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THE Australian Rugby Union giveth, the SANZAR judiciary has taken away.
No sooner had Western Force officials received a rare piece of good news, when they learned after their gallant loss to the Bulls on Saturday that the ARU had given them the green light to re-contract Scott Staniforth for another four matches, than the embattled Perth club was hit with a new blow.
Fellow winger Nick Cummins was suspended for two matches for a dangerous tackle. Force intends to appeal, claiming the incident in which Bulls replacement back Jacques-Louis Potgieter was lifted and dropped was not intentional and not on the same scale as the Sione Lauaki tripping tackle in round two, which also earned the Chiefs' No 8 a two-match suspension.
Force captain Nathan Sharpe, whose side has been ravaged by injuries this season, let out an exasperated sigh yesterday when told Cummins had been cited and suspended. "It has got to the stage where you turn up for training and just look around for the nearest 15 blokes to form a team," he said.
Thrown together the Force might have been against the competition leaders on Saturday night, but the makeshift Perth side covered itself in glory, standing up to the rampaging Bulls for far longer than anyone had thought possible.
"I think we definitely had the game plan to beat them and we maintained it for 50 minutes," said Sharpe. "But then our tackling intensity fell off a little bit and that's something that comes down to experience, dealing with that when you're fatigued."
It would have been astonishing had the Force's intensity in defence not fallen away, as they rocked the Bulls from the outset. As determined as the South Africans were to begin in intimidating fashion, the young Force players stood up to the blue juggernaut. Indeed, they even took a slender lead into the half-time break.
But better and stronger sides than the Force -- the Waratahs and Brumbies come quickly to mind -- have opened up early leads on the Bulls only to be pegged back this season and for most of the second half it was simply a case of the locals desperately staving off the inevitable.
As ever, flanker Matt Hodgson and centre James O'Connor soldiered on admirably in what became a lost cause, but on this occasion both were overshadowed by Sharpe who sent yet another reminder to the Australian selectors that he is not done with Test rugby.
Every time Sharpe trucked the ball into the defence, he somehow managed to drive over the advantage line, but it was in the rolling mauls, where the Force skipper time and again manhandled his way through the Bulls' human wall to get at the ball-carrier, that his determination was most evident.
The season won't get any easier for Force, which on Friday faces the Stormers, but Sharpe is confident three of the team's Wallabies: flanker David Pocock, prop Matt Dunning and halfback Brett Sheehan, will be back from injury.
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news...-1225846627499
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Originally Posted by BDAVEY
