Rugby: Mercurial Burke slays NZA

MELBOURNE - Matthew Burke returned to haunt New Zealand rugby on Saturday night, reproducing his dynamic form of 1998 as the Australian Barbarians beat New Zealand A 33-24 at Olympic Park.

Burke was one of several stand-out performers in the Barbarians' deserved three-tries-to-two victory against their "Second XV" opponents.

By scoring 23 of his team's points and having a strong all-round game, Burke rekindled memories of last year's Tri-Nations test against the All Blacks in Melbourne when he scored all Australia's points in their 24-16 win, the most by an individual against New Zealand in a test.

Burke, aged 26, was a key figure in Australia's other two transtasman wins last year before suffering a serious shoulder injury while scoring a try against the All Blacks in Sydney.

Following reconstructive surgery, he recently returned to the game and Saturday night's display is likely to see him replace Chris Latham for the Wallabies' Tri-Nations opener against South Africa in Brisbane next Saturday.

Burke criticised some missed goalkicks and second-half errors in his own game, but felt that was due to a lack of match fitness.

"Obviously I've still got to work on a few things but overall I've got to be happy with the way things went," he said.

"It was a great team performance and hopefully the good individual performances showed out. It was never going to be that Barbarians-style, free-flowing rugby but we gutsed it out when we had to."

The Barbarians' win was based on a powerful tight-five effort and superb tackling all over the park.

New Zealand A were not able to get over the advantage line around the fringes and their backline were consistently closed down further out.

"Their defence was superb. They were certainly up very flat in the midfield all night," New Zealand A coach Ross Cooper said.

"We won a couple of lineout balls off the top and we'd throw miss passes to [centre] Caleb Ralph and he'd still get the tackler at the same time as the ball. That was a bit of a concern, but I won't say any more than that."

However, Cooper conceded that his side had paid for a sloppy beginning to both halves and that they were lucky to trail only 9-13 at halftime after first five-eighths Carlos Spencer kept them in touch with his kicking.

"I think we gave them too much of a start really. We didn't settle down and keep hold of the ball in the first half. We had a lot of penalties for offside and some silly knock-ons," Cooper said.

"I have to pay credit to the experience factor in the Australian side, which punished us."

Cooper was pleased with his side's gritty comeback when trailing 9-30 early in the second half.

Powerful No 8 Isitolo Maka, who made an impact off the bench, scored from a blindside scrum move and from the following kickoff, blindside flanker Troy Flavell sprinted 40m after accepting a delightful pass by lock Ian Jones.

Spencer then trimmed the difference to 24-30 when he kicked a penalty after being tackled late by lock Tom Bowman. Bowman was sinbinned by replacement referee Wayne Erickson, who had taken over control of the match from Scott Young after Young suffered a leg injury.

"I thought the replacement referee made an impact on the game," Barbarians coach Eddie Jones said dryly.

Jones was rapt with his side's display, picking the front row of Glen Panoho, Phil Kearns and Andrew Blades as three to enhance their test selection chances, as well as Burke and second five-eighths Rod Kafer.

Cooper picked out Maka, Flavell and Spencer as New Zealand A's best performers. The return game is in Whangarei on July 25. - NZPA