Waratahs 2012

[Braveheart81]

The 20 metre cutout pass was decidedly more difficult with a leather ball in Ella's day.

 

[Loki74]

I was pretty young at the time but from memory and footage I have seen Ella wasn't a chuck it wide kind of player. He played flat and followed the ball to secure multiple touches. I think Barnes has all of the skills required to do this. Not wanting to start a Reds v Tahs argument but the Reds used this style of play to great success against the Bulls earlier this year. All it takes is a slight adjustment to the team tactics.

Also it would be impossible to argue that the Tah's haven't been the most successful team from the last 5 years. I would much rather be finishing in the finals every year than starting to plan for the follow season in early May. Yes they missed out on the title but they came bloody close and a bit of luck and things can change.

I agree that Barnes has all the skills necessary. I think his running game now looks ok (provided he can now take the collisions). The question is can we come up with a varied game plan. One thing I noticed and liked about the Reds this year was that they changed their game plans against different opponents. They played some games with a more field position focussed plan, kicking to the corners. Others they looked to keep ball in hand and run it. Is one reason why I rate Link as a coach, as he clearly plans for each opponent and how to exploit any perceived weaknesses.

 

[#1 Tah]

Being the best Australian team is a mute point.

Pardon?

 

[sudrugby]

I know he's not part of the Tahs team for 2012 but Ryan Cross will now move from Perpignan (where he was a RWC joker) to play for the Racing Metro 92 where he will be the injury cover for Mirco Bergamasco.
Don't know yet the length of the contract.

 

[darkhorse]

I know he's not part of the Tahs team for 2012 but Ryan Cross will now move from Perpignan (where he was a RWC joker) to play for the Racing Metro 92 where he will be the injury cover for Mirco Bergamasco.
Don't know yet the length of the contract.

Did Cross actually play? If so, how did he go?

 

[Inside Shoulder]

Very constructive, champ.

was your comment intended to be ironic?

 

[Inside Shoulder]

i dont think its worn as a badge of honour, not winning in a couple of years there was underachieving as far as im concerned. But consistantly giving yourself the opportunity to achieve is a form of success and the Tahs have been able to do that. they have been the best Aus team of recent years, if the reds had lost in the final would you have not called there season a success compared with that of other aussie teams?

The problem with this argument is that there's nothing the tahs actually do - the opportunity presents itself because of the sheer numbers of players in this state versus the others.
If you looked at it from the point of view that the Tahs are given a heads start with numbers then they have squandered that head start in every one of the Super seasons - for different reasons.
Based on potential over the long terms they are rank under achievers.

 

[waratahjesus]

The problem with this argument is that there's nothing the tahs actually do - the opportunity presents itself because of the sheer numbers of players in this state versus the others.
If you looked at it from the point of view that the Tahs are given a heads start with numbers then they have squandered that head start in every one of the Super seasons - for different reasons.
Based on potential over the long terms they are rank under achievers.

it was in response to the tahs being the best team in aus over the last five years, your response discounts the crusaders/bulls/stormers who have been the ones to win comps during this time. The Tahs have been beaten. but its not the resons to throw them away, there is no head start against international opposition when the actual numbers are given.

 

[Inside Shoulder]

it was in response to the tahs being the best team in aus over the last five years, your response discounts the crusaders/bulls/stormers who have been the ones to win comps during this time. The Tahs have been beaten. but its not the resons to throw them away, there is no head start against international opposition when the actual numbers are given.

Do you mean that the playing numbers in this province are the same as in those provinces?
My argument requires consideration of every person playing in NSW from u6 to grade - thats the long term pool - including players who have moved interstate etc.
If they go somewhere else and taste success its no answer to say that there was no room for them at the Tahs because someone somewhere was charged with the decision(s) that sent them to another province: whether that was the correct decision can only be determined generally - do they get more right than wrong?
To take an obvious example: Waugh v Smith - both emerge from school one goes Brumbies one goes Tahs. Smith is part of Brumbies sides that win the comp. On balance Tahs got that choice wrong.
Mortlock is another.
Now i know you are going to get these wrong from time to time. And they're not necessarily the measure of success. But when you put bad calls with lack of championships i reckon you've got a reasonable case to say that the Tahs, from top to bottom for whatever reasons, do not produce.

