In the air
Farah Palmer Cup: Round 4; Mitre 10 Cup: Round 3
Welcome to this week’s edition of The Tip-On!
If you want to watch 19-year-old Wellington back Ruben Love — who played international cricket for New Zealand U19 in 2019, like Taranaki loose forward Kaylum Boshier a year before him — finish acrobatically in the corner on NPC debut, you can find a clip of his try here.
All in-game data per ESPNScrum unless otherwise stated.
Eye of the beholder
After a 4-turnover performance in Taranaki’s Shield-claiming win over Canterbury in Week 2 of the Mitre 10 Cup, it’s fair to say that Lachlan Boshier hype once more approached the levels of early 2020.
It was a time when COVID-19 was far from the immediate thoughts of most New Zealanders, Boshier’s Chiefs were still winning games for fun and the flanker was regularly stealing back possession for his team multiple times a game:
As the chart above shows, Boshier was truly unparalleled over the ball at the defensive breakdown from January to March; then, despite not featuring as prominently in the headlines during Super Rugby Aotearoa, he did enough over the course of the domestic tournament to warrant selection for the star-studded Steinlager North v South match.
This, it was widely assumed, was the flanker’s first step on the path towards a well-deserved All Blacks call-up — but, since that point in time, things have not gone according to plan for the New Plymouth native. Even with Sam Cane out injured, Boshier missed out on a spot in the North’s matchday 23 at Sky Stadium, and subsequently wasn’t included in the All Blacks’ initial 35-man squad for 2020 which was named the day after the inter-island game.
While it’s straightforward enough for the rugby media to simply shake their heads and denounce his non-selection as a “staggering omission”, the disconnect between Ian Foster’s choice to leave Boshier out and the plaudits his performances have (rightly) received throughout the year is worth exploring in more detail.
Primarily, the fact that those in the high-performance departments of national unions have an enormous information advantage over even the most avid rugby-watchers and journalists is seldom noted in such discussions. Analysing publicly available data on top of watching games and taking notes can help paint pictures of certain parts of a player’s game — Boshier’s remarkable fetching ability, for instance, or the inability of New Zealand’s up-and-coming opensides to match the ball-carrying workload shouldered by Sam Cane and Ardie Savea — but this additional detail still leaves you far short of a complete understanding of an individual’s ability to perform at the top level of professional rugby.
In contrast, Foster and his fellow selectors will have access to much more granular (and more qualitative) data to aid them in making these decisions. For a player in Boshier’s position — where effective attacking cleanout work and powerful tackling are arguably the key skills on either side of the ball — this proprietary data will be indispensable: those of us in the public remain (mostly) in the dark when it comes to assessing the number and quality of an individual’s ruck contributions, or their ability to dominate the tackle line in defence.
From observing Boshier’s play at Super Rugby level over a number of seasons, the eye test certainly suggests that he is not a dominant tackler in the mould of his Chiefs teammate Cane; nor, anecdotally, does he appear to win the shoulder battle at the breakdown as often or as comprehensively as the new All Blacks captain.
Given this selection of evidence and the ball-carrying data referenced above (which is backed up by reporting from the All Blacks camp that “the main area for Boshier to improve is increasing his ball-carrying game and becoming a more physical threat on attack”), it is possible to build a perfectly valid line of reasoning for his absence from the first squad of a head coach who wants players “who are outstanding at their core job”.
It’s not as emotive a response as a tirade against know-nothing coaches and selectors, but working through such a process in response to contentious issues will almost always lead to a more interesting discussion about the topic at hand — and it starts with acknowledging the information deficit between those of us on the outside of the professional game, and those who do this for a living.
Nothing to behold
Meanwhile, in the women’s game, it is lamentable that fans and public analysts remain far away from being able to scrutinise this sort of selection decision in anything approaching the same level of detail.
While RUGBY.com.au has been presenting match and player data from the country’s Super W competition prominently on its website since 2018, the Farah Palmer Cup is still poorly served by New Zealand Rugby in this regard. Despite the fact that equivalent data is clearly being collected and used for certain purposes in the media, statistics for matches in this year’s competition are currently blank inside the official All Blacks app:
Data availability — even within top-level teams — is a persistent problem across women’s sport; however, given that NZR clearly already has a collection process in place for the FPC, the refusal to collate it for public consumption is particularly frustrating.
There’s no reason that, by the time next year’s World Cup rolls around, we couldn’t be in a position to debate the respective merits of Tiana Davison and Les Elder just as easily as we can those of Boshier and Cane.
Level playing field
It’s difficult to imagine Aaron Smith having to worry about being made redundant by NZR a year out from a flagship global tournament, but that was the situation World-Cup-winning scrum-half Kendra Cocksedge found herself earlier this year after her role with the union as a women’s rugby development manager — a financial necessity, given the Black Ferns’ current contracting structure — came under threat as a consequence of the impact of COVID-19.
