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Wayne Smith, Rugby union editor | April 13, 2009
Article from: The Australian
THE rugby gods sure drove a hard bargain. Yes, they delivered the win everyone had prayed for, an emotional Brumbies triumph over the Stormers, but at the hefty price of the three other Australian teams losing.
No real damage done to the Reds, whose season was already shot, but the Western Force's after-the-bell loss to the Hurricanes was gut-wrenchingly cruel and costly. As for the Waratahs, who knows what will come of being impaled by the Bulls?
But after failing to heed the warning signs all those times they won ugly, perhaps now, after losing ugly, they will finally realise that when they find themselves in the vice of their own squeeze tactics, they need something to fall back on - like the ability to surge out of their own half by playing rugby.
Doing deals with deities is always a risky business but, all things considered, the Brumbies' win was worth the cost. It would have been simply too awful if, at the end of the worst week any Super rugby team has experienced, the Brumbies had been beaten.
The Brumbies went to great lengths to honour Shawn Mackay at Canberra Stadium on Saturday night, with a video tribute showing on the scoreboard during the pause for applause, his name embroidered on to the match jerseys and players on both sides wearing black armbands.
But Shawn's father, John Mackay, had requested only one thing in his son's memory - a Brumbies win. It was a tough ask against a desperate opponent but somehow the ACT players squeezed the last drops from their severely depleted emotional reserves to make it happen.
Not surprisingly, there was little animation from them after the final whistle. Rarely has a winning team looked so drained, so utterly spent.
There was no happy ending but there was at least a win. And an important promise had been fulfilled. Over in Invercargill, the Reds' promise yet again was left unfulfilled, even if their performance against the Highlanders was one of their more commendable of the season.
And yes, Queensland again had legitimate cause to complain about the match officiating which, even by the disgracefully inconsistent standards of the Super 14 generally, was appalling.
How strange that the first Highlanders try could be awarded when there was no visible evidence, none whatsoever, of the ball being grounded over the tryline, yet that one of the most blatant instances of all-the-ball interference imaginable could go unpunished by referee Craig Joubert in the build-up to their second.
It beggars belief that Jonathan Kaplan should award the Waratahs a penalty for an inconsequential jersey tug on Kurtley Beale and that Stu Dickinson should sin-bin Hurricanes prop Neemia Tialata for holding back Junior Pelesasa in the Force match on Friday night, yet Joubert should ignore Highlanders flanker Adam Soakai wrapping Reds counterpart Daniel Braid in a bearhug to prevent him from making a critical tackle.
With his path cleared before him, Highlanders five-eighth Daniel Bowden waltzed through the undefended gap to trigger the 60m breakout that led to winger Kenny Lynn's try. What should have been a full-arm penalty and probably a 15-10 lead to the Reds became instead 17-12 to the Highlanders. Understandably, in the contest of a 24-19 defeat, Reds coach Phil Mooney was more than a little peeved.
Still, those are the kinds of decisions that tend to run against sides that referees expect to lose. Only the Reds can change referees' perceptions of them and that won't happen until they learn some patience.
Unless Queensland scores pretty much as it did from the kick-off on Saturday, from one or two phases, then it virtually has no chance because the longer the Reds attack, the closer they come to their next idiotic pass.
What came to pass at Subiaco Oval on Good Friday doesn't bear thinking about - two tries conceded in the final four minutes of play to lose the unlosable match. Small wonder Drew Mitchell was seen beating the ground with his fists as Hurricanes fullback Cory Jane crossed in the 81st minute to clinch an astonishing victory, although Mitchell might more productively have vented his rage by giving himself an uppercut instead. He, after all, was the man who missed the last tackle.
Until everything went pearshaped right at the death, this had been a peach of a performance from the Force against the side that most critics had considered the pick of the crop just a few weeks ago. They had dominated at the breakdown, which is where the Hurricanes fancy themselves, they had played most of the rugby and they had defended stoutly.
But when it counted the most, the Force had Richard Brown on the sideline and David Pocock in Disneyland and simply couldn't get the ball off the Canes. The head says "season over" for the Perth team but the heart says there still can be life if they take down the Tahs on Saturday in Sydney.
The Force, it should be remembered, are two from two in derbies this season, corralling the Brumbies in Canberra and reducing the Reds to rubble in Perth. It won't be much of a consolation if it again misses the play-offs, but still a clean sweep of the Australian "conference" would be something for them to salvage from a trouble-plagued season.
As for the Tahs, they're either still in joint second place on the ladder or desperately clinging to fourth, depending on which way you lean in the half-full, half-empty debate. Certainly, losing to the Bulls complicates things and leaves them eyeing their three matches in South Africa, against the Cheetahs, Sharks and Lions, with rising trepidation. But as long as they don't draw Kaplan for any of their games, they should still figure in the play-offs.
For a side that has won 28 Super 14 matches, lost 21 and drawn one, it's certainly an eye-opening stat that the Tahs are, what, one win from 16 matches under Kaplan? Not that his refereeing directly cost them the match against the Bulls but it was evident early on the Waratahs were fretting over his decisions.
That's not the mindset to take into a must-win match. Still, they'd better get their heads together
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au...-32102,00.html
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, his heart just doesn't seem to be in it (sorry Robyn)
