South Africa v New Zealand. RGR, Test Two. Argentina v Australia.

 

South Africa v New Zealand, Test Two

If last week’s game was summed up by South African dropped ball unproductive entries into the 22, this game was summed up by a stat that’s not really recorded - the unwillingness of the referee to blow the whistle. 

The scrums were a shambles, and some, maybe most, of that was his fault - the cadence between bind and set in particular was all over the place. As short as 2s, as long as 10s. Crouch to bind was pretty consistently 3s. Yes, I timed it because it was so noticeably all over the place. (in the later test there was a bit of variation, but it was about 2-4s so the players still had to listen, and react, but weren't just waiting forever.) If both sides are a mess, and they were sometimes, a chat or better yet a fast reset. But if you’re only talking to one side, blow the fucking whistle. (Again, comparing to the later match, BOK spoke to the front rows once. Gus about four times, and once he called them all over, then only spoke to one hooker. No, penalise him if it's only one player.)

Likewise, the lineouts. Last week everyone kept a good gap. This week, not so much. I think the Boks were the worse offenders, but the ABs weren’t angels. Was there a peep from Gus? He said something once. A couple of peeps of the whistle and it stops. 

Likewise the breakdown. This was better than the set pieces, but the number of times a Bok would get on the wrong side, get wrapped up and Gus would call “you put him there” rather than blow the whistle for him being offside… crazy. 

I, in common with others, saw Kolbe punch Carter. He was provoked, but it looked like a genuine, closed fist, punch. Gus, ever the peacemaker, checked he was ok, checked Carter was ok and moved on. Not even a TMO check. I screamed abuse at the TV at that point. It might not have been a punch, we didn't get a replay, but it looked like he was scared of being pilloried by Rassie or the local fans and decided to just ignore the incident so he didn’t have to make a tough call. (There has been no citing, I can understand Rennie might not have brought it up, it was a bit of a nothing burger, to the chest, and the citing officer may have thought it didn't reach the red card threshold, given where it landed and the provocation. All of that's fine. But it was more than play on.)

Before we move on from that, we need to mention all the team changes that Rassie pulled, honestly out of his arse. He announced the team on Monday, to everyone's surprise Arendse was included. 

This is not impossible, we’ve seen it happen before. I don't remember exactly who, but a Welsh player in the Gatland-2.0 era did this, and it was explained at the time. Just to go over the process, from the World Rugby HIA protocol (it's a fun read if you're having trouble sleeping):

• If a player fails what we normally call an HIA, what World Rugby calls HIA1, which is the quick test during the game, they enter into a process where they take two additional tests (imaginatively HIA2 and 3)
• HIA2 is taken within three hours for early signs of concussion
• HIA3 is taken within 36-48 hours (after they’ve slept twice) for signs of late-developing concussion. 
• These are much more extensive tests than the “pitch-side” test of HIA1, typically taking about an hour rather than under 12 minutes, and for elite players compare test results to their baseline values. 
  • If their personal baseline values aren't available, they're compared to the standard values. 
• If a player passes both of these they’re cleared to return to play. (It’s assumed the HIA1 was a false positive. That’s happened definitely once, possibly twice in hundreds of tests now.)
  • If a player skips HIA1, for example because they were knocked out on the pitch, they are entered straight into Return To Play and skip HIA2 and 3.) 
• Everyone who enters RTP also takes HIA4, which is similar to HIA2/3, but is used at the end RTP to confirm that the various concussion markers have returned to their individual baseline levels. 

So, Arendse could have passed HIA2 and 3 by Monday when the team was announced. That's all fine. However, he then pulled out with the return of a concussion. Suspicious much? It's possible - you would imagine that the Boks were working on protecting the ball in their practises and this could have more head knocks than a normal practise session, so he might get concussed again, but it's unlikely. Meanwhile the AB would have mostly worked on scrums, lineouts and taking high balls, where there's less chance of head contact.

Moving on, Pollard was named at 10. I think everyone expected that. Then he withdrew with a training injury. This was announced early enough that OK, these things happen. I’m pretty sure this was genuine, although Sacha FM was better in this test, he wasn’t as solid as Pollard would have been, and didn’t really produce anything. 

Then, an hour before kickoff, Rassie swapped the starting and bench front rows. Just a straight swap of 1-3 and 16-18. What is the fucking point of a team announcement? This might be ok under the tour agreement. (RugbyPass very pointedly had a comment to that effect on the Argentina v Australia team lists, but there were no changes there.) Rennie hasn’t commented, and he has had a go at the Boks for illegal scrummaging. But I don’t think it’s good enough. At the RWC he won’t be allowed to do it. In most other competitions you can’t do it. There are ways to swap late, after 48h before kickoff, but it requires a medical exchange, not a coach playing mind games. 

