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Brumbies all but end Waratahs finals hopes with commanding performance in Sydney

Tom Banks sizes up a gap for the Brumbies. (Photo by Cameron Spencer/Getty Images)

The Brumbies have secured Australian conference honours and finally put paid to the NSW Waratahs’ Super Rugby finals hopes with a comprehensive derby win at Bankwest Stadium.

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The Brumbies were never seriously threatened after piling on four unanswered first-half tries in a 35-24 victory on Saturday night that left the Canberrans nine points clear of the Melbourne Rebels and 14 ahead of the Waratahs entering the final round.

While the third-placed Brumbies will look to push for an all-important top-two spot with victory over the Queensland Reds in the national capital next Saturday, the Waratahs will head to Invercargill for a dead-rubber game against the Highlanders.

With his side’s title hopes shot after a season dogged by the Israel Folau saga, Waratahs coach Daryl Gibson can now at least rest his Test stars as per a pre-season pact with with Wallabies coach Michael Cheika.

Had the Tahs still been in finals contention next week, Gibson might well have been tempted to run the gauntlet.

As has become the norm in recent years, the Brumbies were too physical and clinical for the Waratahs, who yet again failed to back up after scoring an impressive win over the Rebels last week in Melbourne.

In a frustrating campaign for both the Waratahs and their fans alike, Gibson’s 2018 semi-finalists managed to string together successive wins just once.

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And they have notched only three wins from eight outing since Folau’s suspension and the subsequent sacking out Super Rugby’s all-time leading try-scorer for his controversial social media posts.

The Brumbies’ fourth successive derby win in Sydney also marked the end of an era for the Waratahs.

The London Irish-bound trio of Curtis Rona, Nick Phipps and Sekope Kepu have all played their last home games for NSW, while fellow Wallabies stars Kurtley Beale, Adam Ashley-Cooper and Bernard Foley are also off contract at the end of the season and weighing up their futures in Australia.

All but Rona featured in the Waratahs’ 2014 championship-winning team, leaving Gibson potentially facing a major overhaul before next year.

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The Brumbies had the match – and conference bragging rights – all but wrapped up at halftime.

Four tries in 18 minutes – to Rory Arnold, Andy Muirhead, Irae Simone and Folau Faingaa, all converted by skipper Christian Lealiifano – had the visitors up 28-3 at the break.

Replies from Phipps and Ashley-Cooper in the second half gave home fans a glimmer of hope before flanker Tom Cusack sealed victory with the Brumbies’ fifth try with five minutes remaining.

“I felt like we took our opportunities. We tried to play reasonably simple and our forward pack were really strong and it was nice to get a mixture of scores there,” Lealiifano said.

“So things are working really well. Top of the conference is nice.”

But the Waratahs denied the Brumbies a bonus point when Rona touched down after the fulltime siren.

“The Brumbies, like we spoke about all week, stuck to their guns and played a really dominant game there,” said Waratahs captain Michael Hooper.

“Their first half, their penalty to sideline to driving maul was clearly too hard to stop and credit to them – they’ve worked out a really strong way of playing.”

– AAP

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Flankly 1 hour ago
'Absolute madness': Clive Woodward rips into Borthwick in wake of NZ loss

Borthwick is supposed to be the archetypical conservative coach, the guy that might not deliver a sparkling, high-risk attacking style, but whose teams execute the basics flawlessly. And that's OK, because it can be really hard to beat teams that are rock solid and consistent in the rugby equivalent of "blocking and tackling".


But this is why the performance against NZ is hard to defend. You can forgive a conservative, back-to-basics team for failing to score tons of tries, because teams like that make up for it with reliability in the simple things. They can defend well, apply territorial pressure, win the set piece battles, and take their scoring chances with metronomic goal kicking, maul tries and pick-and-go goal line attacks.


The reason why the English rugby administrators should be on high alert is not that the English team looked unable to score tries, but that they were repeatedly unable to close out a game by executing basic, coachable skills. Regardless of how they got to the point of being in control of their destiny, they did get to that point. All that was needed was to be world class at things that require more training than talent. But that training was apparently missing, and the finger has to point at the coach.


Borthwick has been in the job for nearly two years, a period that includes two 6N programs and an RWC campaign. So where are the solid foundations that he has been building?

4 Go to comments
N
Nickers 1 hour ago
Scott Robertson responds to criticism over All Blacks' handling errors

Very poor understanding of what's going on and 0 ability to read. When I say playing behind the gain line you take this to mean all off-loads and site times we are playing in front of the gain line???


Every time we play a lot of rugby behind the gain line (for clarity, meaning trying to build an attack and use width without front foot ball 5m+ behind the most recent breakdown) we go backwards and turn the ball over in some way. Every time a player is tackled behind the most recent breakdown you need more and more people to clear out because your forwards have to go back around the corner, whereas opposition players can keep moving forward. Eventually you run out of either players to clear out or players to pass to and the result in a big net loss of territory and often a turnover. You may have witnessed that 20+ times in the game against England. This is a particularly dumb idea inside your own 40m which is where, for some reason, we are most likely to employ it.


The very best ABs teams never built an identity around attacking from poor positions. The DC era team was known for being the team that kicked the most. To engineer field position and apply pressure, and create broken play to counter attack. This current team is not differentiating between when a defence has lost it's structure and there are opportunities, and when they are completely set and there is nothing on. The reason they are going for 30 minute + periods in every game without scoring a single point, even against Japan and a poor Australian team, is because they are playing most of their rugby on the back foot in the wrong half.

43 Go to comments
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