Nrl-raised Kiwis smash their Aussie comrades
There was a time when the Kiwis rugby league team lapped up the mud of Carlaw Park when it came to playing the Aussies. Carlaw and its rickety old grandstand, covered in concrete and apartments now, is a distant memory in upmarket Parnell, Auckland, a world away from rugby league’s hinterland.
Semi-industrial Te Papapa and Mt Smart with its all-weather surface is more rugby league’s decile and is where the Kiwis got it done last Saturday.
In the Carlaw days there were also New Zealand-based players from distant provinces such as the West Coast and Canterbury complementing a few Sydney-based professionals with bent noses always poised for a punch-up.
In the Kiwis’ last win there over the Aussies in 1985, it was an 18-0 shut-out.
Also at Carlaw, the South African league team downed the Kiwis 4-3 in a test. Today the South African Rhinos lose to teams such as Niue.
Nowadays, every Kiwis player is polished by playing in the NRL and the Kangaroos on the other side are mates in many cases and so less feared.
In support of my claim that the NRL has lost its vein of home-grown gold, a Kiwi who didn’t play in the test, Roger Tuivasa-sheck, was named the Dally M player of the season. And the Kangaroos looked bereft without their departed stars of Cameron Smith, Billy Slater, Cooper Cronk, Johnathan Thurston and Paul Gallen.
To make Saturday’s win even more satisfying, it was accomplished by a team of New Zealand loyalists who hadn’t jumped ship to join the Tongan sea of red.
The Tongan team might be some sort of fairytale, but rugby league’s rules are too loose when players who are New Zealanders and Aussies can flit off to another team on a whim. And a year later they can flit back if they feel like it.
Captain Dallin Watene-zelezniak, wearing Tuivasa-sheck’s fullback jersey, could have donned the Tongan red, and could play for Poland. But he chose to stick with his Nga¯ ruawa¯ hia roots, even after 18 years in Sydney.
With the demise of the provincial leagues and most of the best playing in Australia, New Zealand seems short of coaches and referees likely to foot it as professionals. In the Carlaw days, the Kiwis were always coached by a Kiwi.
Their only other other Aussie coach has been Daniel Anderson from 2003 to 2005.
The sole New Zealand referee in the NRL is Henry Perenara, a cousin of All Blacks TJ Perenara and Sonny Bill Williams.
The national team is coached by an Aussie, Michael Maguire, the test was reffed by Aussie Ashley Klein and presided over by the Bunker with its 57 TV monitors in suburban Sydney.
And still the Kiwis got the job done, despite the dodgy knock-on call from the Bunker, which denied another try.
As the Kangaroos raced in for two late tries against the run of play, it seemed they would emulate the All Blacks’ burglary in Pretoria. It was why it had me thinking when the Kiwis led 26-12, where is the droppie Mr Johnson?
Then it twigged, converted tries in league are six-pointers.
It has always been odd that NRL teams never pass the ball across field when fielding kickoffs, but Watene-zelezniak sensibly did, utilising the space the Roos didn’t shut down.
As for the rest, the Kiwis just employed the ‘‘smash ‘em bro’’ tactic and the 26-24 scoreline did not reflect the smashing victory.
Tough times for Turbos
Manawatu¯ Rugby’s board under chairman Tim Myers has big calls to make after the Turbos’ underwhelming season in which they finished 13th of 14 teams.
The board has still to churn over the reviews of the Turbos team and initiate repairs, but there is the wider game in the province to mull over too.
Supporters could plainly see the quality of play, starting up front, was a factor in the seven defeats.
Since returning to the premiership after 2015, the Turbos have won only 11 of their 30 matches and last reached the semifinals in 2014.
This season they conceded an average 37.1 points a game, as against 28.7 last year and 26.6 in 2016. Points scored were 18.8, down from the mid 20s in the other two seasons.
Given the calibre of Turbos players, that must change. Over the season the playing structure wavered, tries were leaked too easily, the scrum was seldom steady enough, the ball was turned over and honourable defeats became the benchmark.
The Manawatu¯ policy has always been to promote local players, which must be fundamental, and then to go to the market if there isn’t anyone in that position. Shrewd recruiting is probably an art.
There might be a need to utilise specialist coaches on part-time wages. The Turbos had only two coaches this year, while most teams had extra specialists spilling out of their coaches box.