Welcome to this week’s edition of The Tip-On!
If you want to hear about Stacey Fluhler’s relationship to te Reo Māori, you can watch an interview with the Waikato and Black Ferns Sevens star — who has recently worked on a children’s book as part of a series profiling “Māori and Pasifika women who have overcome challenges in their lives” and presented a TV show on Māori Television — here.
All in-game data per ESPNScrum unless otherwise stated.
A win and a prayer
Dave Rennie’s Wallabies touch down in New Zealand for the first time this week, ahead of Bledisloe Cup tests in Wellington (on 11th October) and Auckland (18th).
After a successful conclusion to the Super Rugby AU competition, a positive outcome in the Rugby Championship hosting stakes and an influx of exciting new talent into the test squad, those around the sport in Australia are feeling considerably more bullish about Rennie’s prospects than they were just a few months ago.
Behind the chatter, however, are the fundamentals that the new head coach will have to reckon with immediately: in basic terms, Australia will be trying — away from home — to overcome a side that outscored them by 48 points to 13 in 109 minutes of 15-versus-15 play last year, while trying to adapt to their new coach’s tactical approach and integrate 16 new caps into their playing group.
(For reference, former assistant coach Ian Foster could quite feasibly select 13 of the All Blacks’ starting 15 from Eden Park last August in the same positions in a couple of weeks’ time. Only 8 of Australia’s starting 15 that day are in Rennie’s 44-man squad — and 3 of them have spent a lot of 2020 in different positions: Lukhan Salakia-Loto, who started at 6, in the second row; James O’Connor, who started at 13, at fly-half; and Reece Hodge, who started at 14, in the midfield and at fullback.)
While it is a verifiable fact that a number of those new caps beat a team in black last May, Harry Wilson, Noah Lolesio et al. won’t be facing up against the likes of Kianu Kereru-Symes, Kaylum Boshier, Dallas McLeod and Cole Forbes at Sky Stadium — in their places will be Dane Coles (or Codie Taylor), Ardie Savea (or Hoskins Sotutu), Jack Goodhue (or Anton Lienert-Brown) and Jordie Barrett (or Beauden Barrett, or Damian McKenzie or Will Jordan).
And while it is possible that those players “harbour no mental scars” of defeats to New Zealand — although Gus Bell, Will Harrison, Trevor Hosea, Noah Lolesio, Jordan Petaia and Harry Wilson were all part of the Australian Schools squad beaten 34-11 by their Kiwi counterparts in 2017 — it is inarguable that the magnitude of any hypothetical positive effect on performance would be dwarfed by the impact of the step-up in quality and physicality of play from age-grade to test level.
None of this is to say that the Wallabies are not in a positive position to build for the future — there are clearly a number of generational talents in their 2020 cohort, and in Brad Thorn’s Reds project they have a young team whose cohesion and familiarity they can draw from and build upon for years to come — but simply that it is unreasonable to expect meaningful success in the short term.
That said, Rennie should be able to make immediate improvements just by adopting a gameplan that is actually suitable for modern test rugby. To get a sense of how much of an outlier Michael Cheika’s run-first, -second and -third strategy was at last year’s World Cup, consider this chart:
In their fixtures against Tier 1 teams, the Wallabies were outkicked by approximately 300 metres per 80 minutes — almost twice as much of a deficit as Japan, the second-worst team by this measure, and enough of a difference to comfortably outweigh their advantage in the running game.
Rennie is certainly another Kiwi that ‘loves to play footy’ — and references to “tactical intransigence” and a style that is “too predictable and too loose” by Stuart Hogg in a recent interview may give Australian fans a familiar feeling of dread — but he has signalled since arriving in the country that he is “someone who recognises the importance of having a balanced game-plan”. Moreover, there is recent evidence to support this desire for balance: in the pool stage of the 2019-20 Champions Cup, Rennie’s Glasgow progressed the ball slightly less than the average team with the boot — 582.5m per game, compared to a mark of 600.0m — but more than their opponents, who averaged only 544.0m per game.
An issue with deeper roots is the team's predilection for providing the All Blacks with prime opportunities to attack from turnover ball. 33 (or 14.4%) of New Zealand's 229 tries against Tier 1 opposition in the last World Cup cycle were zero-phase scores directly from the opposition turning over possession to them; looking at scores only against Australia, however, this proportion increases to 21.1% (or 12 of 57).
