Wallabies-25 Springboks-32

GIFT WRAPPED

I’m beginning to feel like I’m the kid in the story “The Emperor’s New Clothes” who actually points out he’s parading around in the nip.

All the headlines this morning talk about these “Unstoppable” Springboks and maybe I don’t know all THAT much about southern hemisphere rugby, but based on what I’ve seen this summer from down there, I just don’t see it.

Of course they outplayed the Lions and they’re four outta four in the Tri Nations with the trophy within their grasp, and you can’t blame them if their opponents keep handing them matches with poor preparation and seemingly unlimited unforced errors.

What we need to see is for them to come up against a side with a canny tactician at the helm, one who is well used to inspiring his charges to get the job done on the day.

I feel Smit & co will face just that very test on November 28 at Croke Park when they come up against Declan Kidney’s Ireland. What a marquee match up that will be. Grand Slam 6 Nations Champs against the (possibly also Grand Slam) Tri Nations Champs. THEN we’ll see just how good the Bokke really are.

If ever there was an indication that a home side was poorly prepared, we had it at the Subiaco Oval yesterday when not only did Richard Brown prove to be the wrong choice of kickoff receiver, but the Wallabies let through two absolutely unforgivable tries within the first ten minutes at home.

The third Springbok try, although created by du Preez’ high bomb of a kick, was a tad fortunate since even if Habana may not be at his World-Player-of-the-Year best, you wouldn’t bet against him to finish when it literally falls into his lap like that. And as for his second touch-down which sealed the bonus point, well, yet again the Boks backline were handed a gap you could drive a Sherman tank through.

I ask you…how many times did the commentators use the phrase “Australia lose the ball going forward”? If it wasn’t a knock-on it was a forward pass or even more senseless illegal play at the breakdown.

And as for the line-outs…well their plan to take quick throws to prevent the visitors spoiling them was all well and good, but that only works if you can guarantee your hooker will deliver a perfect toss every time.

The final score says it all. Despite all their errors, despite all their clear lack of the right kind of preparation, the Aussies STILL got close enough to snag the bonus point.

Maybe Deans should start next week with the same team that finished this one, but whatever he does, he needs to get his players’ heads to a place where they can withstand what we all know the visitors will throw at them and keep next weekend’s game close early on, or it will be déja-vu all over the place in Brisbane.

Leinster-8 LettinOn Irish-24

EDINBURGH HANGOVER?

God love me, I actually went and published Episode 1 of my vidcast tonight!!!

The one thing that it does to this blog is that it sets me up to repeat myself as I do a post on Leinster’s matches having already given my views on the vidcast.

So now you know what I thought of Leinster’s performance and why I call the visitors the LettinOn Irish, what more can I say?

Well, despite the result it was an enjoyable evening, and fair play to the visitors for sending such a strong squad…I seem to remember this time last year the corresponding match was against the Queensland Reds’ 4th string Junior Academy 3rd XV…and as always it brought back memories (most of them pleasant) of my days as a Blackrock College schoolboy cheering the Rock Senior Cup Team to one of their twenty million Leinster Senior Schools Cup truimphs.

Next week, it’s for real and we play the Scarlets who of course hail from Llanelli, a word that’s much more enjoyable to write than to say, but more of that in Episode 2 of the vidcast…

What’s New

Could this week POSSIBLY be moving any slower???

I am positively ITCHING to get to Donnybrook tomorrow night for Leinster’s pre-season warm-up match with the LettinOn Irish, so we can formally say once and for all the new season has begun.

Maybe I can kill more time by doing a blog post on what’s new for the coming campaign.

First, there’s the disappearance of most of the ELV’s, which is a good thing. My personal favourite was the banning of passing back into your own 22 to kick for touch and that has stayed on the statute books, so I for one am happy.

Also permission to collapse a maul has been denied again which must have every forward (particularly Paul O’Connell no doubt) rubbing their hands with glee. The rolling maul is back, folks…

To read the official text on all the new rules for the coming season, go here.

Now, to my biggest bugbear…the format of rugby’s various competitions.

I’ve said several times before I believe the structure of the European season is seriously up its own backside. One competition one week, another the next, then a big break for the Six Nations, the most important one of all, then back to the regional tournaments. It’s a model based on that of soccer, and as much as I also enjoy the “beautiful game”, it’s not so beautiful that the rugger heads need to copy it.

But who’s going to listen to dumb ol’ me on that subject? So instead, the Heineken Cup and Magners League have done a couple of tweaks, and given the circumstances, I’m in favour of both.

As happy as I obviously am about Leinster winning the Heineken Cup last May, the manner in which one must do so used to raise serious questions. Six pools of four, with the winners plus the “best two runners up” going through to the knockout phase. What this meant was that if a team lost their first two matches, they were effectively out of the competition, and would thus field weaker teams in their remaining pool matches to protect players for their domestic league.

