Try as England might, they couldn’t beat cunning Kiwis

The All Blacks landed in Dublin yesterday, mightily relieved to have avoided defeat through an escape route they had used only once before in 30 years.

Mon, 12 Nov, 2018 - 04:28

By Peter Jackson

The All Blacks landed in Dublin yesterday, mightily relieved to have avoided defeat through an escape route they had used only once before in 30 years.

Nobody could remember for sure when New Zealand last won a Test, despite being outscored on tries, as happened at at Twickenham on Saturday, against England, the world champions scraping home by the skin of their teeth.

No All Black team had lost on tries and won on points in almost 200 internationals, not since July, 2004, one week after a largely unknown American, Todd Hamilton, did a two-legged reprise of Tipperary Tim and won the Open Golf championship, at Troon, against all the odds.

Tana Umaga’s team beat the Springboks 23-21, despite conceding three times as many tries as they scored, their first such win since 1990.

Had a hairline offside ruling from the South African TMO gone the other way, England, too, would have out-tried them 3-1, with time running out, not that any win is guaranteed, given the unfathomable Kiwi capacity for retrieving lost causes.

Amid a downpour that threatened to turn Twickenham into a gigantic, 21st century version of Noah’s Ark, the decision that did more than any other to turn the tide belonged not to the man in the van, Marius Jonker, but to one on the field, Kieran Read, then 36 minutes into the action.

For most of that time, his team had been pummelled from pillar to post by a super-charged England, first stretched beyond breaking point out-wide, then smashed into submission by a 12-man drive.

Fifteen points down, a lesser team would have been happy to take the guaranteed three points from a penalty in front of the posts and seek refuge in the dressing-room.

Instead, Read opted for a scrum. Owen Farrell would twice spurn shots at goal to go for the corner. Australia’s Michael Hooper would do precisely the same against Wales in Cardiff. All four gambles dissolved into nothing.

Read knew he had the precision tools at his disposal for the job, a luxury that reduced the risk factor inherent in rejecting three points to go for seven.

When England tried to do the same, the airborne Brodie Retallick sabotaged their line-out from a great height.

Australia literally threw their advantage away, sparing Wales the bother of finding a jumper with the altitude skills of New Zealand’s elastic second row.

At the end of a grim, try-less duel, Hooper knew, in hindsight, that he had made the wrong call.

The same could be said of Farrell, given the narrowest possible losing margin. In contrast, Read’s foresight enabled the All Blacks to find a way back against impressive opponents, to trust their instincts, and Beauden Barrett’s goal-kicking, and to edge a terrific Test match.

In doing so, Read had climbed another Himalayan peak, his 100th international win from 116 matches, making him eminently qualified to collect the shield named after New Zealand’s ultimate mountaineer, Sir Edmund Hillary.

As the best in the business thrust ever upwards, reaching towards their Everest of a World Cup hat-trick in Japan next year, Saturday, in Dublin, would be just the time and place to blow them off course.

Confusion reigns but ref clearly got it wrong

The ritual Monday morning inquests into a fraught weekend open beneath clouds of confusion thick enough to justify borrowing a phrase from Charles Dickens in Oliver Twist: “The law is an ass.’’

It comes to quite something when a Test match referee gives the clear impression of not knowing the law. When Samu Kerevi flattened Leigh Halfpenny in Cardiff on Saturday night, the Welsh crowd howled in anger at the Wallaby centre getting clean away with a tackle as late as it was dangerous.

The man in charge, New Zealander Ben O’Keefe, waved play on and provoked still more outrage by awarding Australia a penalty. When Wales captain Alun-Wyn Jones asked why no action had been taken in respect of his battered full back, O’Keefe told him: ‘’It’s not a deliberate act of foul play.’’

Officials are given this instruction on Law 10.4 (e) in respect of dangerous tackles: ‘’Referees should not make their decision based on what they consider was the intention of the offending player.’’

Kerevi may not have intended Halfpenny harm but his actions were, at best, reckless, demanding a penalty and, at the least, a yellow card. Yet here was an example of a Test referee seeing the offence and failing to recognise it.

Jacques Garces’ volte face having awarded Sam Underhill’s try at Twickenham prompted one retired South African referee to accuse another of the wrong decision. Jonathan Kaplan, once the world’s most-capped official, claimed that the TMO, his compatriot Marius Jonker, had made a mistake in ruling Courtney Lawes off-side at the ruck before charging down TJ Perenara’s kick.

Kaplan argued that, contrary to World Rugby guidelines decreeing that “the infringement must be clear and obvious”, it was nothing of the kind and that Underhill had scored a ‘fair’ try.

This also happens to be the same Kaplan who pronounced the previous week that Australian referee Angus Gardner had blundered in not penalising Farrell for his contentious tackle on the Springbok Andre Esterhuizen.

Farrell’s subsequent clearance suggested that Kaplan, not Gardner, had got it wrong.

Little wonder confusion reigns.

Rugby players who tried to make it in film

Hollywood directors Steven Spielberg and Martin Scorsese were nowhere to be seen at Twickenham on Saturday, each appearing to resist any professional curiosity over Eddie ‘Indiana’ Jones’ call for his England team to turn themselves into ‘film stars.’ Rugby players and the silver screen have not been mutually exclusive over the years.

Back in the late 1950s, young Tony O’Reilly’s dazzling performanes for Ireland and the Lions reputedly earned him an audition for a part in the Hollywood epic Ben Hur. Charlton Heston got the gig, instead.

At the same time, Rex Richards, a one-cap Welsh scrum-half from the mid-1950s, had an audition for Tarzan, but failed to make the cut. He wound up instead in Wild Women of Wonga, a movie later unsportingly placed among the 50 worst of all time.

The late Ray Gravell, a card-carrying member of Equity, after calling time on his career as a crash-ball centre for Wales and the Lions, featured in more than one motion picture, appearing with Jeremy Irons and Miranda Richardson in the Louis Malle film Damage.

Overworked Argentina top of the tackle table

Of all the tackles made in all six weekend Tests, three Argentinians are among the top four, proof of how hard the Pumas had to work on their damage-limitation exercise against Ireland.

Tighthead Santiago Medrano tops the table with 25, one ahead of second row compatriot Matias Alemanno and England’s Sam Underhill, two ahead of the Pumas other lock, Tomas Lavanini.

All Blacks’ name makes Marler blue

So Joe Marler, England’s newly retired prop, thinks any reference to New Zealand as All Blacks gives them a psychological edge, an intimidatory aura of supremacy.

In his wisdom, spoilsport Joe would like the phrase to be banned.

On the same theme, he would presumably wish the Boston Red Sox to be called boring old Boston stripped of any mention of their colourful stockings.

As for Manchester United, well perhaps there ought to be a law against calling them the Red Devils. What a load of baloney…