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Australians are quite right to be complaining about Samipeni Finau

Samipeni Finau of New Zealand charges forward during The Rugby Championship & Bledisloe Cup match between the New Zealand All Blacks and the Australia Wallabies at Forsyth Barr Stadium on August 05, 2023 in Dunedin, New Zealand. (Photo by Joe Allison/Getty Images)

If I’m a little bloke, who’s not in possession of the ball, I shouldn’t expect to get cleaned up by Samipeni Finau.

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It’s pretty evident that the Chiefs’ blindside flanker can hit. And, as any rugby player knows, they’re not the guys you want to run at.

But as Finau’s body of work builds, a trend is developing of him collecting guys late.

If Finau wants to return to the All Blacks’ fold, we can’t have that.

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Penalties and cards have the potential to decide test matches and Finau appears a candidate for both right now.

Rugby is a contact sport and, as we seek to minimise head contact in particular, we’ve lessened the target area for tacklers.

Finau seems to be hitting the target just fine. He’s wrapping his arms and keeping his shoulder away from people’s chins.

It’s just that some of the people he’s hitting have already passed to a support player.

Forgive me if I’m wrong about that, but the vision seems pretty conclusive.

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Except maybe for those blinded by their New Zealand eyepatch.

I see and read that they’re whinging about Finau in Australia because their Super Rugby Pacific franchises don’t possess a hitter of his calibre.

That the types of tackles he’s affecting are commonplace in rugby league, for instance, and that Finau is the long-awaited successor to the great Jerome Kaino.

All right, let’s pick that apart a bit.

When I think of Kaino, I think of him lurking down a blindside. I see a man of similar stature carrying the ball towards him and that player being levelled.

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In my mind’s eye, I don’t see Kaimo flying out of the line to hit a little bloke who’s not holding the ball anymore.

This type of hit was once a staple of the NRL, as retired halfback Andrew Johns well knows.

A neck injury forced Johns to give the game away prematurely, partly as a result of being blindsided by late hits.

As any fan of the Sydney Roosters knows, the laws have been changed to try and eliminate playmakers being hit without the ball. Nevertheless, Roosters prop Jared Waerea-Hargreaves is penalised for that offence most weeks.

The point is, though, that penalties do now exist for hitting guys who’ve passed the ball, as well as support players who were once routinely taken out on the suspicion – as they often referred to it – that they were about to receive the football.

If rugby folk in Australia are complaining about Finau, I think they’re doing it with some justification.

I admire his ability to hit and I commend the height at which he’s doing the hitting, I’m just dubious about his timing.

The game needs to protect players who are no longer in possession of the ball and I’d hope that, if Finau comes down on the wrong side of this fine line, he’s penalised appropriately.

In the meantime, a bit of coaching is required where Finau is concerned.

The highlights, if you can call them that, are out there. Opponents know he has the power and technique to whack them.

In that regard, running the ball at Finau has already become something people will shy away from.

But, if he is to be a legitimate weapon in the Chiefs’ and All Blacks’ arsenal, then the timing is critical.

Finau’s no good to any team on the sideline and you certainly wouldn’t want to see any opponent seriously hurt.

Thanks to one or two Aussies crying foul, there’s no doubt Finau’s technique and timing have now caught the attention of referees and Television Match Officials.

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Comments

31 Comments
I
Isaac 232 days ago

except ot wasnt late wasnt late at all so dont know why you all saying its late he commits early and its your fault fir not paying attention

L
Liam 234 days ago

Waawaawaaaaaaaa

j
john 235 days ago

Karma is a powerful force

A
Alister 235 days ago

The problem is the officiating & changing rulings,& TMOs.Last weekend I saw a 9 penalized for a crooked scrum feed! the last time I saw that rule applied was In about 1975!!!!!!!!.Late or not the incident is history & Australians alleging that Kiwi rugby supporters wear eye patches is a bit rich.Try listening to Australian Commentators.Every new player who has an above average game is suddenly the next great sensation.

N
Nickers 235 days ago

Finau is definitely operating on razor thin margins. He hasn’t done anything wrong… yet.

But a player going into contact 6 inches lower than he is expecting, without him even knowing, will end in disaster. You can imagine a situation where the pass dies on Edmed and he has to bend down a little lower to catch it at the last second. Finau’s hit would have been catastrophic. The margins are just too fine.

He needs to study how PSDT, at 6’7”, manages to drop his tackle height and exert just as much force with close zero danger of taking someone’s head off.

Given how poorly NZ has adapted to lower their tackle height, and that this issue which has plagued the ABs for years and played a big part in them not winning the World Cup, I thought NZR and all SR coaches would be prioritising sorting this issue out.

If I was Razor I would be on the phone to Clayton MacMillan and Samipeni Finau saying exactly that.

Finau is a monster and shaping up to be the closest thing to Kaino since Kaino, but I wouldn’t risk selecting him for the ABs at the moment.

M
Manu 235 days ago

Never read such tripe. He was hit just as he passed the ball which was reviewed and deemed legal by yes the Australian TMO and referee

J
Jasyn 235 days ago

Well let’s hope world rugby doesn't read some of this nonsense, because next on the agenda will be…“players will only tackle other players deemed to be in their weight class, and only with moderate velocity”.

s
sam 235 days ago

Great point. It would be terrible to have a card for poor tackling cost the all blacks a world cup. Oh hi all blacks captain Sam Cane, how you going?

