Rugby: Try-less tragedy plumbs depths

By Wynne Gray

The list of Super 12 shockers is growing at a disconcerting rate this season.

The 12-all draw between the Auckland Blues and Queensland Reds became the latest entry and earned an unwanted place in the series' history.

Since the 1996 start of the Southern Hemisphere tournament there have been 229 matches, and Saturday's game at Albany was the first without a single try.

A crowd of about 16,000 came to watch the "sexy, one-stop, entertainment shop," as NZRFU chief executive David Moffett marketed the series this season, but left grumbling and dissatisfied.

The game coincided with the Bee Gees concert on the other side of Auckland, so the match marketeers used some of the famous band's music to accompany the football. Tragedy was first on the sound system - it described the match to perfection.

Sanzar officials should have been waiting outside the turnstiles offering the crowd refunds or a free pass to another game. It should also be debated whether either side should keep their two points for a draw.

The only excitement came in the final three minutes, which contained a missed Reds penalty for Nathan Spooner, two promising Joeli Vidiri runs which ended in errors and a Carlos Spencer drop goal which just slewed wide for what would have been a Blues victory.

Before that came dross and plenty of it. There was some commendable work, too, but it was lost in the bundle of bungles. Referee Tappe Henning made a few odd calls in his 25 penalty rulings, though that number was not excessively high.

But watching more than 40 scrums called for a multitude of infringements and an unacceptable error rate was coma-inducing stuff. The match was so stop-start that Robin Brooke, starting his first game after injury, said he had no trouble with the pace of the match.

With Spencer and Spooner kicking frequently from those set pieces, and often without any great skill, there was little spectacle. The kickfest brought some crowd complaints about temporary blindness after looking up into the glare of the floodlights all evening.

There was also some discussion about whether a press conference was warranted because there had not been a game. This discontent may seem excessive and protracted, but it reflects the evening.

All sorts of reasons have been given for the year's entertainment decline - insistence that referees rule more stringently, changes to rule interpretations, especially in scrums and breakdowns, and even greater emphasis on defence.

A mix of factors can be blamed, but the skill level in this game was much worse than any of the other weekend offerings.

The Blues will take heart from a solid scrum, but their rearranged backline was scratchy.

After the late hamstring-induced withdrawal of Craig Innes, the new midfield combination of Rua Tipoki and Marc Ellis never looked settled in attack, which may explain Spencer's inclination to kick.

"We are a side obviously that has forgotten how to win," lamented coach Jed Rowlands. "We should have been able to beat a side which did not do much."