Silver Linings From Australia's Miserable Weekend Of Super Rugby

Jamie Wall searches for positives from Australia’s Super Rugby weekend from hell.

The weekend of 8th-11th July 2016 was not a good one for Australian rugby. Every one of their Super Rugby sides conspiring to lose last weekend, and in most cases lose horribly.

Gallingly, four of the losses were to New Zealand sides. The highest-ranked Australian team (Brumbies) were torched by the lowest-ranked New Zealand side (Blues).

But as they say in every hackneyed after match speech, there are positives to be taken out of even the most embarrassing collection of L’s. They might be minute as Phil Kearns’ sense of impartiality, but every cloud has a silver lining, right?

Brumbies (lost to the Blues 15-40): After finding themselves down 14-0 after 10 minutes, the men from Canberra did manage to execute a pretty effective Plan B. Their lineout drive bore an encouraging penalty try, however the Blues simply went back to giving them a hiding soon after. On the bright side, their away jerseys looked quite smart.

Reds (lost to the Chiefs 5-50): Just over 18,000 people presumably paid money to attend this game, which is a pretty good crowd for a team that has been a steaming pile of effluent for the last few seasons. Considering it was in Brisbane, a great deal of them would’ve been New Zealanders, but at least the Reds won’t be in the red from gate receipts.

Rebels (lost to the Crusaders 26-85): Ironically, the team that got thumped the worst actually produced the best Australian highlight of the weekend. However, the celebration by Reece Hodge quickly turned into a grimace as he realises he’s only cut the deficit to 55 points. The Rebels also had the distinction of scoring the most points by an Aussie side (despite giving up the third-highest total in competition history).

Waratahs (lost to the Hurricanes 17-28): In the closest loss of the round the Waratahs managed to stumble upon an example of how the Tahs’ and Wallabies’ game plan should work on a more regular basis: give the damn ball to Israel Folau.

Force (lost to the Stormers 3-22): The Force managed to play out an entire 80 minutes without once doing anything even remotely memorable, other than almost making the Stormers seem exciting.

Five losses with an aggregate score of 225-66. But thanks to the generosity of the Super Rugby conference system, at least one of these teams – either the Brumbies or the Waratahs – is going to the playoffs. Hope is still alive.