NATIONS CHAMPIONSHIP HAS SUCCEEDED IN ITS MISSION
The Nations Championship has succeeded in what it set out to do - it has added interest to what otherwise not be so interesting.
For a good example of what I am talking about, let’s reference last weekend’s opening Bok game of the away leg of the new World Rugby competition in Turin. When the Springboks went up 31-0 after just 22 minutes the game was effectively over as a contest. But instead of the rest of the game just being regarded as a procession to the finish line, we stayed engaged. Not just South African eyes stayed engaged, but neutral eyes should have stayed engaged too.
For having a log which will determine which teams go into the main final on what has been named Finals Weekend at Twickenham in a fortnight’s hence, and having two nations, South Africa and New Zealand, tied together on the same number of points at the top of the southern hemisphere pool, has brought points differential into play.
A 66-0 win last week would definitely have been more preferable to Siya Kolisi’s team last weekend than 66-7. What the Boks did in Turin upped the pressure on the All Blacks to win with something to spare in the later game played last Saturday in Edinburgh.
Not that the All Black/Scotland game really needed a different angle to make it interesting, so maybe Saturday’s game in Cardiff is a better example of what the inception of the Nations Championship has done to bring extra meaning. The All Blacks should be expected to hammer Wales. But now their points differential quest makes it more interesting. Provided of course the Boks beat France in Paris on Friday.
THERE IS CONTEXT TO POINTS DIFFERENTIAL SHOOT OUT
Okay, so that’s the positive. Those who read me often will know I am not as crazy as some other critics are about the Nations Championship, and will still stick to my argument from earlier in the year - it would make more sense to play series (two or three match) during the July window.
That is said from both a competition integrity viewpoint - Fiji playing home games in Liverpool, Edinburgh and Cardiff against England, Scotland and Wales respectively is just ridiculous - and a carbon footprint viewpoint. The air miles required to fulfil the July fixtures were off the scale, with England flying to South Africa, back to England and then to Argentina in the space of three weeks. Wales did something similar.
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The big games in the November or northern Autumn window, such as the one in Paris on Friday and the one between England and New Zealand, would remain big games even if there was no competition. They just always have been.
But my misgivings about the Nations Championship goes a bit further than that. Firstly, when New Zealand hosted France at the start of the competition they did not face a France team at full strength. I am not referring to them being a bit under-strength because of injury, as is the case in Paris for them in their game against the Boks, but being properly under-strength because club commitment prevented Fabien Galthie from being able to go Full Metal Jacket.
On that same day the Boks were at full strength against a full strength England at Ellis Park, but a week later Bok coach Rassie Erasmus, who was taking the long view towards the World Cup in Australia and even beyond that, went into aggressive experimental mode when his team face Scotland. Not even when Scotland were pressing for the win later in the game did Rassie drop the experimentation.
The result was a far closer game at Loftus than might have been the case had the Boks been chasing points differential then like they are now. But what would have been achieved by Rassie had he gone full strength against Scotland? The big win might have been relevant to the Nations Championship, but seeing as England coach Steve Borthwick was severely chastised by the English media for not experimenting enough during his team’s away Championship campaign, it would be reasonable to suggest Rassie would have been missing a trick had he just played the same team that beat England.
And ditto the following week, when at full strength the Boks could have pushed for a massive winning margin against Wales in Durban but instead opted to give young Vusi Moyo a debut opportunity at flyhalf and Jaco Williams an opportunity at wing, among other experiments and selections geared towards increasing depth.
THE DRIVING MAUL LAW DOES REQUIRE SOME ADJUSTMENT
It was good to see that the All Blacks didn’t get their way when it came to the decisions made at the recent State of the Game conference, if that was indeed what the pow-wow of top coaches was called in the latest edition of it’s iteration.
If rugby union is to continue to be differentiated from the 13-man league code, scrumming has to remain important, as it has throughout the sport’s existence, and ditto the maul and other aspects of forward play that South Africa just happen to be better at right now than New Zealand. I stress the phrase “right now”, because the Kiwis have boasted some formidable scrumming packs in the past, and Rassie could not be faulted if he considered laying a charge of plagiarism against the All Blacks for the way they on a few occasions used the scrum as their get out of jail card against Scotland. They also scored a good driving maul try or two.
Actually, the laws around the driving maul are something that I do believe should be looked at. Former England hooker Brian Moore wrote in his Telegraph column that the first round of the northern leg of the Championship proved that tries are now too easily scored through a driving maul, and I agree with him.
It doesn’t make sense to me that having a shield of players ahead of the ball carrier in a maul is not obstruction but when something like that happens elsewhere in the game it is. It is almost impossible for the defending team to get their hands on the ball when the maul is set properly and the fact Scottish hooker Ewan Ashman made history by becoming the first Scottish player to achieve a try scoring hat-trick, and he didn’t have to do much more than stand behind the shield and then fall over the line when it arrived, is a concern. Or should be.
No, I am not saying ban the driving or rolling maul. What I am saying is that some thought needs to be put in to finding ways to make it more easy to defend against.
HOPEFULLY NO HANGOVER FOR PROTEAS
The national cricket team, the Proteas, in beating Australia in their recent test series, succeeded in doing what the Springboks did in August and September - they won a high profile series between the No 1 and No 2 teams in the world. Like the Boks, they had to come from behind to manage it, and like the Boks they had to dig deep.
I wrote in a previous column how fraught my nerves were as SA fought back on the fourth day at Newlands, so I can only imagine what it felt like for the players and coaching staff. It’s a good thing that by the time they get into action again in the format against Bangladesh at the Wanderers on Sunday, two weeks will have passed since the end of the Aussie series.