This would give an unfair advantage to the teams who faced them in those later rounds. The ERC have attempted to close this loophole by awarding three extra second-placed slots from the HCup to the quarterfinals of the Challenge Cup, a tournament which gives you a place in the following year’s HCup, so definitely worth teams going for even if they lose their first two games.

Then there’s the new Magners League playoff method. I’ve seen rumblings of discontent about the ruggersphere regarding this, but personally, I’m all for it. Here’s how I worded my argument on Babbling Brook…

Maybe if the 18 ML games were played in 18 to 20-odd successive weeks, and not 35 as it stands, I'd prefer the league-only method, but with the way the Euro rugby calendar is structured, a top 4 playoff really is the only way to go to MAKE it fair IMHO.

Even two seasons ago when we won the competition proper there was a huge sense of anti-climax to the ML once the Six Nations was over. I used to call it the Meaningless League.

To have the Championship decider still to play for will only increase the profile of the league in the month of May. Besides, this increases the odds of yet another chance to beat The Munsters, and who wouldn't want that???

If I were to do a further tweak, I'd say the top 8 teams in the League qualify for the Heineken Cup regardless of country of origin. With two Italian clubs joining next season, it would surely mean that nobody could afford to "ignore" any round-robin games.

Now not all domestic format changes are to my liking. Take the way they’ve repackaged the second tier of England’s league and called it “The Championship”. Again I ask the question…WHY do they feel they have to imitate what soccer does????” Here is a good article on scrum.com outlining just how the new format works if you’re interested.

But what is the most significant new aspect to the upcoming campaign?

Why my vidcast, of course, which premieres this Saturday, all going well.

It’s going to be no longer than 10 minutes of a YouTube clip each week, with my opinion on Leinster or Ireland’s performance that weekend being the focal point, and a sketch or two here and there thrown in for good measure. See it as my way of taking things up a notch in an attempt to improve on what went right for Irish rugby last season, if that’s possible.

Again I say…BRING IT ON! STAT!!!

Don't worry - they've got us covered

I've heard a rumour or two that Setanta Ireland aren't showing the Scarlets v Leinster Magners League opener. According to a desktop application I use called Digiguide, we have nothing to worry about.

Wallabies-18 All Blacks-19

BACK IN BLACK

I reckon those Wallabies are too used to those boomerangs in their neck of the woods, since they threw this match away and clearly expected it to come back to them.

You don’t have to be too clued up on southern hemisphere rugby to know this was always going to be a contest between the two famous Number 10s on display.

“Deeen Caht-ah” was returning like the prodigal son on one side, while Matt Giteau was on the other keen to make him wish he’d stayed away.

Well whatever happened in the first 78 minutes of this contest, it was in the last two that we saw who came out on top.

Trailing by two, Carter kept up the All Blacks’ 2nd half territorial advantage by lobbing a kick perfectly into the Wallaby 22. Drew Mitchell collected it, and probably should have kicked or at least run it out of play to give his lads a breather. But he chose to run and his opponents could smell blood so after a desperate fling to his fellow winger Turner, his pack couldn’t catch up in time and a penalty was conceded in decent enough kicking range.

These are the situations where a place kicker can become a superstar. Think Johnny Sexton in Edinburgh. Not that Carter wasn’t already being paid the big bucks, but here was his chance to show us why. Reasonable distance, but the wrong side of the park for a left footer.

Well I don’t think he could have put the ball more down the middle between the sticks if he used a T-square.

Still, the match wasn’t over, and Giteau was to have his chance. The Wallabies recovered their own kickoff, then lost it, then sub scrum half Genia pinched it back again. This was pretty much how the open play had gone throughout the match.

They started to move it out the line, but I thought surely they’d set up the drop goal given the situation, and sure enough they ploughed through a few phases to bring it more central. Eventually the ball got to skipper George Smith who burrowed his way to a perfect spot under the All Black posts.

And the ball got fired back to Giteau, who was, of course, perfectly placed to slot over the winning drop goal…

Erm, only he wasn’t. For reasons only he will know, he was out wide and tried to continue the move to score a try. Eventually there was a knock on and there’s your ball game, there’s your Bledisloe Cup and there’s the Aussies knocked out of Trinations contention with their third defeat from three.

Although it has become an overworn cliché I’m reluctant to use, in this case it can definitely be said that the Wallabies really did “snatch defeat from the jaws of victory”.

As for the All Blacks, although of course they will be delighted to have gotten one over their rivals, I’d be very surprised if Graham Henry was happy with the way they did so.