The early stages of Saturday’s Super Rugby AU final between the Reds and Brumbies — for all the toil and physical application on display — was rather strewn with errors, and based on the data for the whole competition Rennie will surely be worried about whether his young team will be able to last for 80 minutes at test level without providing the All Blacks’ lethal finishers with enough opportunities to take them clear:
Perth and the Gold Coast are nice memories for fans to have, but the reality is that there is not yet a consistent pattern of strong performance by Australian sides against New Zealanders at the elite levels of the men’s game. In Dave Rennie and his exciting young squad, some of the pieces of the puzzle are there — but excellent test rugby teams aren’t assembled out of fleeting moments and promising youngsters. If the Wallabies’ new head coach is able to build the team’s cohesion, adjust its tactical approach and reduce its error rate, then he will go some distance towards regaining the Bledisloe Cup — but 2020 looks to be too early to expect Australia to truly challenge a more settled All Blacks side over a 4-game series.
Usual suspects
After 3 rounds of Farah Palmer Cup play, there are 2 unbeaten teams in each of the North and South Pools: Counties Manukau (2W-0D-0L) and Waikato (3-0-0) in the former, and Canterbury and Wellington (both 2-0-0) in the latter.
After fighting off Auckland (2-0-1) 36-22 at Eden Park on Sunday, Counties — whose Premiership record over the last 3 seasons has only been bettered by the current champions — are well positioned to take out top spot in the North Pool; they take on a winless (but impressive) Northland Kauri (0-0-2) side in Pukekohe this coming week, before facing Waikato in Round 5.
If Counties are able to win against James Semple’s side in Putaruru and Auckland overcome Bay of Plenty (1-0-1) on the same day, that may set up a blockbuster clash for Waikato at Eden Park on Saturday 17th October, scheduled to be the final match of the regular season: both teams would have a single loss to their name, and the winner would take the second playoff slot in the north.
(The Volcanix and their Black Ferns Sevens stars are the other team feasibly in the running for finals footy, but face a difficult run-in: they have to travel to Auckland and Counties Manukau in consecutive weeks, before hosting Northland on the final day of the season.)
The South Pool should be more clear cut, with a gulf in class evident between last year’s Premiership sides and those who played in the Championship. Canterbury kicked fully into gear in Week 3 with a comprehensive 85-10 win over Otago (1-0-1), while Wellington have scored 129 points and conceded only 17 in 160 minutes of rugby so far. Leaving aside their contest at Orangetheory Stadium on Saturday 3rd October — which will likely decide who takes the south’s top seed into the playoffs — both teams should come through the remainder of their games comfortably.
At an individual level, a few less familiar faces have started put their stamp on the competition: 2018 Youth Olympians Tiana Davison (a loose forward) and Iritana Hohaia (a scrum-half, but also comfortable at fullback) were prominent as the Taranaki Whio claimed their first win of the year on Saturday, Carys Dallinger attacked well from fly-half for Manawatū against Tasman and Black Ferns Sevens youngster Dhys Faleafaga has been in rampaging form from number 8 for Wellington.
Red and black
Announcing the resigning of Whetukamokamo Douglas for the 2021 season last Thursday, the Crusaders’ Twitter account stated that the loose forward had committed “to [their] 26th Crusade”.
In the days after the terrorist attacks at a pair of mosques in Christchurch last March, the franchise was urged to change their name and branding — “for no other reason than the fact that the man who killed 50 people with an assault rifle believed in perpetuating the conflict they are named after”, as Jamie Wall put it for The Spinoff.
Disappointingly — again, as Wall put well — after the team’s brand review “it was decided that no name better represented the club’s commitment to living its values…than ‘Crusaders’ did”, and the key component of its identity remained unchanged.
While presenting “crusading for social improvement and inclusiveness, and crusading with heart for our community and for each other” as among the franchise’s values is almost credible — using the verb in this way, without its militant religious associations, is relatively common — referring to the team’s campaigns as numbered ‘Crusades’ is clearly unacceptable. (The capitalised term refers specifically to “the military expeditions undertaken by Christian powers in the 11th, 12th, and 13th centuries to win the Holy Land from the Muslims”.)
Regardless of the franchise’s intention, using this language is actively leaning into the negative connotation of the ‘Crusaders’ brand — and needs to stop.
Blank space
Katherine Burgess recently received some attention for a visually striking and incredibly powerful sports media project:
The results of her work tally with those of similar initiatives looking at the coverage of women’s sport in mainstream media: for instance, Siren and the Swinburne University of Technology’s Sport Innovation Research Group found in recent months that, across a range of Australian outlets, women consistently received less than 10% of coverage.
In the interests of transparency: since the restart of rugby in New Zealand in June, 15.0% of the words written on thechaserugby.com and in previous editions of this newsletter have been about women’s rugby; this has risen to 35.7% since the start of September and the return of the Farah Palmer Cup. We all have work to do to ensure that women’s sport gets the attention that it deserves.
Pass of the week
Gayle Broughton was at her imperious best at first five-eighth for Taranaki in their 32-29 win over the North Harbour Hibiscus.