I do believe that going through the emotional and physical wringer in order to win the RGR series had some impact on the Boks then losing to the Wallabies in Perth two weeks later and it would have been understandable if there was a bit of emotional fatigue around the Proteas camp after getting across the line against Australia.
Bangladesh are no Mickey Mouse team, as anyone who watched their series against Australia before the Aussies came to South Africa. With England due here shortly, there should be no shortage of eyes on the two games that will be played against Bangladesh at the Wanderers and Supersport Park (Centurion), which just happen to be the venues of the first two test matches in the England series too.
The World Test Championship is set out to achieve the same thing that the Nations Championship does in rugby, but although I spot the same problem with it, in the sense that not all nations take it seriously - England didn’t when Ben Stokes was in charge but apparently Stephen Fleming is going to change that - I do think the WTC is a more needed concept. In the sense that it will bring more meaning and interest to a SA/Bangladesh series than might otherwise be the case, just like the two series against first Sri Lanka and then Pakistan did here two years ago.
CUMMINS DOUBLING DOWN WRONG THING TO DO
Oh dear, Australia cricket captain Pat Cummins using his press conference held early on Friday to double down on the statement he and fellow bowlers Mitchell Starc, Josh Hazlewood and Nathan Lyon, issued in 2021 claiming they had no part in the events that led to the infamous Sandpapergate in Cape Town in 2018 was probably the last thing the sport in that country needed.
To me it looks like Cummins is being careful with his words. As in he did not know that sandpaper was being applied to the ball in that Newlands test. Which is possible. In other words, when the other members of the team doctored the ball, we didn’t watch them doing it and didn’t see them doing it.
But having done a lot of bowling in my youth, because that’s what I had to do because I was the worst batsmen any level of cricket has ever seen, I do know how important the ball condition is to a bowler. I even got fussy about the condition of the ball when bowling in the nets. So I can’t imagine that bowlers who get paid to the job and bowl for teams far above the status of my school or club teams, wouldn’t be even more switched on to the ball.
If someone doctored a ball I was bowling with I would have noticed it, even if I didn’t see what agent was applied to the ball to get it to do what it was doing. Which effectively is what just about everyone in cricket was saying back in 2018 - yes, three guys from the Australian team were sanctioned, but it just defied logic that the bowlers were not in on the fact that something was being done to help them hoop the ball around corners.
So when former Aussie batsman Usman Khawaja tackled the subject in his book, and said the whole team was aware of what was happening, the reaction of just about everyone I spoke to or messaged about it said pretty much the same thing: “So what? Wasn’t that obvious all along”.
Which also happens to be pretty close to what Cameron Bancroft, the Aussie foot soldier who took the rap alongside his captain Cummins and vice-captain Dave Warner because he was the guy caught with the sandpaper, said back in 2021 to elicit the denial from his team’s bowlers.
What has been said is just logical, and as a lot of the Aussie cricketing public have come now to the conclusion that there was a bit of an overreaction in 2018, and that the suspensions meted out to Smith, Warner and Bancroft were too harsh, I sense that what is really wanted is just some honesty at last to draw a line under the whole affair.
Warner has come out and endorsed Khawaja “100 per cent” and so did one of the back up bowlers in that series (he only played in the final test), Chad Sayyers. Sorry, there’s too much counter argument from within the camp to the statements and denials made by Cummins et al for there not to be fire to go with the smoke.
As former Aussie skipper Michael Clarke says, “let’s just hear the truth”. Maybe you didn’t see the sandpaper, but you had to know what was going on. Or must we wait now until Warner’s book for this whole controversy to restart. Seconds out… here’s Round No 2.
Which is damaging to Aussie cricket because Aussies like teams made up of people who have each other’s backs and if Smith, Warner and Bancroft took the fall for something that the entire team should have been culpable for then that is clearly contrary to that spirit.
KHAWAJA WOULD NOT HAVE BEEN MOTIVATED BY BOOK SALES
As someone who has ghost written sports autobiographies, let me tell you that those who say the whole ignition of the sandpaper controversy has come about because Usman Khawaja wants to boost his book sales are wide of the mark. I don’t know Khawaja, but I do know that what he stands to make out of his book from a monetary perspective will pale into insignificance when compared to what he may have made in just a month or two or three during his cricket career.
Those who do books at the end of their careers, or certainly those who I have worked with, do not do it to make money. They do it to tell their truth. And there’s usually an understanding that you tell the whole truth, and don’t censor when you feel it is expedient to do so.
This was something that was made crystal clear to Peter de Villiers, the former Springbok coach, when he asked me to do his book - ‘Politically Incorrect’. My arrangement with Div was that he had to answer every question I asked him, and do so honestly. From that understanding the book was born.
It would have been the same with Khawaja, who I understand did not use a ghost writer. It is highly unlikely he’d just make stuff up so that he could boost book sales. It wouldn’t be worth that for the minimal difference it would make to your pocket and then there’s the looking at yourself in the mirror aspect.
So yes, without knowing the man, I am on ‘Team Khawaja’. It’s too easy to just shoot the messenger rather than confront the truth. I am not sure I agree with the aforementioned Clarke that “there’s Usman’s truth, there’s the bowling team’s truth and then there’s THE truth”, because sometimes if you fiddle with words then ‘THE truth’ is a grey area - particularly when it is being applied historically.
But surely ‘THE truth’ is closer to what Warner, Bancroft, Khawaja and Sayyers have said than to what the bowlers, who are no doubt driven in their denials by the damage complete revelation might do to their own personal brands, have said.