Loose Pass: Cheika’s exit, tip tackles and statistics

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This week we will mostly be concerning ourselves with exit interviews, bad tackles, and an absence of info for the discerning fan…

A bear exits hurriedly

As exit interviews go, it was pretty forthright.

Q: Do you feel that the company is moving strategically in the right direction?

A: I dunno mate, I just tried to do whatever I wanted.

Q: How do you feel management could be improved?

A: I dunno mate, I barely talked to management.

Q: Do you have any ideas on the best methods for your succession?

A: I dunno mate, but going local would be important.

Of course, the above didn’t happen in so many words. But it’s safe to say that the departure of Michael Cheika will bring perhaps a little more internal harmony to the overall management of Rugby Australia. Whether that lasts is a moot point. The clamour for heads to roll from top to bottom in Australia is growing.

Further fuel to the fire was added by the revelations of a public spat between Rugby Australia CEO Raelene Castle during the tournament, at the Australian embassy the night before Australia lost to Wales. Evidently Cheika had refused to take part in a function the night before such a crucial game, whereupon Castle went behind his back and asked Scott Johnson – whose appointment had already got Cheika’s back up – to gather a quartet together.

Quite important in all of this though is that Cheika does seem to have retained the backing of the players. Michael Hooper said he ‘owes Cheika a lot,’ while 10-year veteran David Pocock said that Cheika was terrific at shielding the playing group from any upper-level political wranglings. Will Genia called him the best coach he’d had, while Drew Mitchell said he’d ‘die for’ Cheika.

Even a couple of editorials, while acknowledging that Cheika was architect of his own downfall, have opined that the mistakes were much further-reaching than just at head coach level.

https://twitter.com/mtoomua/status/1186271233639235585

Cheika has overseen a stormy period in Australian rugby, with some unique characters occupying big roles, Quade Cooper and Israel Folau among them. The on-field team he created was nothing if not honest and, while trying to run everything in a World Cup quarter-final was naivety of the highest order and a serious strategic error, Cheika also took the Wallabies to a World Cup final and stuck 47 on the All Blacks not six months ago. There’s been highs and lows during his time, but he’s definitely gone out swinging – and as anyone who has been at one of his pressers knows, he’d not be happy going any other way.

It’ll be interesting to see what happens now. Cheika has recommended hiring an Australian coach, but international-level coaches are pretty thin on the ground there at the moment. Yet the future does look bright. Club rugby in Australia is resurgent, while both the Wallaby schoolboys and U20 have beaten New Zealand this year. Both management and coaching will be critical to nurture the potential and, while Cheika will be missed, Australia has to hope that the likely resultant harmony will be helpful if it can be maintained.

A beastly action

Japan made little of it, few people made anything of it actually, so perhaps we are wrong here, but we’re pretty staggered Tendai Mtawarira was not sent-off on Sunday.

Eight years ago almost to the day, Sam Warburton had been red-carded for almost exactly the same offence – the tackles themselves were almost identical. Since then, we’ve had a pretty clear framework for spear tackling which has all but eradicated the offence from the game.

But this was textbook. He hit, he lifted, he tipped and his body followed his victim beyond the horizontal, driving downward, with Keita Inagaki needing to use his arm to stop his head hitting the floor first.

The apologies and good sentiments all over social media were all well and lovely, and Wayne Barnes dealt with the incident at the time so efficiently that none of the players had time to react negatively, a situation which likely contributed to Barnes opting not to ask the TMO to review.

But not even a citing? And was the TMO not minded to have a word anyway? A lovely chap he most certainly is, but he’s got away with one here…

Is it all still being hoarded?

A lot of rugby folk are more than happy to pore over the quarter-finals in significant detail before, and even more so in the wake of the matches.

But some good statistics for all of this is almost impossible to come by for the mere mortal. A couple of sites have offered some good bots and bobs: tackles made by player, possession and territory and so forth. Several newspaper columns have used some numbers which hint that there is an offering to the press which is just as closely-guarded as the match data itself. And even that only to those who can afford it – not many of us.

The effort involved in gathering statistics is huge, we understand that. But surely many fans deserve better than just to be presented with a few meaningless ‘tackles made’ trinkets. We want to know about strategy, about possession usage, about decisions. At some point, those who know about the game, which is many of us, want to know what really happened – and at the moment, we’re not getting enough info from sources which could enrich us but choose to hoard it for their own financial gain.

Rugby, and its stakeholders/tournament organisers, needs to start owning and sharing this information better, such as is done by American sports and Australia’s AFL.

Loose Pass compiled by Lawrence Nolan

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