The Black Ferns Sevens playmaker had slotted 3 important goals, launched a number of dangerous set-piece attacks with her wide passing from first receiver and hitch-kicked her way to a fantastic counter-attacking try by the time the clock had gone red at TET Stadium, but the Whio still trailed by 2 points on the scoreboard. After Harbour were penalised by Tiana Ngawati on their own 5m line just metres from Taranaki’s right-hand touchline — and reduced to 14 as a consequence of a yellow card — it was Broughton who stood over the ball, plotting a route to victory.
After organising a pod of forwards infield, she taps, passes to loosehead Tachelle Gardiner and begins to circle around to the left-hand side to orchestrate the next phase of the attack. Nonetheless, she has her head up as she moves across the pitch and scans both sides of the tackle — and when the prop is driven further infield by some robust North Harbour defence, she immediately spots the space back towards the touchline which the Hibiscus have been unable to quickly refill.
Calling for a switch of play from her scrum-half Kelsyn McCook, she slots in behind substitute Nicole Whittle and takes the ball perfectly at second receiver, with hands outstretched towards the passer. After double-pumping to fix the final defender, she leaves the ball up in space for right wing Chloe Sampson to attack:
Sampson collects the pass and grounds in the corner — and the Whio are on the board in 2020, thanks in no small part to their local star.
Loose threads
In case you missed it on Twitter this week
Tupou Vaa’i auditioning for some minutes at fullback
Caleb Clarke and Jacob Ratumaitavuki-Kneepkens — two players with recent sevens experience — showing off their aerial skills
More excellent basics from Canterbury scrum-half Kendra Cocksedge
Nice execution on lineout attack from the Auckland Storm backline
Quick hits
The Wellington Rugby Football Union are moving the Lions’ fixture against Tasman in October from Sky Stadium to Jerry Collins Stadium in Porirua out of contractual necessity rather than choice, but their chief executive Matt Evans is positive about the concept of playing more NPC rugby at “boutique” venues:
New Zealand Cricket have in recent years moved away from hosting men’s test matches in larger, less atmospheric grounds (such as Sky Stadium or Eden Park) in favour of locations like the picturesque Bay Oval in Tauranga; despite lower attendances overall, the lower associated hosting costs have made these fixtures more financially viable in the net. Also not to be overlooked is that the game “looks so much better for those who aren’t” attending in person with such a backdrop — and the positive impact that this could have on the experience of television audiences, arguably one of the most important groups of stakeholders in the sport in New Zealand Rugby’s eyes.
The Blues and Crusaders announced the groups of players attending their respective U18 Regional Development Camps, following on from the Hurricanes’, Chiefs’ and Highlanders’ announcements over the last couple of weeks. In a media statement on Friday, NZR High Performance Player Development Manager Matt Sexton noted that “[t]he inclusion of schoolgirl players for the first time is recognition of the continual growth in the women’s game and the impressive talent we have seen across the country”. Among those selected for the Blues camp, Tamari Ati, Sylvia Brunt, Luisa Togotogoroa (all Auckland), Manaia Webb and Madison Johnson (both Northland) have already been named in their provinces’ squads for this year’s FPC; down south, 6 girls will attend the Crusaders camp, with Jorja Miller — who starred as a 15-year-old at the Condor Sevens last year —and Canterbury squad member Atlanta Lolohea two of the more prominent names.
A New Zealand Barbarian U18 squad of 50 boys has also been asked to assemble at the conclusion of those regional camps to prepare for an intrasquad fixture on 9th October in Hamilton, which will take place in lieu of the typical New Zealand Secondary Schools and New Zealand Barbarians Schools programmes. Former Highlanders assistant Mark Hammett and the Blues’ Tom Coventry will coach the 2 teams, with prop Lavengamonū Moli, locks Allan Craig and Jamie Hannah, loose forward Te Rama Reuben and scrum-half Dayton Iobu all returning from last year’s schools programme. (Moli — brother of fellow front-rowers Atunaisa, Sekope and Samiuela — and St Paul’s Collegiate tighthead Havila Molia were both asked to join this year’s New Zealand U20 triallists at a set-piece camp in March.) Among players making their first foray into national representative rugby, St Bede’s number 8 George Methven and Hamilton BHS scrum-half Noah Hotham — who is from a strong rugby family and has a touch background — are 2 to look out for in the future.
Sonny Bill Williams’ return to the NRL with the Sydney Roosters has been largely successful so far, and this piece from the ever-excellent Jack Snape of ABC at the weekend looked at how he has added value to the defending premiers as a ball-playing forward.
Finally, take a look at this great snippet of analysis by Sam Jones of Swansea University — using last year’s World Cup quarter final between Japan and South Africa, it introduces a basic framework for examining the effectiveness of a team’s kicking strategy by looking at how much further they are up the pitch from the location of a kick when they next regain possession.