D
David 236 days ago

well maybe he needs to be introduced to darcy swain then who never got anything much and put a cheifs ands allblack player out injured and made him miss a season recovering

d
dave 236 days ago

2 out of 3 were perfect. TMOs love jumping in on anything outside the law. The fact they saw nothing wrong speaks volumes. You want to see what a late blindside hit looks like, watch Kepu take out Carter in the 2015 World Cup final. Completely different to the Tah’s tackle.

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GrahamVF 17 minutes ago
Does South Africa have a future in European competition?

"has SA actually EVER helped to develop another union to maturity like NZ has with Japan," yes - Argentina. You obviously don't know the history of Argentinian rugby. SA were touring there on long development tours in the 1950's

We continued the Junior Bok tours to the Argentine through to the early 70's

My coach at Grey High was Giepie Wentzel who toured Argentine as a fly half. He told me about how every Argentinian rugby club has pictures of Van Heerden and Danie Craven on prominent display. Yes we have developed a nation far more than NZ has done for Japan. And BTW Sa players were playing and coaching in Japan long before the Kiwis arrived. Fourie du Preez and many others were playing there 15 years ago.


"Isaac Van Heerden's reputation as an innovative coach had spread to Argentina, and he was invited to Buenos Aires to help the Pumas prepare for their first visit to South Africa in 1965.[1][2] Despite Argentina faring badly in this tour,[2] it was the start of a long and happy relationship between Van Heerden and the Pumas. Izak van Heerden took leave from his teaching post in Durban, relocated to Argentina, learnt fluent Spanish, and would revolutionise Argentine play in the late 1960s, laying the way open for great players such as Hugo Porta.[1][2] Van Heerden virtually invented the "tight loose" form of play, an area in which the Argentines would come to excel, and which would become a hallmark of their playing style. The Pumas repaid the initial debt, by beating the Junior Springboks at Ellis Park, and emerged as one of the better modern rugby nations, thanks largely to the talents of this Durban schoolmaster.[1]"


After the promise made by Junior Springbok manager JF Louw at the end of a 12-game tour to Argentina in 1959 – ‘I will do everything to ensure we invite you to tour our country’ – there were concerns about the strength of Argentinian rugby. South African Rugby Board president Danie Craven sent coach Izak van Heerden to help the Pumas prepare and they repaid the favour by beating the Junior Springboks at Ellis Park.

147 Go to comments
J
JW 6 hours ago
Does South Africa have a future in European competition?

I rated Lowe well enough to be an AB. Remember we were picking the likes of George Bridge above such players so theres no disputing a lot of bad decisions have been made by those last two coaches. Does a team like the ABs need a finicky winger who you have to adapt and change a lot of your style with to get benefit from? No, not really. But he still would have been a basic improvement on players like even Savea at the tail of his career, Bridge, and could even have converted into the answer of replacing Beauden at the back. Instead we persisted with NMS, Naholo, Havili, Reece, all players we would have cared even less about losing and all because Rieko had Lowe's number 11 jersey nailed down.


He was of course only 23 when he decided to leave, it was back in the beggining of the period they had started retaining players (from 2018 onwards I think, they came out saying theyre going to be more aggressive at some point). So he might, all of them, only just missed out.


The main point that Ed made is that situations like Lowe's, Aki's, JGP's, aren't going to happen in future. That's a bit of a "NZ" only problem, because those players need to reach such a high standard to be chosen by the All Blacks, were as a country like Ireland wants them a lot earlier like that. This is basically the 'ready in 3 years' concept Ireland relied on, versus the '5 years and they've left' concept' were that player is now ready to be chosen by the All Blacks (given a contract to play Super, ala SBW, and hopefully Manu).


The 'mercenary' thing that will take longer to expire, and which I was referring to, is the grandparents rule. The new kids coming through now aren't going to have as many gp born overseas, so the amount of players that can leave with a prospect of International rugby offer are going to drop dramatically at some point. All these kiwi fellas playing for a PI, is going to stop sadly.


The new era problem that will replace those old concerns is now French and Japanese clubs (doing the same as NRL teams have done for decades by) picking kids out of school. The problem here is not so much a national identity one, than it is a farm system where 9 in 10 players are left with nothing. A stunted education and no support in a foreign country (well they'll get kicked out of those countries were they don't in Australia).


It's the same sort of situation were NZ would be the big guy, but there weren't many downsides with it. The only one I can think was brought up but a poster on this site, I can't recall who it was, but he seemed to know a lot of kids coming from the Islands weren't really given the capability to fly back home during school xms holidays etc. That is probably something that should be fixed by the union. Otherwise getting someone like Fakatava over here for his last year of school definitely results in NZ being able to pick the cherries off the top but it also allows that player to develop and be able to represent Tonga and under age and possibly even later in his career. Where as a kid being taken from NZ is arguably going to be worse off in every respect other than perhaps money. Not going to develop as a person, not going to develop as a player as much, so I have a lotof sympathy for NZs case that I don't include them in that group but I certainly see where you're coming from and it encourages other countries to think they can do the same while not realising they're making a much worse experience/situation.

147 Go to comments
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