During New Zealand’s Mental Health Awareness Week, the former Kelvin R Tremain Memorial Player of the Year told RNZ of the emotional toll that the possibility took on her:
The article’s framing of this sequence of events as something that “made [her] even stronger” obscures the fact that it’s not a position an elite athlete should ever be in the first place, and the story serves as a reminder of the barriers that sportswomen continue to be faced with as they try and perform at the top level.
(Another issue which has been “supercharged” by the pandemic is the disproportionate burden of housework which tends to be borne by women: in a separate interview this week, Cocksedge’s provincial teammate Te Rauoriwa Gapper acknowledged that Canterbury training is effectively a “break” from the responsibilities of parenting for her.)
In the family
Strong sibling combinations have long been a feature of Kiwi rugby, but things have gone to a new level over the last few weeks.
Across the teams named for Rounds 1, 2 and 3 of the NPC and 1, 2, 3 and 4 of the FPC, 29 pairs (and 1 trio) of siblings have both (or all) seen top-level provincial action — and a further 8 players who have made 2020 appearances have a brother or sister in an NPC or FPC squad who’s not yet been on the field.
While Scott’s ongoing injury issues mean that Taranaki haven’t been able to call on all of the Barretts in their squad, the Mikaele-Tu’u family have had 3 members togging out across both competitions: Liana for Auckland, Marino for Hawke’s Bay and his twin brother Antonio off the bench for North Harbour.
15 of the other 37 sets of siblings also split their allegiances between different provinces, but the majority — like Canterbury’s Bremner sisters, Chelsea and Alana — run out in the same colours.
Pass of the week
Northland came storming back in the second half to beat a fancied Counties Manukau side in Pukekohe on Sunday, with the pick of their tries coming as a result of the excellent skills of their spine of experienced internationals.
From a scrum on the right-hand side of the pitch inside the Counties half, scrum-half Tyla Nathan-Wong feeds and hooker Te Kura Ngata-Aerengamate provides a quick strike. Loose forward Aroha Savage controls the ball adeptly the base of the scrum, allowing Nathan-Wong time to shield the ball from her opposite number Arihiana Marino-Tauhinu with her body and release an accurate wide pass to fly-half Victoria Subritzky-Nafatali.
Subritzky-Nafatali — who assisted a nice first-half score with a crossfield kick from first receiver — fizzes a beauty of a double-miss across the face of the Counties midfield, catching outside centre Mele Hufanga narrow and putting Portia Woodman into space.
Woodman — spotting that her erstwhile All Blacks Sevens teammate Ruby Tui, on the right wing, is the key defender to commit — straightens immediately and times her pass to Stacey Tupe to perfection, releasing the ball once Tui has turned her shoulders inward:
Tupe and Tyler Nankivell — who bagged 4 tries in total on the day — did the rest, and the Kauri were on their way to a memorable victory.
Loose threads
In case you missed it on Twitter this week
Andrew Makalio causing havoc in midfield for the Tasman Mako
An innovative exit play from the Bay of Plenty Steamers
Blair Baxter’s Canterbury nicely adapting an increasingly common multiphase attack shape in their 72-15 win over the Hawke’s Bay Tui
Quick hits
In a piece with Gregor Paul for The XV, Pacific Rugby Players chief executive Aayden Clarke laid out the long-term vision of his organisation for the form that Pasifika involvement in Super Rugby should take:
However, Brent Impey revealed today that there will be no expansion franchises entering the Kiwi competition in 2021, but are “still committed” to getting Pasifika representation in Super Rugby. (4 candidates have been shortlisted for 2022 entry, he told Stuff.)
Crusaders head coach Scott Robertson confirmed his plan to remain in New Zealand for at least another few years in an interview with Stuff:
Richard Knowler also reported that his “lack of experience coaching outside New Zealand” was an important factor in his application for the All Blacks head coach role being unsuccessful.
A number of individuals with experience of the Australian men’s sevens programme — Michael O’Connor, Nick Phipps and Stephen Hoiles —shed light on why they think the skills learned in the shorter format are transferable to 15-a-side rugby, in an interesting piece by Christy Doran for The XV. The entire article is worth reading, but particularly interesting are Phipps’ comments on how the All Blacks Sevens have managed their squads to enable talented young players to grow within the system as freely as possible:
Read this interview with legendary point guard Sue Bird — who “has logged the most career minutes, games and assists of any W.N.B.A. player” — ahead of Game 1 of the league’s Finals series on Friday, as the Seattle Storm prepare to try and reclaim the title they gave up last year.
Finally, be sure to take a look at the excellent FPC content on LockerRoom this week: Rikki Swannell on a number of young Dutch players —Lisa Egberts, Lynn Koelman and Esra van Ramele — establishing themselves in provincial rugby in New Zealand, and Ashley Stanley on some of the tournament’s rising stars.