Back on track

Super Rugby Aotearoa: Round 8

Apr 21, 2021

Welcome to this week’s edition of The Tip-On!

If you want to listen to 2022 Rugby World Cup Tournament Director Michelle Hooper speak to Ashley Stanley of LockerRoom about the rescheduling of next year’s competition in New Zealand, you can listen to their recent interview here.

All in-game data per ESPNScrum unless otherwise stated.

Secret sauce

Tony Brown loves an underdog.

The Highlanders head coach is well aware that his franchise operates at a resource deficit relative to the other teams in Super Rugby Aotearoa, but appears to relish the freedom that affords him to innovate in search of winning solutions.

That resource deficit was clear at times against the Blues at Forsyth Barr Stadium last Friday. Leon MacDonald’s team controlled the running game both with and without the ball, making 454 metres with ball in hand (on 125 carries) compared to the Highlanders’ 327m (105 carries) despite spending 17 minutes of the game with fewer players on the field than their opponents.

However, Brown’s Highlanders were still able to come away with a 6-point victory — thanks in large part to the effectiveness of their set-piece attack. As he said himself after the game:

"If you're scoring from first phase, from lineouts, the game becomes a lot easier.”

First, they took almost immediate advantage of Hoskins Sotutu’s yellow card to dot down after a centre-field scrum in the 25th minute.

Then, with the clock in the red at the end of the first half, they won a penalty at the defensive breakdown a few metres outside their own 22. Rather than opting for a welcome breather and regrouping for the second period, they kicked the ball to touch to set up one last attacking platform — although Mitch Hunt was rather fortunate that his poorly struck line kick bounced into touch inside the 22 rather than staying infield.

But, if the touch-finder was speculative, the sequence that followed was surgical. After dummying a maul set-up, Aaron Smith, Ash Dixon and Ngatungane Punivai were able to isolate Blues scrum-half Jonathan Ruru in an unwinnable situation at the tail of the lineout. Smith (as he tends to do) picked the right option, sending winger Punivai through a hole and stealing back a half-time lead for the home side.

This second score in particular was evidence of Brown’s desire to wring every last drop out of a playing group that — as he frequently likes to remind the media — contains only 2 (current) All Blacks in action: being sure to have a cut every time an opportunity comes your way, and coming up with inventive and unpredictable sequences to allow you to make the most out of them.

While it doesn’t all happen on first phase, taking advantage of scrums and lineouts in favourable attacking positions has been a constant feature of the Highlanders’ performances this year (remember the try that opened their season?) — and a crucial factor in their ability to punch above their weight. (Despite sitting fourth in the table, they have the third-best points difference per 80 minutes played behind only the Crusaders and the Blues.)

As this chart shows, only the competition-leading Crusaders have come close to matching their effectiveness on strikes from set-piece platforms this year:

The Crusaders and Blues remain fundamentally the strongest rugby teams in New Zealand — a succession of single-score losses away from home doesn’t change that — and should both do well against Australian opposition in the upcoming Trans-Tasman competition.

Of the other 3 franchises, however, with their intelligent and efficient approach to the game the Highlanders may be in the best position to push the top teams from across the ditch — even if the Chiefs do end up making the Super Rugby Aotearoa final ahead of them.

Brad Thorn’s exciting young Reds side are set to travel across to Dunedin to play under the roof on Friday 14th May in what will be a 6-day turnaround after hosting the Super Rugby AU final; in contrast, the home team (assuming they don’t finish in the top 2) will have a fortnight without a game beforehand.

With that disparity in preparation time, the Highlanders’ best chance of an upset might come in their first game of the new competition — and you can bet that Brown and his coaching staff will spend those weeks drawing up a few specials to make sure they tilt the odds as far as they can in their own favour.

Foreign fields

Last weekend, there were 64 Kiwis playing in top-level competition overseas:

Loose threads

In case you missed it on Twitter this week

Fehi Fineanganofo putting on some footwork during the recent All Blacks Sevens trial
Young tight forwards Josh Lord and Soane Vikena displaying their ball-playing ability during the Super Rugby Aotearoa Under 20s tournament
The Blues U20 side attacking cleverly from line-out platforms — and mimicking one of the phase-play strategies of their senior counterparts
An examination of an interesting defensive trend in last year’s Tri Nations

