Loose Pass: Blackwash, saluting two greats & a bad call

David Skippers
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This week we will mostly be concerning ourselves with trans-Tasman travails, the exit of another legend, mental health and, during the week Friends announced a comeback, The One The Officials Got Wrong…

Blackwash

It was expected by many, yet it won’t make it any more bearable for Australians. New Zealand 5, Australia 0 is the final, damning figure from the weekend’s first round of trans-Tasman Super Rugby clashes. A couple of the games were mighty close, one was mighty entertaining in a fast-food-for-cheap-try-lovers kind of way, but in the end, Australian teams emerged with only deflating near misses.

Mighty close? Two kicks, had they been successful, would have seen the record move to won one, drawn one, lost three. But how really close will tell over the next two or three weeks as travel fatigue kicks in. Certainly the Chiefs can be forgiven for not looking too durable, coming off the back of the rugged finale to Super Rugby Aotearoa and then crossing several time zones within a week. It’s doubtful the Force would have come so close against a fresh Chiefs team. Similar can apply as mitigation to the Reds in Dunedin, although the jump in time zones was more in their body clock’s favour. The Brumbies should be commended for their performance in Christchurch but the other two Australian teams looked distinctly average.

Most pertinently, the only Australian team to lead in any of the games by more than a conversion was the Waratahs, who were 16 points behind barely 15 minutes after taking said lead in a game where both sides looked as though they had reached an arrangement not to tackle each other.

Maybe some of the scores were close, but the gap between the two sets of franchises is still significant. Whether it gets wider or smaller over the coming weeks will be more significant still for Australian rugby, as it ponders its state.

An under-appreciated great

In many ways, it was unfortunate that Kieran Read’s international career commenced a short time after Richie McCaw and Dan Carter were busy re-defining what it was to be the greatest. Mr. Read more or less permanently lived particularly in Mr. McCaw’s shadow: even when he assumed the captaincy permanently he was all too frequently asked how he might compare himself to Richie.

A difficult comparison: different people, different positions, different playing styles. Yet your writer always had a soft spot for the number eight who combined all the best aspects of some of the fine number eights on the world’s stage and wrapped them up into one hyperactive, grinning bundle.

In the end, following Mr. McCaw’s retirement, Mr.Read emerged into his own era. A more aggressive captain, more energetic in body language and more involved in ball-playing for his team. Even when injuries began to pile up and age slowed his surprising pace, he never tried to change his game too much, nor did he ever lose his grin – a versatile expression that could register frustration, joy, despair and excitement without really changing much.

Falling at the penultimate hurdle of the 2019 World Cup clearly hit him hard, perhaps the one time that grin was genuinely disturbed. He left for Japan shortly after where, among other things he hoped to have fun playing again.

And this week he formally retired. So many statistics have been trotted out about him, so many pointing to his being just behind Mr. McCaw in so many numbers. Whatever – he should enjoy his retirement considering that he is very probably the greatest number eight of the professional era.

Thanks Joe

In a year where so many have struggled and suffered, ahead of a Lions tour where the opportunity for enormous and debilitating pressure is immense, in an era of perpetually appalling anonymous online abuse that can cause terrible mental damage to its victims, Loose Pass would like to doff cap and shout out to Joe Marler’s admirable public demonstration of both what it is to have mental health problems, and how it is to go about fixing them.

Alone his observation that not watching his responses and mental processes will spark mental health issues just as not watching his diet will end up with physical health issues is a golden nugget of information from an athlete with significant standing and public profile, enough to give anyone who might be struggling a little ray of hope.

Should you not have seen it yet, it’s worth checking out his documentary ‘Big Boys Don’t Cry’, currently running on Sky.

The One The Officials Got Wrong

The mocker gods out in force: having lauded the TMOs many times for getting more and more things right (even if they are a mite over-used), a Friday night in Dublin saw them getting it horribly wrong.

How on this good, clean, Covid-ravaged earth was Robbie Henshaw’s tackle on Robert Baloucoune judged to be legal? It’s head-high, head-on. Baloucoune’s head snaps horribly back in the contact – and we have so much proof now that concussion and all its itinerant ills can be caused by sudden head movements as well as contact.

Iain Henderson’s on-pitch exclamations were fully justified, as was the withering analysis delivered in the studio by Darren Cave, most pertinently this: “We’re lucky that wasn’t head-on-head and one of them got a serious injury. We need players to tackle lower than that. I’m amazed we’re saying that’s acceptable.”

We’re very lucky. Danger is danger, whether it results in injury or not. Rugby is still learning.

Loose Pass compiled by Lawrence Nolan

Blues