 

[waratahjesus]

Do you mean that the playing numbers in this province are the same as in those provinces?
My argument requires consideration of every person playing in NSW from u6 to grade - thats the long term pool - including people who have moved interstate etc.
If they go somewhere else and taste success its no answer to say that there was no room for them at the Tahs because someone somewhere was charged with the decision(s) that sent them to another province: whether that was the correct decision can only be determined generally - do they get more right than wrong?
To take an obvious example: Waugh v Smith - both emerge from school one goes Brumbies one goes Tahs. Smith is part of Brumbies sides that win the comp. On balance Tahs got that choice wrong.
Mortlock is another.
Now i know you are going to get these wrong from time to time. And they're not necessarily the measure of success. But when you put bad calls with lack of championships i reckon you've got a reasonable case to say that the Tahs, from top to bottom for whatever reasons, do not produce.

its all hindsight though isnt it. Im pretty glad i dont have to make the calls. but i think as QLD has shown, you can build a team of youngsters and they can have great success, but it doesn happen right away, they have to build for a few years in the core decision making departments. In a few years the reds will have the same problem the tahs have as they choose to hold onto there premiership winners or invest in youth again. I honestly dont believe there is a right or wrong answer and you can argue it both ways.

that said, as a fan and a fan that would love success, i love being able to cheer a consistant team on. in this day and age of professionalism to many players move around and with the rebels (not a shot at them) its only going to get worse. the ability to identify and support players is dying out everytime someone jumps contract.

 

[Inside Shoulder]

its all hindsight though isnt it. Im pretty glad i dont have to make the calls. but i think as QLD has shown, you can build a team of youngsters and they can have great success, but it doesn happen right away, they have to build for a few years in the core decision making departments. In a few years the reds will have the same problem the tahs have as they choose to hold onto there premiership winners or invest in youth again. I honestly dont believe there is a right or wrong answer and you can argue it both ways.

that said, as a fan and a fan that would love success, i love being able to cheer a consistant team on. in this day and age of professionalism to many players move around and with the rebels (not a shot at them) its only going to get worse. the ability to identify and support players is dying out everytime someone jumps contract.

I'm not saying (for present purposes - if you want we can debate that one) that anyone could pick that Smith was going to be the dominant open side out of the two. Thats why i say you have to look at it generally.
Somewhere along the line NSW have passed on (as they say in the US) a lot of blokes who won championships. Beau Robinson is another good example.
If NSW had won one then it would be legitimate to say we cant keep them all. Not having won one they must be open to the criticism that either they're letting the wrong ones go or they're not getting the best out of the ones they keep.

 

[waratahjesus]

I'm not saying (for present purposes - if you want we can debate that one) that anyone could pick that Smith was going to be the dominant open side out of the two. Thats why i say you have to look at it generally.
Somewhere along the line NSW have passed on (as they say in the US) a lot of blokes who won championships. Beau Robinson is another good example.
If NSW had won one then it would be legitimate to say we cant keep them all. Not having won one they must be open to the criticism that either they're letting the wrong ones go or they're not getting the best out of the ones they keep.

I know what ur saying, I can't agree though, to me a team wins a championship so sighting individual players like that overstates there contribution. Funny though that link let beau go.

 

[sudrugby]

Did Cross actually play? If so, how did he go?

Apparently good despite the fact that Perpignan is pretty bad since the beginning of the Top 14.
But I don't rate Cross that much so I don't really like him to play for my team.

 

[Inside Shoulder]

I know what ur saying, I can't agree though, to me a team wins a championship so sighting individual players like that overstates there contribution. Funny though that link let beau go.

For that to be right would make it coincidence that explains the players who grew up in NSW and went to other provinces where they won comps and from which they became wallabies or, as I recall it in one case, an all black

 

[Lee Grant]

I was pretty young at the time but from memory and footage I have seen Ella wasn't a chuck it wide kind of player. He played flat and followed the ball to secure multiple touches.

That's right: he and the teams he played with used short passes and Ella would loop around a lot. He was also good with his ghost pass. He would send out a pass once, twice and three times but the ball would disappear on the third one. Then you realised he was running up the field with it and probably giggling and later passing to one of his brothers if it was at Coogee Oval.