Quick hits

After last week’s announcement of conditional Super Rugby licences for Moana Pasifika and the Fijian Drua, there has been plenty of additional reporting on the matter in the last 7 days. Liam Napier provided a good summary of where things stand for ESPN:
“As always, forming the financial backbone remains the final piece of the puzzle. Moana Pasifika and the Fijian Drua must raise around $[NZ]9-10 million to fund their respective teams annually - $5-6 million of which will be spent on coaching, management and players. World Rugby has committed $2.3m in annual funding, guaranteed for an initial three-years, while the teams will split an expected $5m in broadcast revenue.”
Meanwhile, for the Sydney Morning Herald Paul Cully shed some light on Rugby Australia’s lack of involvement in the administrative process:
“They have been happy to let the Kiwis run this process - provided they have an oversight role - and there is a sense in Australia that the potential for cannibalisation of talent, sponsors, and even support among the New Zealand Super Rugby franchises is something they are quietly happy to play out on the other side of the Tasman…It’s true that the Kiwis have been running the show, and perhaps RA would have liked more say into the criteria for the new teams, but the business plans of Moana Pasifika and [Fijian] Drua have been shared across the ditch.”
In an interview with Gregor Paul for The XV, New Zealand Rugby chief executive Mark Robinson also signalled the union’s intention to assist World Rugby in building out more robust professional rugby infrastructure for Fiji, Samoa and Tonga that goes beyond this competition:
“What this does offer is the assembly of two teams, in regular, high-level competition where they get all the high-level preparation exposure to high performance conditions so that when they transition into international rugby they are hopefully better prepared. But it will take more than just Super Rugby to build our broader vision for what the international game can be like for those emerging nations. We haven’t really ever stopped work at looking at competition models and calendars that provide pathways for those emerging teams and that won’t stop. I talked to Alan Gilpin [head of World Rugby] about this this morning. They have put some revenue towards making this happen and are committed to this being a success and they know they have to work harder at providing those opportunities.
For the NZ Herald, Napier also had some more details on the possible shape of the All Blacks’ test schedule for 2021. First of all, in the July window:
The All Blacks are due to host Italy and Vern Cotter's Fiji (one test) in July but if the Italians don't make the trip, NZ Rugby may opt to double the tests against Fiji and possibly fall back on another North versus South fixture to fill the void.
There are then a couple of different options for running the Rugby Championship between August and October, before the possibility of an elongated end-of-year tour with additional tests against Wales and the USA outside the November window. However, there is a possibility that the USA fixture will be contested by the All Blacks XV team announced by NZR last March.
The provinces are set to vote on NZR’s proposed investment deal with Silver Lake at the national union’s AGM on Thursday 29th April, and the 12 Heartland provinces have made their intentions clear. Their chair, Wanganui Rugby Football Union CEO Bridget Belsham, told Stuff last week:
“We just felt we are a couple of weeks out from the AGM and we know there is a mediation that is happening at the moment. We just felt it was a good time for us to go out and re-emphasise the importance of the community game in this deal, and the future of rugby. We would be concerned if [the Silver Lake deal] didn’t go through. We see some huge benefits for the community game. That is why we put the release out.’’
For better or worse, private equity investment looks like it will be an unavoidable necessity for professional unions going forward: Sky News in the UK reported yesterday that World Rugby themselves may look to sell off a stake in the commercial rights to their tournaments, including the men’s and women’s Rugby World Cups. That report also noted that CVC — who hold minority stakes in the Pro14, Premiership and Six Nations — are “understood to have bid against Silver Lake during the All Blacks [investment] process”.
The Super Rugby Aotearoa Under 20s tournament concluded in Taupō at the weekend, and recently appointed New Zealand U20s head coach Tabai Matson was pleased with what he saw. The new competition was the first step in something of a revamp by NZR of their age-grade pathways in the men’s game, and Head of High Performance Mike Anthony spoke to Tom Vinicombe of The XV about New Zealand’s relatively poor performances at U20 level in recent years and how they conceive of its role in their overall development system:
“There’s been a real development focus for us whereas if the programme was purely about winning a tournament, it would look quite different. If you geared it up to win a tournament you would take the team touring, you would play Northern Hemisphere teams and get exposed to that physicality and set-piece mentality that we do in tournaments, but we keep the programme with a wide base early on.”