It’s hard to be sure whether the Boks deserved this win. They vastly improved their ability to hold onto the ball, lost ball was about even this week. Despite my comments about Gus needing to blow the whistle more, by the eye test the AB set piece had also improved. It wasn’t quite as good as the Boks' but it was close. Last week, when they won their scrum penalty to escape, it felt like an escape. This week, they only conceded one penalty (and an advantage), just after the bomb squad arrived, and that led to a try. But it was also the only time that the Boks really showed true dominance throughout the game. The scrum never went backwards at speed or similar. There weren’t a lot of collapsed scrums either, a few, but the ball was already at the back.

However, the Boks did improve enough to stifle the AB's attack reasonably efficiently, limiting them to "only" four tries, and their attack had improved enough to score three of their own. Add four penalties and you get a 33-26 victory. It wasn't convincing, the Bok were clinging on desperately for the last 20, and the ABs had adjusted their defensive patterns so they only scored penalties, and only two of those, in the second half, but they held on just well enough to win. 

Argentina v Australia

This was a game played with a much firmer control by the referee, which was good, because the aggression that good players need threatened to spill over into violence on several occasions and BOK managed to keep it to a couple of a cases of handbags that he prevented from both exploding at the time and continuing throughout the match at that level. 

The game itself was an arm wrestle. It was 7 v 8 on the WR rankings, and whilst I'm not the biggest fan of the rankings system, this felt like two teams of similar ability going at each other (as did the earlier match). But where that was two behemoths intent on trying to land the decisive blow, this was more two drunks in the car park flailing around. 

At times, everything would coalesce and it would look like someone had a plan and there was some beautiful rugby played. At others, it looked more like schoolboys playing for the first time. Some of that is because Argentina had a fast, aggressive and efficient defence, that made 95% of their tackles, often behind the gainline, but were generallypoor at forcing turnovers, whilst Australia were pilfering ball all night long. This really stopped both attacks being able to click into gear for any extended periods throughout the game. When either side managed to throw off the shackles for a few phases, rugby emerged, and it was often quite good. But a minute or two later, a great tackle, a turnover and we were back to where we'd been. 

The impression of schoolboys playing for the first time wasn't helped by the fact that both 10's had some very wayward kicking from hand. I don't know if there was a swirling wind in the stadium, I would guess so, because normally both of them are better than this. I'm not sure how many kicking errors there were overall, but double digits I think. If you contrast that to the other game, where I think Sasha FM kicked eratically but still didn't just kick it dead on multiple occasions, and I believe both goal kickers missed one attempt which you could harshly call an error. The other players kicking from hand had odd errors, but there were maybe five between both teams, odd slices and the like, which is about what you'd expect. Apart from the erratic kicks from Sasha, nothing looked outrageous in that match. In this one, multiple kicks, from both sides, did.

In the last ten minutes, Australia were defending a six point lead and were under extreme pressure. At one point Argentina had the ball and were on the Wallabies' 5m line. Within the last couple of minutes they had the ball twice and turned it over twice. They really tried their best to manufacture a one point loss and one of the Wallabies fans I know who is suffering from PTSD said. But they held on, and under Les Kiss they've now won three from three. This was a proper test for them, in ways that Japan wasn't really. But they emerged victorious and whilst they'll have a lot to learn, those lessons feel much easier after a victory than after a loss.

Looking Ahead

Next week seems repeats of these fixtures. In France the Top 14 also gets underway. In South Africa and the SA Women are hosting the Black Ferns.

I find it hard to call the SA v AB game. I think that it's easier for the AB to find ways to tweak, in particular their defensive system to cope with what went wrong in the first half. They gave up no tries in the second half which suggests that they already found a patch for it. The Boks are not really able to reliably stop the AB from scoring, it's currently nine tries to four in favour of the ABs. So... interesting times.

I expect both Argentina and Australia to improve. I think Argentina have an easier job of that, it's smaller tweaks to get their act together.

All four coaches will look, think they’ve got areas to work on, but good signs too, and feel confident going into next week. The All Blacks comfortably won the second half, and the Boks were lucky to cling on and win. That’s good for Rennie. You can say the same for Argentina. On the other hand, the Boks improved enough to win, and the Wallabies have won three from three under Kiss, so that’s good too.