no question it is rattling cages.
It is understood that there are non-disclosure agreements being tossed around like confetti within all the major rugby nations, including Aotearoa, so this is likely to be slightly more than the “pie-in-the-sky” it has been dismissed as by Stephen Jones in The Times.
There was no panic at World Rugby headquarters yesterday among the people to whom I spoke. Big money is lovely. But to get your fingers in the pie, I fear, you will find that the pie is in the sky. World Rugby knows well that they have to go to the Middle East to start balancing their own books. Maybe it will nudge them.
Another Telegraph story seemed to suggest that big players have already been targeted.
Finn Russell and Antoine Dupont feature on a global franchise league wish list under ambitious plans to target the world’s best players on double-your-money deals and kick-start a new era of rugby…
Several leading England players are known to be on the league’s wish list, as well as internationals from France, South Africa, New Zealand and emerging nations. It is understood that Ireland’s leading players have not yet been approached, but figure prominently on the shortlist.
Around 320 players will need to be mobilised to service eight men’s franchises. Insiders hope that assembling 280 top internationals from a shortlist of over 300 would represent a tipping point that could persuade World Rugby to sanction the league.
The Guardian says 20 players have already signed in principle to join the league, but does not list any names.
Bumper salaries and the promise of fewer matches are said to be significant in convincing players to join the rebel league, which has been likened to cricket’s IPL, LIV Golf and Formula One and represents the biggest challenge to the world order since the game went professional.
Surely the only way it could work was that if it didn’t jeopardise players’ test careers, something that the IPL, the tournament this has been most likened to, has avoided to date? Yet in that same Guardian story they note the RFU’s stance is that players who join the league will be considered rebels and would not be selected by England.
This is the rugby establishment’s biggest stick to wield, as test rugby remains a huge lure, but might such a hard and fast dismissal of the idea be counterproductive.
Rugby’s finances are crippled, in large part due to player costs below test level. Can the sport afford to ignore the idea that an outside agency might be willing to pay the game’s 300-odd best players “doubled” salaries, while increasing the sport’s global visibility?
It might be pie in the sky, and there’s no doubt a lot more details that need to be revealed before it can be truly taken seriously, but so too, 30 years ago, was the idea that India would be the financial driver of global cricket and that they’d do through teams like the Punjab Kings XI and Rajasthan Royals.
***
Back to Paris.
About 28 hours ago, at the time of writing this at least, I settled in to watch one of the more interesting tests of the last four or five years. It was frenetic, occasionally frustrating, was pockmarked by moments of panache and beauty, and the less edifying stuff was lurking there as well.
Strange then, that after all that action and all those points, 59 of them in total, I left the safety of my lounge with one question occupying my mind above all others: did Ronan O’Gara just cost the All Blacks a win in Paris?
To be fair to the former Ireland and Munster playmaker, his name has not been mentioned in dispatches, but I felt his spectre hovering over Scott Barrett’s fateful decision to take the three points when trailing by four with sand rapidly slipping through the hourglass.
In the end Barrett’s decision proved to be a failure of imagination, but was it also a failure of maths?
This is what he said post-match.
“I was really torn, actually, on that,” Barrett said. “Could go to the corner — four points behind, put ourselves in front. Equally, we get back and five minutes to go, we get down there and it’s a one-shot play.”
“We could have gone for the corner, on reflection. We could have gone for the win. I’ll reflect on that and learn from that [and whether] it was the right decision. Potentially not.”
Three things leapt out at me from this.
One, good on him for addressing it up front, acknowledging it was a pivotal moment in the game and that he might have got it wrong. In these situations we’ve grown accustomed to so much less, to the point that I was mildly shocked not to have been offered something along the lines of, “Well, hindsight never loses does it? There were any number of incidents during a one-point test that could alter the outcome, so no regrets.” Barrett’s vulnerability here is more admirable than it is weak.
Two, this reads like a failure of data. Barrett appears to be making this decision on gut and there should be screeds of information available to the captain of the All Blacks in the most pivotal moment of the match that is not based on feelings. The All Blacks are marketed as an apex high-performance environment so surely there is a data-set available in the coaches’ box that tells you the percentages of winning from that position when taking the shot versus kicking for the corner. There would be in the NFL, where every play on every part of the field comes with a set of numbers available to coaches, informing their decisions on what play to run next. Rugby is a more fluid game that mitigates against an NFL level of statistical detail, and that’s mostly a good thing, but the pro game has been around for close to 30 years and the points for tries, penalties, drop goals and conversion points have remained the same for 32 years, so there must be some rich information available to coaches. That being the case, how are they relaying the information to Barrett at that key moment?
(Interestingly, this story just dropped as I was wrapping this up, and included this quote from Scott Robertson: “We have a process to tell him our thoughts. We get the message out [as soon] as we possibly can to help him with the decision. He got the information.” I would love to know if that information was data-based, or just more gut feelings.)