Cricket website ESPNcricinfo took the step of eliminating unnecessarily exclusionary references to gender in the language they use this week, and it’s a step that rugby media would do well to follow. There’s no reason why a lineout set-up with 7 players involved has to be a ‘7-man’ rather than a ‘7-player’ lineout, for instance; as editor-in-chief Sambit Bal said:
Gender equality as an ideal is an objective that we will struggle for generations to achieve, but gender neutrality in language is easily achievable.
As noted above, there are a number of fundamental aspects of their game that the Blues should be pleased with this season. Despite falling to third in the table, they’ve continued to dominate the running game — making 55.5% of all of the metres made in their matches so far, on only 50.5% of the carries. What’s interesting is the change in strategy from last season: in contrast to the kick-heavy approach they adopted in Super Rugby Aotearoa 2020 (when they made 55.7% of all kicks in play), they have made only 47.4% of kicks in their matches in 2021 — the lowest proportion in the competition.
In contrast to their northern neighbours, the Chiefs are in better shape in the standings than on the field. Even with a 4W-0D-2L record on the board, they still have a negative overall points difference: their mark of -4.1 per 80 minutes is better only than the Hurricanes (-6.7). For supporters of the team, it’ll be positive in the long term that the playing and coaching staff aren’t being swayed too much by a few victories that could have gone either way. Brad Weber noted after the game that the Crusaders were some distance from full strength at the weekend, while assistant coach Neil Barnes was similarly circumspect:
"They were one-point losses last year, they're one-point wins this year. Not a lot's changed in what we're doing. We've got ourselves in a position now where we've got a chance at being in a final, and that's what you play rugby for. We're excited about that, but we also know we've got a lot of improvement to do if we want to win it.”
Barnes — who’s in charge of the Chiefs forwards — will probably have cracked a smile at the prospect of welcoming Atu Moli back into the fold, however; the All Blacks prop returned to rugby after over a year out for Varsity in the Waikato Premiership A on Saturday.
To no one’s surprise, the Crusaders remain the best-performing team in New Zealand by average points difference per game — even after their recent wobbles. It is interesting, however, to look at how their performances by that metric have changed since 2020: after scoring 31.3 points per game and conceding 21.1 for an average margin of +10.1 per 80 minutes in last year’s edition of Super Rugby Aotearoa, they have regressed slightly on both sides of the ball this season. Their average scoreline in 7 games of Super Rugby Aotearoa so far this year is 29.7-22.7 (+7.0 points per 80) — still comfortably out in front, but with the gap between them and the other Kiwi sides continuing to narrow.
The Highlanders sealed their victory over the Blues by turning the visitors over at the defensive breakdown, and it was a fitting way to close out their third win of the season. The Dunedin franchise have turned over ball at 6.9% of their defensive rucks this season, while the other 4 Kiwi sides have collectively managed turnovers at a rate of 4.8%. 21 separate players have won turnovers for the team per SANZAAR data (NB: not only ruck turnovers counted), and openside flanker Billy Harmon leads the way with 8 in 447 minutes played.
The Hurricanes resigned Dane Coles through to 2023 on Sunday, a couple of months after the test hooker hinted at possibly retiring at the end of 2021. However, whether or not TJ Perenara will be in Wellington with him next year remains an open question: rumours abound that the Sydney Roosters have approached him about playing hooker for them in the NRL. Coles is famously a massive league fan himself, and even he sounded excited about the prospect of his former teammate switching codes:
“The guy is made for league, he’s tough, he’s fit, he’s skilful…as much as I’d love to see him back in rugby if it’s a six-month gig for the Roosters, I don’t know if many of those will come in your lifetime. I haven’t spoken to him, but it’s up to him and his family, but he’d be awesome. He’s real competitive, he’s got a bit of niggle in him so he’d definitely suit the league style.”
However, it’s worth emphasising that Hurricanes chief executive Avan Lee didn't sound too surprised or concerned when the news broke last Thursday:
“You’re never confident in these conversations because you just don’t know what’s driving someone at this particular time, but I’m pretty confident – I know what we need to do to get TJ home but it doesn’t surprise me there might be interest from other sports or at least rugby league. He loves rugby league – it’s not really a surprise, when you’ve been in and around professional rugby for a while you know it’s a pretty fluid process. There’s always other teams involved, if there’s a rugby league team involved well that’s just another team.”
Lee certainly knows all about the fluidity of possible player movement between codes: as well as bringing Ngani Laumape back to union from the Warriors, the franchise have been keeping tabs on former Wellington College 1st XV star Nelson Asofa-Solomona — currently of the Melbourne Storm — for a number of years.