He was very good passing facing square also: an art that seemed to be lost to Oz rugby until QC (Quade Cooper) started doing a lot of it in the last couple of years. Looping seems to have died out a bit though. Beale did it all the time at school but I can't remember one loop at the Tahs. And forget about dummy looping - when the fullback runs against the grain, just in front of the looping flyhalf and gets the ball instead.

But I digress - when the likes of Ella, Hawker and OÇonnor played together in the same backline for the Wobs they were not too far from each other and used the ball more. Their interaction in passing at the right moment to a man that who was not there except just at the time that the pass arrived was finely honed and looked so simple, but wasn't. It wouldn't have worked with long passes.

Long passes from the flyhalf as a custom are a relatively new thing and Larkham was the master at it. Even then it wasn't all up to him. He needed guys to make a move to the gap before they got the ball otherwise the space of the field was used up pointlessly. QC (Quade Cooper) has picked up the baton of this practice also.

 

[Lee Grant]

On the matter of the Tahs selecting or retaining the wrong players: the Tahs have been infamous, and especially at the start of the pro era when so many players moved down the Hume Highway when the Brumbies started up.

Just about all the coaches have been guilty of it, even Ewen McKenzie.

Beau Robinson was terrific in 2007 when Waugh was out most of the season and scarcely less so in 2008 playing in most games from the bench. That was Link's last year and he was stitching up Tahs players for the future before he got the bullet, but not Beau.

Maybe the new guy, Hickey, could have had time to sign Beau up, I forget the timing of it, but Link had the opportunity to do so and didn't. Ironically Beau is playing for Link now, north of the Tweed, but that was more his own doing in taking the chance to move up there and hanging around for his chance. Good for him.

This example of Beau in criticising the Tahs recruitment and contracting practice is not made in hindsight. We Tahs tragics complained about it at the time.

 

[inthestands]

Seriously, this Beau Robinson issue is a real bugbear of mine. In 2008, Ewen McKenzie actually had Beau Robinson go back to play for Dubbo in the last round of the competition. He only made it back into the 22 for the semi and final because David Lyons was injured. Pat McCutcheon even travelled with the team to Christchurch as 23rd man with some close to the team thinking Link was going to debut Cutch in the final ahead of Beau.

The next step is for everyone to have a crack at Hickey for not re-signing Beau when he took over mid-2008. Well, Andy Friend didn't sign him to the Brumbies. And neither did Phil Mooney to the Reds. And neither did John Mitchell to the Force. It wasn't the Tahs who didn't sign him - it was all four Australian provinces, yet the Tahs get smashed for not picking him up.

Tragedy brought Beau back from overseas, and good luck to him for taking an opportunity, but to point the finger at Hickey and the Tahs is far too narrow-sighted and doesn't give an accurate view of what happened in 2008-09.

 

[fatprop]

I am pretty sure it was Hickey who decided not to re sign Beau (2009 was his last season with the Tahs and Hickey's first) after a season where he was struggling to get to the bench by the end of the season. I think from memory didn't even get in the squad sent to SA for the last games of that season.

It is clear something didn't gel with the new coaching regime, whether that was style of play or attitude at the time, but something wasn't working and he was released.

 

[inthestands]

I am pretty sure it was Hickey who decided not to re sign Beau (2009 was his last season with the Tahs and Hickey's first) after a season where he was struggling to get to the bench by the end of the season. I think from memory didn't even get in the squad sent to SA for the last games of that season.

He did go to Africa in the 26, but was out of the 22 until Lyons was injured.

Tahs touring team to Africa in 2008 was Backs: Kurtley Beale, Luke Burgess, Matt Carraro, Tom Carter, Sam Harris, Rob Horne, Alfi Mafi, Sam Norton-Knight, Brett Sheehan, Timana Tahu, Lote Tuqiri, Lachie Turner. Forwards: Al Baxter, Will Caldwell, Matt Dunning, Rocky Elsom, Adam Freier, Sekope Kepu, David Lyons, Dean Mumm, Wycliff Palu, Tatafu Polota-Nau, Beau Robinson, Benn Robinson, Dan Vickerman, Phil Waugh (c).

 

[MrTimms]

Heard a whisper about Berrick defecting back to the Broncos. Anyone else heard anything?

What is his contract situation?