‘We were bullied’: Waratahs take a beating from Force in Sydney

Waratahs coach Dan McKellar has admitted his team was “bullied” after the Force won 20-17 in Sydney.

The Force have kept their hopes of reaching finals alive, while the Waratahs now face a challenging journey to Dunedin, knowing they must beat the Highlanders to have any chance of a top-six finish.

If Super Round in Christchurch was a three-day, sold-out festival of rugby that will live long in the memory, the Force’s win over the Waratahs was the disappointing after-party in Sydney.

A heavyweight match-up between two former NSW Origin teammates, Joseph-Aukuso Suaalii and Zac Lomax had been promised. The Ferrari was ready and revved up against the Australian muscle car and 10,096 fans had arrived to see it. Ultimately, both men were underutilised. Suaalii particularly only managed three carries all game. The Waratahs managed one line break all game.

McKellar was asked how to get Suaalii more involved in the attack and his answer was simple.

“Stop making 300 tackles ... no one’s touching the ball and when you’ve got 32 per cent territory, all you’re doing is defending and then trying to get out of your own end, so you get squeezed to death and bullied in and around the breakdown,” the coach said.

“I can’t flick a switch and be like, Su (Suaalii), here’s space, you’ve got to earn that.”

If right winger Lomax still gets the majority of the headlines for the Force, it is Dylan Pietsch who provided the true story of this game, scoring two tries in an outstanding performance. Pietsch has now scored four tries in his last three games, underlining his credentials as a potential Wallabies starter ahead of the July Tests.

The Waratahs almost stole the game with a 74th-minute try from hooker Folau Faingaa, but a subsequent Teddy Wilson knock-on ended that brief and small hope.

McKellar said that ultimately his team had been bullied at the breakdown and their late comeback had come too late

“We were bullied in and around the ruck, that’s both attack and defence, and they just came here with a pretty bland plan and it worked,” McKellar said. “It’s just disappointing that we didn’t start to fire a punch until we were down by 10 points.”

The first 30 minutes of the game only yielded three points through a Ben Donaldson penalty. The Waratahs have admirably allowed juniors to attend their home games for free this season, but even they could feel short-changed by the action on the field. Both teams were wasteful with possession and attacking opportunities.

Before the game, the Waratahs held the unwanted record of just 27 per cent of entries into the 22 leading to tries, making them the most inefficient team in attack in Super Rugby. After 12 minutes, the Waratahs had an early opportunity to take a kickable penalty, but turned it down. Ultimately, the ball was turned over by Force hooker Brandon Paenga-Amosa.

The Waratahs were eventually rewarded for an extended period spent near the Force tryline with a try for five-eighth Lawson Creighton. The playmaker dummied and spun through attempted tackles from the Force to finally get his team on the scoreboard after 33 long and error-strewn minutes. Sid Harvey added a penalty to his earlier conversion to extend their lead.

Force winger Dylan Pietsch scored his third try in three games just before half-time, muscling past the Waratahs’ defence after 21 phases of patient play from the visitors to level the game at 10-all.

Pietsch spent three seasons at the Waratahs, but it’s in his last two years in Perth that he has established himself as an elite winger. Ten minutes into the second half, Pietsch had his second try, after a great offload from fullback Mac Grealy.

The Waratahs were forced to absorb wave after wave of Force pressure throughout the second half. A Donaldson penalty extended the Force’s lead to 10 points with 12 minutes left.

With five minutes left of the game in their first visit past the Force 22-metre line, the Waratahs scored a converted try through Fainga’a to give the chance of an unlikely win, but it was too late and too late as the Force clung on.

McKellar admitted after the game that he hasn’t calculated his side’s chances of reaching the finals, which are looking increasingly unlikely.

“I’ve not even looked at the ladder and not even thinking about that, but I know when we’re at our best, as we’ve shown sporadically, we can beat anyone,” McKellar said.

“But the gap between our best and not our best is too big at the moment and that’s where we get inconsistencies in and around performance. It’s frustrating, we’ve got to have a look at what we’re doing.”

Asked what his biggest frustration was with his team, McKellar refused to share it.

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