Super Rugby: 5 Things we learnt from Round 1

Five things we learned from Round 1:

1     Two of the great things about Super Rugby are that the competition between teams is so tight that any team can beat any other team on any given day, and that – unlike in many competitions – winning away from home can happen frequently. Six of the seven Round One games were won by visiting teams, with at least four of those wins being achieved by teams considered underdogs.

2     Lyndon Bray’s instruction to referees that the ball is “to be put into the middle of the scrum” has not been taken seriously by his referees. And do his referees believe him when he says that “the standing up of front-row players is not a penalisable offence”?

3     If other teams imitate the slowing-down, time-wasting delays causing the pedestrian non-spectacle imposed on opponents, spectators, and TV viewers by the Western Force on Sunday, rugby will suffer as a spectator and TV attraction.

4    The Chiefs 19-year old debutant flyhalf / first five-eighth Damian McKenzie is the real deal. A prodigious talent, he has ball-playing and decision-making and distribution skills, varies his game astutely, is physically strong, defensively courageous, and an accurate goal-kicker. His timing is sharp, and that’s not an asset easily coached if it’s not intuitively there.

5    Sports fans love to pick competition favourites even before a tournament starts. If you had to choose Super Rugby favourites after Round One of the 18 rounds, you’d probably go for the Brumbies and Chiefs, wouldn’t you?  But it’s too early to make accurate predictions.