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Welcome to the final edition of this year's ET's TRI NATIONS Weekly Preview. well done to the Springboks on their win in Jo'burg and in taking the Mandela Plate and well done to the Kiwis for getting hold of the Tri Nations trophy... in this issue I have a wrap up of the stats for the season, an assessment of the teams' performances and a few thoughts on current issues... ASSESSMENTS… SOUTH AFRICA...a lot of people have been crapping on about how South African has improved etc… - but I imagine that if on January 1 this year you had asked any SA rugby fan to compile a list of 5 indicators that would show SA rugby was improving and on the right track between the beginning of this year and the World Cup next year, winning only one Tri Nations game in 2002 and not having any teams in the Super 12 playoffs would not have been on that list. Lets be brutally honest here... for the past 5 years the last two teams in the Super 12 have been SA teams, barring 2000 when Auckland snuck in and pinched one of their spots. In the past three Super 12 seasons SA teams have made the playoffs three times - twice due to a resurgence in one team created by a New Zealand coach. At Super 12 level SA rugby continues to be a mess. For the past 4 seasons SA have finished last in the Tri Nations, this years one win no better than the previous 4 seasons, indeed this year they conceded more points than ever before in Tri Nations history. And it should be remembered that their one win was at the Ellis Park fortress against a nation that has only ever won there once - and beat them by two points in a nailbiting finish. I dont believe this year has been any different to the other years except they have run out of replacement coaches so they have to show patience with Big Rudi - the usual amount of young hopefuls have been produced and lifted to godlike status, we shall see how the future deals with them. I think there is a lot of hard work to be done to the structures in SA with perhaps the most important being the need to move the Currie Cup to coincide with the Super 12 to allow maximum development to occur. When this happens SA rugby will leap ahead quickly. AUSTRALIA…most of us Aussies expected that this would be a year of rebuilding the Wallabies with our primary goal the RWC 2003. We expected not to win the Tri Nations - and we didn’t :-). But there are areas of concern. The Wallabies have shown an ability to fly out of the blocks and then stop dead in most games. Many top players have been carrying injuries all year and need a rest and this has had an impact on their ability to play a full 80 minutes. Unfortunately there was little player rotation during the Tri Nations, thus a perfect opportunity to experiment further was wasted. There appear to be some players in the run on XV who are wilting and having trouble making an impact anymore and I suspect that the XV that runs onto the ground for the RWC semi against the AB's next year will be significantly different to Saturdays team. There are still holes in the team from a skill level point of view. Roff will be back next year to add another dimension and the presence of the league convertees will make it interesting. Now all we need is for the Reds to recruit Akermanis and we will have a chance to retain the World Cup. NEW ZEALAND…this was the year in which the Kiwis had their best chance of taking the Tri Nations due to the patterns in the draw and they achieved that feat. They also claimed they were going to make Australia pay for their RWC debacle and failed miserably in that quest. Revenge, my ass!! :-) The Kiwis didnt get their hands on the Bledisloe Cup, the fight for that trophy becoming one of the most monumental annual battles - so gripping are these games that both teams and nations are the winners as they take us to higher heights! It is one of the great rivalries in world sport. I doubt there will be too many supporters in New Zealand completely confident. Apart from the efforts of the Crusaders their Super 12 sides struggle to make an impact. They still havent taken the Australian monkey off their backs, they showed weaknesses in games against lesser teams over the past 12 months and will now go to Europe to test their strength against England, the wizards of staying at home, in London. THOUGHTS…. TOURS - there has been talk this week by SANZAR of inviting nations to tour for three Test series' in the future rather than what have been termed "one off meaningless Tests". Whilst I will be the first to agree that the one off Tests to the SH are meaningless, I wonder if the SANZAR chiefs also then see the games played in Europe at the end of each year as similarly meaningless one off Tests. And if so, why are we still playing them?? There are only really 3 Test level rugby tournaments that have any meaning - the Tri Nations, the Six Nations and the World Cup - all the rest of the games are meaningless because they prove nothing. And if we want meaning to exist then we need to do more than play a series of three meaningless Tests. We need to bring each Test into some kind of annual league where there can be a winner for an annual crown. Before all the pro tour people jump on me allow me to demonstrate why tours by NH sides ot the south would be meaningless, regardless of the number of games played... If one analyses the Test records of Australia and New Zealand, and to a lesser extent South Africa, it is very obvious that no nation from outside SANZAR has a hope in hell of winning