Bright idea

Rugby double-headers should be a fixture in sports schedules.

The transtasman rugby double-header featuring the Black Ferns and All Blacks was one of those nifty innovations that prompt the question: why didn’t someone think of this years ago?

Having watched the Wallaroos and Wallabies get cleaned up on their home patch, Australian fans may not share the view that the double-header is an idea whose time has come. However, the players themselves will – or at least should – welcome the opportunity for redemption presented by this weekend’s rematches.

Both games in Sydney were decent tests, not the cakewalks the scoreboard may have suggested. Although the Ferns’ back play left something to be desired, the forwards were on song, with hooker and captain Fiao’o Fa’amausili adding to her legend by scoring a hat-trick of tries. This remarkable player almost makes Richie McCaw seem like a flash in the pan: she began her first-class career last century, turns 38 next month and has been to five World Cups, picking up a winner’s medal at four of them.

The All Blacks’ preparation was disturbed by Vaea Fifita’s claim that coach Steve Hansen had been economical with the truth when explaining why the Hurricanes forward was left out of the squad for the Rugby Championship. Hansen indicated that Fifita, whom the All Black selectors see as a blindside flanker but the Hurricanes used at lock, needed an extended run in provincial rugby in his preferred position to rebuild his confidence. Fifita, though, seized on the apparent anomaly of Highlanders lock Jackson Hemopo making the squad as a blindside flanker as evidence the big chief had spoken with a forked tongue.

Hansen may have been left to reflect that no good deed goes unpunished and, rather than trying to soften the blow, he should’ve simply said Fifita’s recent output hasn’t been up to All Blacks

standard.