Marc dissects the Warriors sale while legendary Kiwi swimmer Dean Kent looks back on his extraordinary career
If you ever need evidence of the futility of trying to fairly apply the laws of rugby, then slip the Brumbies v Crusaders game from the weekend into the VHS and watch and weep.
You will see a world-class referee, Jaco Peyper, in the first place let down by his assistants and TMO, and thereafter tangling himself up in knots trying to administer scrums while being mercilessly conned by a team too clever by half.
By the time his Acme Thunderer shrilled for the final time, the Crusaders reinforced their reputation as the most "professional" non-test team on the planet and the rest of us wondered what we'd seen during a second 40 minutes that was scoreless, rose to no heights and yet remained strangely mesmeric.
The game, won 21-8 by the Crusaders in Canberra, was pockmarked by two flashpoints: the first-half sinbinning of Chance Peni and the back-to-back yellow cards issued to Crusaders Scott Barrett and Ryan Crotty in the second.
Both damaged rugby's credibility, and in one case the credibility of the match officials, and require forensic analysis.
Midway through the first half, Brumbies wing Peni took returning All Black Israel Dagg out with a high shot across the chops. It was a terrible tackle. Although there was an absence of malice (in other words, it wasn't predetermined), the misdirected violence in the hit was palpable.
To his credit, Peni knew he'd got it horribly wrong and gave himself up straight away. He would have known it was a straight red and witnessing Dagg's post-tackle contortions on the big screen added an air of inevitability to proceedings.
Israel Dagg of the Crusaders is tackled high by Chance Peni of the Brumbies. Photo / Getty Images
Then the word came down from on high from TMO Ian Smith. "No excessive force, yellow card." Excuse me? Apart from knocking someone senseless with a concealed weapon, what could possibly constitute excessive force in Smith's eyes?
Peni's subsequent five-week suspension should be a cause of massive embarrassment for Smith and Peyper, who is experienced enough and certainly competent enough to ignore such wrong-headed advice.
As it happened, the stupidity of Peni's 10-minute sanction was brought into sharp relief midway through a dire second spell when Barrett was binned for a lineout infraction on his own line.
With the caveat that the Crusaders had been warned about giving away penalties, the driving lineout maul is one of those idiosyncratically technical rugby mysteries. Defending them legally is notoriously difficult.
Here lies the contradiction: Peni is given 10 minutes for maiming a human; Barrett is given 10 minutes for getting his timing slightly wrong.
Three minutes later Ryan Crotty – who was himself a victim of a late, no-arms tackle in the first half – was also sent to the naughty chair, this time for offside. He was bang to rights, no argument (though, again, it's preposterous to grade this offence as equivalent to Peni's).
If the story of this match ended there, it would warrant further discussion, but it got a whole lot weirder. The Crusaders did what any good, cynical side would do in the situation. They milked every possible second off the clock. Their reconfigured forward pack played the Peyper perfectly, forcing scrum reset after reset.
Full marks to them and, I guess, if the Brumbies had shown even a skerrick of nous, the result might have changed.
The double sinbinning not only ruined the spectacle but in a perverse way made things simpler for the Crusaders. They were forced into total shutdown. It led me to wonder if players from the same team serving time for professional fouls – as Barrett's and Crotty's were deemed – should be made to sit them consecutively rather than concurrently, with the exception of the match's final 10 minutes.
Scott Barrett looking remorseful after his yellow card during the Super Rugby match. Photo / Photosport
You could argue that it nullifies the numerical advantage – 14 v 15 is easier to counteract than 13 v 15 – but it in this case it would have significantly increased the time the Crusaders were short-handed.
Anyway, it's just a thought, and it might not work, but it would be worthwhile trialling it to see if farces like Saturday can be avoided in future.
As it was, the Crusaders deserved the win, Peni deserves every day of his five-week suspension, and the match officials deserve every bit of our incredulity.
Speaking of the Crusaders, one of the biggest contributors to the ongoing success of the franchise is sensible haircuts.
I confess I wasn't really across this angle until reading the letters to the Herald yesterday.
I know, I know, but I cannot help it. The letters page is fresh dung, I'm the blowfly. I land on it and gorge myself on the effluent of middle New Zealand, and Tuesday proved particularly nutritious.
"After such a dreadful season the Blues players should be made to shave their heads in penance," wrote Jock MacVicar of Hauraki. "This would allow them more time to concentrate on the game than worrying about their fancy hairstyles and stop them thinking they are rock stars."
Jock's misery had company. Bruce Elliott of St Heliers opined: "Their brand of rugby is best described as uninspiring mediocrity and clearly the only person missing from their support crew and considerable entourage is a good hairdresser."
I have spent some time contemplating the plight of the Blues. My thoughts have traversed the usual bullet points from substandard administration, to average coaching, to misguided squad selection, to poor culture, all the way to a very real disconnect between the city and all rugby between school and the All Blacks.
And yet all along the answer was staring me in the face – bad haircuts.
This is a topic too important and frankly too big for one person so look out next week when we get our best data experts to carefully analyse the sort of haircuts that create winning Super Rugby teams.
It will be cutting edge journalism.
Kara Pryor of the Blues and his long flowing locks. Photo / Photosport
THE WEEK IN MEDIA ...
Thoroughly enjoyed this piece from former Manawatu Standard sports editor Peter Lampp on a tragic All Black figure you've probably never heard of.
On a similar theme, I wrote a piece for Anzac Day, looking back at the short and largely forgotten life of double All Black Bill Carson. In return I received the following note from another New Zealand sports journalism stalwart, Lynn McConnell, which is reproduced in abridged form below and gives some fascinating insight into Carson the man and also the three-degrees-of-separation principle.
(It also confirmed to me just how lucky New Zealand was to have journalists like Lampp and McConnell – and scores of others I could mention – on regional sports desks around the country and what a crying shame the enfeebling of those desks is, a drum I have banged before.)
"I don't know if you were aware but Bill Carson featured strongly in my book Galatas 1941: Courage in Vain. I had that Carman book from my boyhood, it was going cheap in the back of the Cricket Almanack one year so I bought it. Carson remained an ongoing fascination to me.
"When I was researching Galatas I came across a report in the NZ Observer, it was actually a copy of a letter he had written home after getting off Crete, and a fascinating letter in itself, but there was one comment in it that said: 'I was in the big battle on Sunday night.' That gave me the link that he was involved in the centrepiece of my story the bayonet charge to retake Galatas. More research provided a letter written after the war by one of the men who served in his group known as 'Carson's Rangers' who operated in and around Galatas and who accounted for the death of more than 100 Germans. The information had never been published before.
"But long story short, my daughter is now married to a great nephew of Bill Carson and that was where I accessed the letter about Carson's Crete feats and other archival material - it really is a small world.
"Also it gave me access to his letters from the 1937 tour. It was interesting to learn that he suffered ankle damage while playing deck sports on the way over and it troubled him for the first two-thirds of the tour. It was only then that tour manager Tom Lowry sent him to a Harley Street specialist he knew. His recovery after that was rapid to the point where he started bowling and was regarded as second only to Jack Cowie in the speed he mustered. A look at the tour records showed how successful he was with his bowling in the latter stages of the tour.
