A new season and some old issues

It’s hard to believe we’re already on the countdown to another season, with a tasty little entree being served up in Wellington this weekend with the New Zealand leg of the International Sevens.

While Wellington is seen by many Kiwis as just one huge party (over 70 000 tickets for the two days sold out in less than half an hour), on the field itself it could be a pivotal tournament in what is developing as the tightest race in the Series' 13-year history.

Going into Wellington, New Zealand and Fiji share the lead with 51 points, with South Africa only three points adrift and just 19 points covering first place down to Samoa in 8th.

A sign of how important this tournament is being regarded by the New Zealand Union has come with All Black Hosea Gear being allowed time out from his Super Rugby preparations with the Highlanders to bolster the New Zealand squad.

Clearly they’re already thinking of the Olympic Sevens in four years' time, and it’s going to be fascinating to see how many big guns are encouraged into the sevens ranks around the world.

New Zealand's coach, Gordon Tietjens, who is in his 19th year in charge, has learned that you can’t just throw some rock star out of the fifteen a side ranks into Sevens and expect automatic success, as he found out one year in Wellington when he was given the use of Jonah Lomu and Christian Cullen.

They had been great Sevens players in their youth, but coming straight out of Super Rugby preparations they were not in Sevens mode, certainly not conditioned and fit to the standards set by the likes of Tietjens and Paul Treu, and they and the New Zealand team bombed out.

But I think you can take it that there’ll be a bit more crossovers in the next few years, with the likes of Liam Messam coming into the frame for an Olympic sevens bid.

Anyway, it should be a great weekend, and it really does look wide open with three different teams winning the tournaments so far, and the likes of Wales and France looking a bit stronger than in the past.

New Zealand had a shocker in Dubai, but bounced back to snatch victory in PE at the expense of the Blitzbokke, who will be desperate to avenge that loss and win in Wellington for the first time since 2002.

There have been all sorts of issues to chew over during the off-season, most notably the appointment of new coaches for the All Blacks and Springboks and the ongoing fallout from the World Cup.

No matter how much Sanzar referees boss Lyndon Bray tries to sugar coat it, it is clear Bryce Lawrence is being kept out of South Africa this year for fear of inflaming post World Cup discontent, and at worst putting his wellbeing in jeopardy. He has also been told he needs to sort a few things out before he can contemplate refereeing tests again.

I have no desire to pour petrol on this issue....I stand by what I wrote after the quarterfinal in Wellington. Where Lawrence got it wrong was in opting not to impose any authority at the breakdown. For fear of making the wrong decisions, he ended up not making any. He did this, I am sure, to try and avoid controversy but succeeded in doing the complete opposite.

His inaction played into Australia’s hands because they had David Pocock, and South Africa did not have Heinrich Brüssow, who, along with Richie McCaw, are the only players in world rugby capable of matching or bettering the Wallaby number 7.

Had Brussow not gone off after aggravating a rib injury he took into the game I believe it could have been a different story, but without him the Boks had no counter to Pocock, who just helped himself, sometimes legally, sometimes not.

The Boks still had the winning of the game. They certainly had enough possession to win comfortably, but blew two tries through forward passes and gave away a needless lineout penalty that ultimately cost them the match.

I am certainly not defending Bryce Lawrence and I can understand South Africa’s angst....we have felt it more than you at World Cups. But to suggest that this was all part of some conspiracy to make life easier for the All Blacks.....now that I will argue until I’m blue in the face..

With all due respect to the Springboks, the team New Zealanders least wanted to face in that tournament was Australia, because they felt that the man most capable of unhinging the All Blacks was Robbie Deans.

His Wallabies had beaten the All Blacks two out of the last three times they’d played them, and Kiwi delight at seeing Ireland beat the Wallabies in pool play quickly gave way to trepidation with the realisation that they had been thrown onto the All Blacks side of the draw. A semifinal defeat to Australia was the worst possible scenario.

If any team had it easy it was France, who lost to New Zealand and Tonga in the pool, beat a scappy England side in the quarters and only had to beat 14 players to get past the luckless Welsh.

But back to Bryce Lawrence.

Although he said he would quite like to have gone and faced the music, it is probably for the best he not go to South Africa for a while, just as it was wise to keep Wayne Barnes away from New Zealand for 18 months after 2007 until things had calmed down a bit.

But the fact that such measures have had to be taken does not reflect all that well on either of our countries.

I realise this is a sensitive topic to be broaching in my first column of the year, and I did think about leaving it alone altogether, but it’s my job to give a Kiwi perspective and so I have.

I look forward to writing about more positive stuff in the coming months as we head into season 2012.