This year's Super 14 raised an intriguing question. Where are out X-factor players and our innovative coaches? Paul Lewis seeks an answer.
Juan de Jongh shimmied at the Waratahs lock; a hint of a movement left. The forward, Kane Douglas, bought it. Like a rocket, the diminutive de Jongh stepped right, accelerating.
As fullback Kurtley Beale came at him, de Jongh feinted left, ccentuating the bluff with the top half
of his body. The bottom half of his body launched him with a blistering, at-pace sidestep. Beale, no mean stepper himself, was done like a Christmas turkey.
The goal line, which had been about 40m away, was now close. De Jongh was at top speed, a cover defender steaming towards him to make the trysaving tackle. A more subtle sidestep this time, just a drift and a little stab off the left foot. He went over for the try in the tackle of two more desperate defenders. It was over in the blink of an eye; five men beaten. . . The Waratahs, one of the best defensive teams in the Super 14, had been cut into small, packaged slices.
In these rugby days of massed defences and recycled possession, it was a stunning try. With it, de Jongh marked himself as someone able to provide the unexpected; to make space for himself through sheer elusiveness; to employ the X-factor that can crack open a game. His was the only try of the match.
After de Jongh scored, the nagging thought arose about players in New Zealand rugby who could have scored that try. Five minutes passed. Still thinking. Ten minutes gone. Then 15. Maybe four: Dan Carter (on a good day - and he'd almost certainly need to employ that ramrod fend as well), Sitiveni Sivivatu and Lelia Masaga. Ma'a Nonu is another.
Masaga has the ability to crack defences but let's face it - he'll not be in an All Black first XV any time soon because so much store is placed in a winger's ability to be an extra fullback these days. Catching and kicking often seem more important than creating or scoring tries.
So where are New Zealand's Xfactor players? Why are we not producing them as much as we used to? Part of the reason is depth - or the lack of it - in New Zealand rugby and the injury toll hitting so hard now. But that is too pat to be a full explanation.
Another element is the fact that New Zealand rugby has become patterned; almost homogenous. There is so much emphasis on the many and varied aspects of the modern game that the art of beating a man (or men, in these days of massed defences) has been overlooked.
Even more likely is that players like de Jongh are not selected because a coach will feel his place would be better given to a bigger man, who can break a tackle, make an offl oad, compete at the breakdown and not be a target for the opposition when they have the ball and look for a weak link.
De Jongh is out of a different mould to most New Zealand midfi elders. He is small, slight and not a particularly effective defender. But he can run like a scalded cat and Super 14s - and World Cups, come to that - are won by scoring tries. Players who can break deadlocks are invaluable.
Where are ours? It's hard not to feel that the modern game; modern coaches; have moved past such players in New Zealand. The percentages rule, the statistics are the Newest Testament, science overshadows art.
Most of the blame for that has to go to the rules of the game - which have produced today's rugby leaguelike string of players across the field; marshalled by an equal and opposing string of defenders. As the role of all players has grown to include duties like cleaning out, foraging at the breakdown and a far greater emphasis on defence, so the days of the specialists have dimmed.
Try-scorers like Masaga have given way to the percentage players. They are luxuries no one feels able to afford.
"We do not have many players these days who can beat people on the ground, with their feet," said former All Black coach John Hart, who added a fi fth player to the list of locals who could have scored de Jongh's try - Conrad Smith ("at his best").
"I would say that skill development is not as high on the national agenda as it was. We are either not developing or not selecting people who can beat defenders with their feet, or with their hands - by passing the ball cleverly.
"We had a lot more players like that in the '80s and '90s," said Hart, acknowledging that the game had changed since them. "Then, we had players 1-15 who could play beautifully with the ball and I do not think we have that these days. I think our skill level has been diminished by trying to play the game physically."
Hart points to the South African development. Two or three years ago, South African forwards were physical lumps with little or no ball skills.
"It's changed now - their props and locks can run and pass. They are leaving us behind in some areas now."
There is also a strong feeling that our coaching has stood still. New Zealand was once one of rugby's leading innovators and thinkers. Now we seem to follow formulas. There is a strong sameness to the play of many of the New Zealand franchises.
We seem predictable and almost pre-ordained. Coaches like Colin Cooper, Ian Foster and even the up-and-coming Pat Lam have not found the answer with their teams.
Lam's Blues perhaps come closest to X-factor although their well-documented inability to win consistently rules them out as well.
Meanwhile, overseas, we have rugby brains like Robbie Deans, Warren Gatland, John Kirwan, John Plumtree, Vern Cotter and Joe Schmidt, Jono Gibbes (Leinster) and John Mitchell. You can't help but wonder what difference it might make to our rugby thinking if these guys were still coaching here.
New Zealand rugby looks in need of a big rethink right now.
Richard Loe has said in these columns in recent weeks that the scrum has been so thoroughly steeped in the ways of scrum coach Mike Cron that opponents now know what to expect. They seem also to know what to expect of our teams.
If you want a snapshot of New Zealand rugby right now, look no further than the tapes of the Bulls-Crusaders Super 14 semifinal. In a nutshell: a naive game plan; the inability to change said game plan; and some strange substitutions.
Crusaders coach Todd Blackadder is uniformly respected and has been mentioned as a future All Black coach, including by this writer. But the Crusaders' game plan against arguably the best side in the competition seemed disturbingly flawed.
Because the Crusaders had done well running the ball in the previous clash with the Bulls, the game plan appeared to be to take the ball wide. They did. Every time. The ball was routinely shunted along the Crusaders' attacking line, almost to the touch lines. There the Bulls defence, which had easily tracked the Crusaders across field, pounced. Half the time, the Crusaders ball-carrier was taken into touch.
So who has one of the best, if not the best, lineouts in the Super 14?
Why, that'd be the Bulls. Instead of taking the ball up the middle, pulling off some pick-and-drives; organising some rolling mauls and sucking in defenders, the Crusaders went at it singlemindedly. They got a single result, a loss. The one time they drove - from an attacking set piece - they scored a try to their best player, Richie McCaw. But that was it. Back they went, shovelling the ball along the line while the Bulls defenders tracked it, like sharks after a wounded seal.
McCaw had a brilliant game; perhaps the best No 7 game in the Super 14 this season. He not only did a fantastic job in the rucks and mauls, he was tigerish on defence and ran the ball up well, linking with his team-mates. But captaincy? When the game plan was not working, there was no change.
All right, he could have been under orders but the captain of the ship is the one who makes the decisions when the seas are running high. The Crusaders were in danger of foundering under their own efforts to bust through the waves of Bulls defenders. They never looked like beating the Bulls - even if you put to one side the train smash that was Stu Dickinson's refereeing.
It was unhappily reminiscent of a certain quarter-final in 2007. About 20 minutes from the end, Blackadder tugged prop Owen Franks and lock Brad Thorn off the field, replacing them with Wyatt Crockett and Chris Jack.
The result? The scrum went backwards. Lost the lineouts, mostly lost the battle in the rucks and mauls, lost the kicking duels and the scrum - which had previously got the upper hand - was de-knackerised. It seemed an appalling decision, unless injury had intervened.
Time for a re-think?