Test matches in the ANZAC arena and therefore any system of sending depleted and worn out European sides to SANZAR would appear to be a complete waste of effort, and could rapidly become boring to the spectators and TV audiences. Australia has hosted the other six major rugby nations (England, France, Argentina, Wales, Ireland and Scotland) 55 times in Australia for 45 wins and a draw. Take out the 4 wins by France and the visiting teams have only won 5 times in 55 games! England has never won, France last won in 1990, Argentina last in 1983, Wales last in 1969, Ireland last in 1979 and Scotland last in 1982. Even South Africa has only won twice in eleven visits since it returned. Over in New Zealand, they have hosted the six major nations 46 times and lost only 4 of those games, the last being in 1994 to France. I would love someone to explain to me how rugby is enhanced, developed and enriched by having tired European teams tour Australia and New Zealand and never win! The French are the most capable of winning Down Under and they rarely manage a win, for all the other teams its a guaranteed whitewash. PLAN A - The most exciting tour that has hit Australia in recent years and captured the imagination of the the public was the Lions tour and I would suggest that this is the way to go, for all areas of world rugby. There should be a Lions tour EVERY year to one of the SANZAR nations, but not in a World Cup year. There should also be a Pacific touring team, an America's touring team and a European touring team which is Europe minus the Lions nations and these should rotate. So in 2004, for example, we would see the Lions tour New Zealand, the America's tour South Africa and Europe tour Australia. or we could try...PLAN B if we wanted to get really creative and develop an exciting, new product for rugby fans we could handicap the matches so the better side are behind on the scoreboard when they run out and are forced to play high speed, creative rugby in order to catch up and win. Combine this with an annual championship ladder and we have a great package. Send the top 6 non SANZAR nations on a SANZAR sweep with each side playing a game in each of the SANZAR countries before moving to the next, on a handicap basis so each team has an equal chance of winning, and allow the results to form a championship ladder which is completed at the end of the year when the SANZAR nations tour. Interest is increased because all teams have a chance, the games are more exciting and faster and everyone has an equal chance of taking out the title at the end of the year.Handicapping sports is nothing new - we do it in horse racing, pro athletics and the bookies do it each week on many games to level the playing field. |
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| TRI NATIONS - 2002 leading scorers | ||||||
| player | team | tries | conv. | pen. | dg | POINTS |
| A.Mehrtens | N.Zealand | 0 | 4 | 12 | 1 | 47 |
| M.Burke | Australia | 0 | 5 | 10 | 0 | 40 |
| A.Pretorius | S.Africa | 1 | 6 | 4 | 1 | 32 |
| W.Greef | S.Africa | 2 | 4 | 0 | 1 | 21 |
| M.Joubert | S.Africa | 3 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 15 |
| C.Latham | Australia | 2 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 10 |
| D.Howlett | N.Zealand | 2 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 10 |
| Goal kicking stats - 2002 | |||||||||||
| player | team | conv attempts | conv -ok | pen. Attempts | pen -ok | total attempts | total -ok | % | total missed pts. | ||
| W.Greef | S.Africa | 5 | 4 | 1 | 0 | 6 | 4 | 66.67% | 22 | ||
| M.Burke | Australia | 8 | 5 | 15 | 10 | 23 | 15 | 65.22% | 20 | ||
| A.Mehrtens | N.Zealand | 9 | 4 | 16 | 12 | 25 | 16 | 64.00% | 14 | ||
| A.Pretorius | S.Africa | 8 | 6 | 8 | 4 | 16 | 10 | 62.50% | 3 | ||
| totals | 32 | 19 | 42 | 27 | 74 | 46 | |||||
| totals | conv. | 59.38% | pen. | 64.29% | total | 62.16% | 59 | ||||
| notes:- set shots at goal are counted in the above list and totals for each type of kick along the bottom. | |||||||||||
Drop kicking stats - 2002
| player | team | dg attempts | dg -ok | % | W.Greef | S.Africa | 1 | 1 | 100.00% | A.Pretorius | S.Africa | 2 | 1 | 50.00% | A.Mehrtens | N.Zealand | 3 | 1 | 33.33% | G.Gregan | Australia | 3 | 1 | 33.33% | A.Mauger | N.Zealand | 2 | 0 | 0.00% | notes:- Conradie(2), Marshall(2) and Mortlock has also unsuccessfully taken drop goal attempts. | S.Africa - 2 from 5 shots =40%, New Zealand 1 from 7 shots =14%, Australia 1 from 6 shots= 16% | ||||||||||||||||||||||
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Well, that’s all for this year boys and girls…. Good luck to all and see you next year…except for my World Cup Previews which I shall resume soon :-) ET |
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For further Australian rugby information : Australian Rugby Union For further New Zealand rugby information : NZ Rugby Union For further South African rugby information : SA Rugby Union and for complete year by year stats for Tri Nations rugby: Tariks SANZAR Guide |
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for preview number 1… ET's TRI NATIONS Preview #1 for preview number 2… ET's TRI NATIONS Preview #2 for preview number 3… ET's TRI NATIONS Preview #3 for preview number 4… ET's TRI NATIONS Preview #4 for preview number 5… ET's TRI NATIONS Preview #5 for preview number 6… ET's TRI NATIONS Preview #6 for preview number 7… ET's TRI NATIONS Preview #7 Thank you for your interest. © copyright 1996 -2002 E.Tarik, Adelaide, South Australia all rights reserved. |