Even the one try they did get was down to another mistake by Giteau, who attempted a kick for territory when it clearly wasn’t on. Sure, there followed some weaving by Sivivatu and a good finish by Nonu, not to mention the toughest (location-wise) kick of the night by Carter to convert, but the situation was handed to them on a green and gold platter.

And you have to put serious question marks against referee Jonathan Kaplan’s abilities to officiate the breakdown. New Zealand won the battle there in the second half, but only by Richie McCaw & co, shall we say, flirting with the wrong side of the law on more than one occassion.

All in all, it seems the biggest winners on the night weren’t even playing. John Smit and his Springboks had to be watching this thinking that if they can bring their impressive form so far in this tournament on the road over the coming weeks, their first TriNations championship since 2004 is there for the taking.

Meanwhile the Wallabies, who have been throwing this competition away since 2001 themselves, will have a long wait to see it come back to them based on this performance. Hopefully it’s one they can repeat in Croker in November because a full-strength Declan Kidney XV would be all over them.

One quick word about Rocky Elsom...he gave it his all on the night, but it appeared he could have been brought back a shade early. Still, as any Leinster fan will tell you, a half-fit Rocky is better than none at all...

Technorati Tags: Tri Nations rugby,Wallabies rugby,All Blacks rugby,Dan Carter,Matt Giteau

The Road Ahead

Curse you, Dean Richards!!!

I decided to take advantage of the week off in the TriNations schedule to take a break from this blog to gear up for the exciting new European season around the corner and when I decide to come back, when I should be focussing on Leinster’s and Ireland’s prospects, there you are front and center in the rugby news cycle, wrecking my buzz!

So I feel I’m forced to first get my views on the whole “Bloodgate” thing out of the way so I can get on with the important stuff.

For the most part, I applaud the ERC for what they’ve done. I believe the 12-month ban initially handed out to Tom Williams was merely a ploy to force him to weed out the real culprits, and that is exactly what happened, and his sentence was rightly reduced, and Richards rightly copped for the major punishment.

Should Harlequins have been kicked out of Europe for a certain length of time? Absolutely. BUT…I think it’s too late to do that at this stage. Fixtures have been set, tickets have been sold, arrangements have been made. The ERC should have acted sooner on a charge so serious and THIS is where they’ve been found wanting.

But at least this has exposed the general public to the fact that although the sport itself is considered “professional”, there are still those who organise the game who have a mindset harking back to the “good old” days of decisions being made in “smoke filled rooms” behind the scenes, with the protection of individual names and reputations taking precedent over the image of the game as a whole.

Hopefully the IRB will wise up to this and make the necessary adjustments to bring their disciplinary procedures into the professional era, and with their ruling to close the loophole surrounding uncontested scrums, it seems they’re beginning to do this.

And to those who feebly try to stick up for Richards & co by saying “why should they be singled out when there are so many others doing the same?”, I say simply this : stop talking bollocks.

You think this matter is messy the way it is? Imagine if the cheating had been uncovered and Quins had actually WON the game!!! Not only no victory in Edinburgh for my beloved Leinster, but no bumper payday for the city of Dublin for the semifinal at Croker!

OK. Enough of that. 400+ words are more than enough on that bloody mess (pun intended). What about the season ahead?

Well, as a Leinster and Ireland fan, I have only one question…HOW THE HELL CAN WE IMPROVE ON LAST SEASON???

Simple. Win Grand Slam, Heineken Cup AND Magners League this year ;-)

Hey – maybe I have my tongue SLIGHTLY in cheek, but who’s to say we can’t do it all again?

As far as Leinster goes (I’ll worry about the national team closer to the Autumn Internationals…), our future hinges on how we fill the gaps left by such names as Elsom, Contepomi and Whittaker.

Of course we already know what Johnny Sexton can do under pressure at Number 10 (SO glad I was proven wrong in my doubts about him from early last season) but it has to be said we have a big gaping hole at Number 6 and the popular opinion is that if we don’t fill it, we could struggle to get near the dizzy heights of Croker & Edinburgh last May.

Personally I’m pinning my hopes on the statement on the Leinster website that “there is one remaining vacancy in the playing squad". You’d like to think that means there’s a marquee name waiting in the wings to join us, wouldn’t you?

If there isn’t, it’s rotten PR by the organisation, that’s for sure! That’d be like handing a boy a present of a massive box in wrapping paper and a bow only for him to open it up and see it’s just a geometry set for school!

Hopefully there will be some kind of announcement before the pre-season friendly with the LettinOn Irish at Donnybrook, followed quickly by our Magners League opener (now they have the play-offs PLUS the prospect of two Italian teams I hereby vow never again to call it the ‘Meaningless League’) against another of our Heineken Cup opponents, the Scarlets.

