ANALYSIS: Are the Rebels the most cynical team?
Jan de Koning looks beyond the scoreline to find the reasons for the most stupefying comeback and a lopsided penalty count of Super Rugby’s Week Five.
Rebels coach Dave Wessels reacted with incredulous wonderment when questioned about his team’s penalty count in the 33-36 loss to the Lions in Johannesburg at the weekend.
The Rebels, one of the most penalised teams in the competition, conceded 20 penalties and the Lions just one.
“That is an amazing stat, I have never seen a stat like that in my life,” Wessels told a post-match media briefing.
However, this game was not an anomaly!
It appears to be a dernier cri – conceded penalties rather than tries.
And it was the second successive week that the Rebels conceded two yellow cards.
In their 29-26 win over the Brumbies in Melbourne the week before, they also had two players sin-binned – as their penalty count stacked up into double figures.
In fact in every game this season they have conceded 10 or more penalties and now stand on an astonishing 53 penalties after just four games.
That is an average of more than 13 penalties per game.
Their four yellow cards are also equal tops with the Sunwolves.
In fact, a painstaking review of the match suggests they were rather fortunate not to have had more players in the sin bin.
It begs the question: ‘Was referee Egon Seconds disinclined to punish them to the full extent of the law?’
Given the extraordinary number of warnings issued by Seconds against the Rebels, especially in the second half, one has to be skeptical.
Captain Dane Haylett-Petty came the closest to credibility and honesty with his post-match answer: “A little bit ill-discipline in that second half put us under pressure.”
There is another reason for the Rebels extraordinary implosion and the Lions’ comeback.
The travel factor!
Despite modern methods and vastly improved approaches to long-haul travel, the body still needs to adjust to the new time zone – mostly at the rate of one or two time zones per day.
The Rebels travelled across nine time zones.
They also play most of their games at sea level and having travelled from Australia to South Africa after a bruising Round Four encounter with the Brumbies the week before, Johannesburg’s altitude (1,753 metres) would have caught up with the Rebels in the second half.
And again Wessels hinted at one of the real reasons for the amazing turnaround: “They did a great job of using what they have, which is altitude.
“We were definitely run off our feet at the back end of the game. Credit to them for engineering that.”
Fatigue may have contributed to the lack of concentration and the declining discipline, but generally, there appears to be a trend with the Rebels when it comes to discipline – or a lack of it!
The Rebels will have less of a problem with fatigue when they meet the Sharks in Durban this coming Saturday – given that they had an additional week to acclimatise and are playing at sea level – but discipline is the one aspect that urgently requires attention.
By Jan de Koning
@king365ed
@rugby365com