Three, even his own words (emphasis mine) seem to condemn his thinking. “Could go to the corner — four points behind, put ourselves in front. Equally, we get back and five minutes to go, we get down there and it’s a one-shot play.” Unless I’m misinterpreting his words, why put yourself in a position where you need to make a one-shot play when you have the opportunity for a multiple-shot play. If you kick for the corner and something goes wrong at the lineout, at worst France steal possession and kick it out. Yes, it’s niggly and costs you some hard-won territory but the chances are you still have the ball deep in their half. You can make a mistake this way and recover; the other way everything has to go perfectly right.
So why do I reckon O’Gara, and not the All Blacks’ own set of data, played a pivotal role? Because when he was at the Crusaders in 2018-19, one of the things he preached longer and louder than anything else was that New Zealand teams needed to occasionally wind their necks in and realise there was more than one way to win games. He saw their insistence on needing to score tries from every play as a conceit that was costing them games. He extolled the virtues of scoreboard pressure and the fact that it could be applied in multiples of three as well as seven. And he had a couple of locks who hung on every word he said, Sam Whitelock, who had seen the Lions squeeze his Crusaders side out of the game by doing exactly that in 2017, and Barrett.
As Barrett opted for shot after shot in that second half, I couldn’t help but wonder if O’Gara was on his shoulder.
***
It was far from the only point of interest from an enthralling test.
For the second test in a row the All Blacks were dominant for long stretches and for the second week in a row struggled to fully capitalise on it. The difference being the result last week was more palatable.
I thought the Pater Lakai try and the brilliant, connected attack that preceded it, would signal an onslaught because France looked bewildered by the whole ball-in-hand approach. But test footy is hard, I guess, and you have to give props to France for not only weathering that, but to start throwing some haymakers themselves.
Not a lot to report from the cricket, unless you’re in the market for low-scoring grinds on turning pitches among intermittent heavy showers.
I gave up pretty early last night, but the highlights and scoreboard suggests this is not one that will feature in many pub quizzes, unless the question is: Who was dismissed for a first-call duck straight after being named in his first test squad?
It was nice to see Mitch Hay get a start with the bat to complement his work with the gloves, and for Michael Bracewell to remind us that he does retain some all-round value in a suddenly crowded field of finger spinning options.
Of more interest, and that’s a relative term, will be the second round of the Plunket Shield, which starts tomorrow and will see a number of Black Caps, including Kane Williamson, seek some time at the crease ahead of England’s imminent visit.
In other cricket news, while contemplating the momentous achievement of the Black Caps 3-0 series win in India, I went down a rabbithole of surprise test victories, none of which would be complete without a revisit of Hobart in 2011.
The star of the show that day was Doug Bracewell who took 3-20 and a match-winning 6-40 as New Zealand won by seven runs. At just 21, he had the cricket world in front of him, but he just couldn’t get out of his own way.
Bracewell tested positive for cocaine and its metabolite Benzoylecgonine (BZE) after a Super Smash domestic T20 match between the Central Stags and Wellington Firebirds in January.
It was accepted that he had used the cocaine out of competition and for reasons unrelated to sport performance, according to a statement from the Sport Integrity Commission.
Cocaine is banned in sport under the Substances of Abuse category in the Sports Anti-Doping Rules. Bracewell therefore incurred a one-month sanction from the Sports Tribunal, backdated to April 11 and reduced from three months on the condition that he completed a treatment programme to address his substance use. He did that and he is again eligible to play.
The saddest line of the opening day of the inquest into the death of Olympic cycling Olivia Podmore:
Former Cycling NZ employee Jessica Massey submitted to the court that Podmore was bullied and ostracised after returning from the Rio Games.
“Upon the cycling team’s return to New Zealand, the bullying against Olivia escalated. The surrounding sprint squad, both athletes and coaches, enforced the hierarchy that [the coach] had set. There were occasions where I would be out for coffee with Olivia, and she would be receiving text messages from her team telling her to ‘shut her mouth’. It was awful to see. I felt that I had done all that I could in attempting to prompt senior leadership to take action against this behaviour.”
Revolting.
The Mike Tyson-Jake Paul fight was somewhere south of pathetic.
Made a lot of money though because mugs like me watched it!
The women’s title fight preceding it between Katie Taylor and Amanda Serrano was sensational, at least, but that won’t be how the night will be remembered.
Magic Johnson knows: “Just sad. I cut it off because I couldn’t watch anymore. It’s sad to see Mike Tyson like this because I went to every Tyson fight. This fight tonight was not great for boxing.”
Last week I was thinking that while Asafo Aumua quite rightly got a heap of plaudits for his round the park play and 88% line out success, the one he got wrong was an important attacking opportunity at an important junction of the game. Just as an out of form kicker will influence the captains call, a lineout that does not always function well at clutch moments will also.