It will all of course give me plenty to blog about, not to mention material for my vidcast which I’m hoping to premiere on August 29 with a little help from my family…more details next week.

You can safely say I’m itching to get stuck into the new campaign, so BRING IT ON!!!

Finally I’d like to thank both Leinster Rugby and Wicklow RFC for an excellent day out back on August 5 as they conducted their training session at the club. As you can see my kids really enjoyed themselves!

Springboks-29 Wallabies-17

MEN AGAINST BOYS

The hardest thing to believe about yesterday’s match in Cape Town is that Australia won the try count, two to one.

Some could even argue that in many ways they were the better team on the day.

But they just couldn’t do what it took to get the job done, and it’s not as if they didn’t get a good look at exactly what that was over the past two weeks!

Even this humble blogger back in Ireland could call the gameplan seven days ago…

We need to see how (Morné Steyn) fares against a team which has both discipline in the forwards and a backline with the confidence to go for linebreaks.

OK, let’s be fair for a second…early on, the Wallabies went for linebreaks. On a tricky away fixture, many would have kicked for goal given an early penalty right in front, but Australia chose for the territory, and were rewarded with a fine finish by Ashley-Cooper in the corner, followed up by an incredible conversion by Giteau.

But sadly, they couldn’t match that composure at the breakdown, and referee Alain Rolland’s hand was shooting up more often than a straight-A student’s in algebra class.

It’s quite simple – take all the Wallaby infractions out of this game and they’d have won it. And Giteau himself was one of the worst offenders. In many ways, their failure to keep their heads was worse than the All Blacks the week before since they had more time to watch and prepare.

While I appreciate it was a tough week for coach Deans, his charges let him down badly in the composure department.

Having said that, there was much to give the Aussies hope, not least the impressive showing given by young James O’Connor (and I MEAN young – he looks about ten!!!). It was his break that led to their second try…maybe he could’ve been more aware of how many team-mates were with him, but nonetheless it provided the springboard for Giteau to stretch over the line and touch down.

And much like the previous week, MSteyn was stroking the ball over the bar with relative ease, when given the opportunity, of course…I still believe this guy’s honeymoon period in a Springbok jersey will come to an end pretty soon, and only then will we see what he’s made of.

But even though this was a South Africa performance more like the 3rd Lions test than the first two, they were still miles ahead in experience and having been handed such a big halftime lead, were never going to give it up.

This leaves just one question regarding the remainder of this TriNations tournament – since the Bokke are now left with three away games, does it mean it’s still wide open?

I’d like to think that both Robbie Deans and Graham Henry have the savvy to regroup and make things uncomfortable for Matfield and co when they eventually travel down under.

But first the Bledisloe Cup rivals must play each other in a fortnight, and whoever loses that will have to make do with a role as spoilers the rest of the way.

Springboks-31 All Blacks-19

STEYN POWER?

I guess if I want to stand out as a rugger blogger I need to be controversial once and a while, but I assure you the opinion I’m about to express is genuine.

I’m not yet 100% convinced that Morne Steyn is a top-notch out-half.

How could I possibly say that when he’s just after breaking the TriNations record for individual points scoring with all thirty-one points in a virtual demolition of the All Blacks?

Well let’s have a look at how he amassed those points in Durban, shall we?

This was an inexplicable performance from the All Blacks. MSteyn (need the initial to distinguish from Francois) may have been new to the international stage, but surely New Zealanders would have been familiar with his kicking skills after he nailed eight goal kicks in the Super14 final? He was up against Stephen Donald that day as well!

And particularly with a finicky-yet-consistent ref like Nigel “Stay on your FEET!!!” Owens holding the whistle, they had to know that any kind of transgression at the breakdown was going to be punished when in his kicking range.

So what I’m trying to say is, although of course he had to use his considerable talents with the boot to score the points, the chances were handed to him on a plate by his opposition.

And as for his try, well that was even easier. For once Spies didn’t try to crash through the defence and instead laid on a perfect pass to his No10 who literally had to fall over the line.

There were a couple of occasions in open play that MSteyn looked a bit average. Cross-field kicking wasn’t exactly perfect, and he was also found wanting once or twice in the tackling department.

You could almost say he reminded me of a young Ronan O’Gara. How’s THAT for controversial???

We need to see how the Blue Bulls outhalf fares against a team which has both discipline in the forwards and a backline with the confidence to go for linebreaks.

Whatever way it turns out, with the Wallabies waiting in the wings and Graham Henry/ the Kiwi press certain to light a fire under their squad, it makes this a fascinating TriNations series and I can’t wait for the next instalment in Cape Town on Saturday!!!

Technorati Tags: Tri Nations rugby,South Africa rugby,Springboks,All Blacks rugby,Morne Steyn