The 'Tahs beat the Crusaders and other weird happenings
Warriors get me All Shook Up, and some terrific yarns from around the world.
With all the inevitability of a lineout drive, New Zealand’s Super Rugby clubs1 flew west to steamroller vastly inferior opposition.
They got the flying west part right. As for the rest - it hasn’t happened.
The Chiefs pipped the Reds; the Blues were fortunate to hold on against the fast-finishing Force; the Brumbies were too good for the up-and-down Hurricanes and, stop the press, the Waratahs beat an undermanned but still massively disappointing Crusaders in inner-west Sydney league heartland.
For the future of Super Rugby, this was in many ways a restorative weekend. While the rugby never rose to great heights (though the atmosphere did in Suva by all accounts where the Highlanders pipped Fijian Drua), there was a real sense of competition. There was the uncertainty required to keep people tuning in.
It wasn’t expected. This was meant to be the soft part of the draw where teams organised themselves for the everyone-gets-a-go playoffs.
The unflattering performances raises the question as to whether we’re seeing regression in this country’s rugby stocks or progress across the Tasman.
It is the peculiarly New Zealand condition to assume it’s the former. That’s how we’re built. The only reason we’ve started losing to Australian teams is because we’ve stuffed up.
It’s a narrow world view and in this case it’s only partly true.
Australia has made progress. While their clubs have generally had greater autonomy from the Wallabies set-up than New Zealand’s have had from the All Blacks, there is a sense that they’re moving their rugby in a similar direction. Reds coach Brad Thorn was even chided recently for not being a “team player”, which at the very least suggests he has pushed back on directives from head office. New Zealand Super Rugby coaches who have done that in the past have tended to find themselves working overseas shortly after.
They are also playing at home. It doesn’t matter what sport or what competition it is, home comforts count, but let’s be generous and say there’s been a significant performance uptick across the Tassie.
It is apparent, however, that New Zealand is not the talent factory that it once was. Take out a couple of first-choice players and these squads start to look threadbare.
That ability to just plug in and play athletes from the NPC or schoolboy level and expect them to perform is looking more and more like a myth.
Admittedly the Crusaders were hamstrung by having to manage the minutes of their All Blacks - nothing screams competition credibility gap quite like the enforced removal of its best players - but it was still weird to see the best-run club in the competition fielding players that, frankly, look substandard. With that in mind, coach Scott Robertson has said he will review everything following the stunning meltdown that included another red card.
While it was just one weekend - and three of the five New Zealand clubs won - it felt like something more significant. It felt like a teetering point, where you know things haven’t been quite right for a while but this could be the “a-ha” moment when the effects of hollowing out the base become not visible too all.
We’ve known for a long time that the professionalisation of schoolboy rugby has had a catastrophic effect on the numbers flowing into club rugby.
(See this thread.)
In turn, the NPC has been increasingly enfeebled.
The sheer talent of those entering fully professional rugby has, until now, been able to paper over the cracks at Super Rugby level, but if the pool is smaller and smaller, it stands to reason that eventually it will take its toll, that gaps will appear.
It might be a doomsday way of looking at one middling weekend; it might not be giving the Australian teams enough credit; but it also might be persuasive evidence that the system is not producing quality professional rugby players like it once was.
Thematically, it seemed fitting that the Black Ferns this morning lost the final of the Canada Sevens to Australia despite holding possession and leading by three points with five seconds to play.
Writing coherently on the Warriors at the moment is above my pay scale.
Honestly, where to start?
The best half of footy they’ve collectively played this season came in a game they lost 70-10 in (clue: it wasn’t the second half).
For three-quarters of their redemption match against the Raiders the best thing you could say about them was they hadn’t thrown in the towel.
That’s when I was compelled to dress up as Vegas-era Elvis2 and left the building to meet friends in the ghetto. My suspicious mind told me that with the Warriors trailing 12-20, they weren’t coming back.
I know what you’re thinking, don’t be cruel, but every time I invest my time into them I end up in a kind of heartbreak hotel.
Enough of that childish nonsense. As you’ve no doubt seen by now, they dragged themselves back into the match, kicked a last-minute penalty to go to golden point and turned it over to Shaun Johnson to brilliantly nudge them ahead.
Can’t help falling in love with them, again.
AROUND THE WORLD
This is a mesmerising story from cyclingtips.com, headlined: “Exposed by a Strava Kom: The Many Lives of a Fake Pro Cyclist.”
The blurb actually undersells the tale, but here it is anyway:
Australian cyclist Nick Clark built a loyal following at his Virginia bike shop, based in part on his national and international results and a lengthy professional career. There was just one problem: none of it was true.
This is the strange tale of the unravelling of a years-long deception – the ‘Catch Me If You Can’-like story of a man with a claimed past as a pro cyclist, a soldier, a CEO, a lawyer, an author, an academic, a hostage responder, and a weapons instructor.
These are the many lives of Nick Clark.
The Olympic movement attracts all the best people. Like John Coates, the vice-president of the International Olympic Committee and outgoing president of the Australian Olympic Committee, who admitted that “to a large extent”, Sydney was awarded the 2000 Games because it bought them.
That’s not the best Coates story of the week, however. It would be this one, where it is revealed that he drafted a gushing letter about himself to be sent under somebody else’s name to get himself on the Brisbane 2032 organising committee.
“I hope you and the OCLG [Olympic Candidature Leadership Group] will agree that John is uniquely qualified to continue to add value to the Brisbane [committee] following the conclusion of his membership as an independent IOC member at end 2024,” he wrote about himself on behalf of Matt Carroll the AOC chief executive.
“Indeed, it is hard to think of anyone better qualified in the world of sport. Accordingly, you and the OCLG are requested to include a position for AOC honorary life president on the [Brisbane 2032 organising committee] commencing on the conclusion of his membership as an independent IOC member.”
I’m in no way uniquely qualified to assert this: the IOC attracts some shameless folk.
PIC OF THE WEEKEND
THIS WEEK
I’ll be back with at least one midweek offering to paying subscribers and there’ll be the usual Week That Was and Weekend That Will Be on Friday. In the meantime, keep an eye on Ronnie ‘The Rocket’ O’Sullivan overnight as he attempts to join Stephen Hendry as the only seven-time snooker world champions of the open era. It’s been classic O’Sullivan so far, dominating Judd Trump 12-5, arguing with the referee… and pulling out this to win the fourth frame.
After 26 years of calling the country’s Super Rugby teams ‘franchises”, I’ve finally caved to calling them “clubs”. I’m unconvinced about it but understand that if New Zealand want to be involved in an inevitable world club league concept, they need to change the perception of their inorganically created professional franchises teams.
Embarrassingly, this is actually true.
