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Aussie Super Rugby Grades - Week 13
By Robert Seltzer
It was so close. The streak looked to be broken in Christchurch only for dreams to be tattered in the second half. Will an Australian team ever beat a Kiwi team again? Here are how the teams fared this week:
Reds – E
They were lucky to even get an E.
They were trounced in Tokyo against a team that hadn’t one a game yet this season. It was 10th time lucky for the Sunwolves but the Reds will really need to take a long hard look at themselves after this one.
It started well enough and the Queenslanders lead 14-9 after 22 minutes, but that was as good as it got. The Sunwolves then piled on 54 points to leave the Reds reeling. The season is over for them now but they need to try and get some momentum going into next season and try and put this one down to a bad day at the office.
Waratahs – C
This was an incredibly hard grade to give.
40 minutes into the game and they were ranking an A+. They couldn’t have been any better. Leading 29-0 away from home at the Champions was a superb effort. All of Australia was jumping for joy thinking the hoodoo was over.
Fast forward to the 68th minute and the unthinkable has happened. The Tahs were a point behind having conceded a penalty try for repeated infringements at scrum time.
The Crusaders pulled off the biggest comeback in Super Rugby history yet Bernard Foley had the chance to snatch the win back with four minutes to go but his kick sailed wide. They could have been given anything but I can’t bring myself to go lower than a C due to them picking up a very unexpected bonus point.
Rebels – C
Their season is still alive. They snapped a 5 game losing streak in the Capital and at the same time ended the Brumbies season. They certainly did it the hard way.
They were 21-10 down at half-time with Tom English’s second try of the evening right on the hooter proving to be crucial to swing the momentum back in their favour. The scores were locked at 24 all with a minute to go. Reece Hodge, who had a mixed night with the boot, slotted the match winner to bring the Rebels to within one point of the conference-leading Waratahs.
Brumbies – D
The Brumbies can look forward to next season. This loss effectively ended any chance they had of making the finals.
In a game that lacked any sustained quality, the Brumbies weaknesses were exposed. They will have to try and find that X-factor player next season that can break through the line or create something when defences are rock solid. They lead for most of the game against the Rebels at home but couldn’t close it out and succumbed to Reece Hodge’s last minute kick.
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Latest Comments
The only benefit of the draft idea is league competitiveness. There would be absolutely no commercial value in a draft with rugby’s current interest levels.
I wonder what came first in america? I’m assuming it’s commercial aspect just built overtime and was a side effect essentially.
But the idea is not without merit as a goal. The first step towards being able to implement a draft being be creating it’s source of draftees. Where would you have the players come from? NFL uses college, and players of an age around 22 are generally able to step straight into the NFL. Baseball uses School and kids (obviously nowhere near pro level being 3/4 years younger) are sent to minor league clubs for a few years, the equivalent of the Super Rugby academies. I don’t think the latter is possible legally, and probably the most unethical and pointless, so do we create a University scene that builds on and up from the School scene? There is a lot of merit in that and it would tie in much better with our future partners in Japan and America.
Can we used the club scene and dispose of the Super Rugby academies? The benefit of this is that players have no association to their Super side, ie theyre not being drafted elshwere after spending time as a Blues or Chiefs player etc, it removes the negative of investing in a player just to benefit another club. The disadvantage of course is that now the players have nowhere near the quality of coaching and each countries U20s results will suffer (supposedly).
Or are we just doing something really dirty and making a rule that the only players under the age of 22 (that can sign a pro contract..) that a Super side can contract are those that come from the draft? Any player wanting to upgrade from an academy to full contract has to opt into the draft?
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You’ve got the perfect structure to run your 1A and 1B on a quota of club representation by Province. Have some balance/reward system in place to promote and reward competitiveness/excellence. Say each bracket has 12 teams, each province 3 spots, given the Irish Shield winner once of the bottom ranked provinces spots, so the twelve teams that make up 1A are 4 from Leinster, 3 each from Connacht and Munster, and 2 from Ulster etc. Run the same rule over 1B from the 1A reults/winner/bottom team etc. I’d imagine IRFU would want to keep participation to at least two teams from any one province but if not, and there was reason for more flexibility and competitveness, you can simply have other ways to change the numbers, like caps won by each province for the year prior or something.
Then give those clubs sides much bigger incentive to up their game, say instead of using the Pro sides for the British and Irish Cup you had going, it’s these best club sides that get to represent Ireland. There is plenty of interest in semi pro club cup competitions in europe that Ireland can invest in or drive their own creation of.
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