by Paul Cook –

“We can’t be happy with just being good, we want to be a great team.”

The fact that Sydney Rays flanker Michael Wells tells me this after his side has just put 58 points on a team containing eight Brumbies, a team against whom they had suffered an embarrassing 63-37 defeat in the same fixture last season, gives some indication of the standards being set by a squad that are breaking club records with every passing week.

The demolition job on the UC Vikings last weekend – the Canberrans biggest margin of defeat in their albeit short history – cemented a first ever finals berth for the Rays at the third time of asking. Having finished 7th in both previous seasons as the North Harbour Rays, the change of name to reflect their more generic geographical representation following the dissolution of the Sydney Stars, has brought with it a change of direction – dramatically upwards.

They won their opening game of the season for the first time, achieved their first back-to-back wins a week later, and had equalled their combined tally of four wins from 2014 and 2015 within five rounds of the current competition. A team that conceded an average of over 41pts per match in those two previous years, has battened down the hatches with some aplomb, more than halving that average to just over 20pts per match in the process of turning themselves into the meanest defence in the NRC.

Now sitting on six victories ahead of tomorrow’s final regular season clash with Melbourne Rising, they already have a spot in the finals, with the weekend’s results set to decide their final position in the top three, and the location and opposition that await their maiden 80 minutes of knockout footy the following week. All pretty positive then.

But as new Waratahs loose forward Wells attests, under ambitious and demanding head coach Simon Cron, all that will count for nothing if they don’t go on to lift the trophy.

“As a team we hold pretty high standards and we’ve got our own expectations of ourselves and we haven’t really met them so far this season,” Wells reveals. “That was the closest we’ve come to achieving it [against the Vikings], but ‘Cronny’ pulled us straight back down to earth and told us we’ve got stuff to fix. He will be disappointed that we still conceded two tries but that’s ‘Cronny’, he’s a competitor and he doesn’t want to go out without winning the comp, so Minor Premiership and then Premiership is probably what’s going on inside his head right now.

“Leaking points isn’t something that we want to do and going into finals, they’re the points that are going to count in tough games. We saw that against NSW Country where we were in with a sniff with a minute to go and they put on two quick tries to turn an eight point deficit into a 24 point blowout. We’ll review this game and probably think that we left some points out there and should have stopped them scoring but that’s how we get better, you can’t just take a win and sit back on your laurels.”

Irae Simone was a standout again in the win over the UC Vikings – Photo: Karen Watson

While the defensive improvements were obvious by round two’s pragmatic win over Perth Spirit in the rain, it has taken a bit longer for the Rays to find the fluidity in attack their talents in the backline are capable of. But in a devastating opening stanza against the Vikings, everything clicked as they steamrollered their opponents six tries to one. It was an impressive statement.

“That first half hour, everyone did their roles in attack and our transition speed was very good, which is something we’ve worked on,” confirmed coach Cron. “Defensively, we were also good, we didn’t panic when they had the ball, chop-tackled, put a lot of pressure on them and got the ball back. Definitely that first 35 minutes was where we need to be heading.

“I felt in the second half that we probably just started to do too much like throwing the ball in contact and offloading the ball in contact, a few things that started to take the pressure off them a bit. But in saying that, it’s an 80 minute game and if you’d told me what the score was going to be at full-time, I’d have been happy. Part of our development is to be as ruthless as possible so we’ll look at that and work out what we were up to.”

“There was a lull in the second half where points dried up and it got a bit tighter but we really put them to the sword in that first half and ran away with it,” agrees Wells. “The last couple of weeks we’ve scored a couple of good first-phase tries and it’s great when we get the set-piece right and the backs can get go-forward ball. We’ve got a lot of talent out wide and Irae (Simone)and Con (Foley) have had two blinding games in a row now and if you give them go-forward ball, there’s not many centre pairings that are really going to be able to handle them.

“We knew it was going to be tough to back up that first forty but we just didn’t have as much ball in the second half as we did in the first, and in this sort of competition, if you don’t have the ball you’re not scoring. The second half was pretty even on points, and you can maybe put that down to people getting lazy or tired, which means that we’ll get flogged even more during the week! But that’s the standard that we’ve got to stick to.”

Bringing together players from six different Shute Shield sides in such a short space of time, plus the additions of new Brumbies recruit Chris Alcock and Aussie Sevens stars Con Foley and Cam Clark, could have made for a difficult bedding in period. And with the nucleus of Cron and his Premiership-winning Northern Suburbs side to the fore, certainly initially at least, adjustment from all parties was required. But the desire and ambition to succeed across the group was embedded from the start.

“We had a camp before the first week and we had values that the team wanted to live by,” explains Wells. “Sometimes, they can be token words but with the Rays, ‘Cronny’s been driving it, the leadership group have been driving it and everyone has bought in collectively, and I think that’s what you need to do in a competition like this. You can’t have values and buy in for 20 minutes at a time, you need to do it every minute of every game, every week.

“We’ve got good game leaders here in ‘Fitzy’ (Damien Fitzpatrick), Matty Lucas and Angus Sinclair, and no-one really gets ahead of themselves during a game. We’re tough on ourselves, we’re our hardest critics and that’s what’s really getting us through. It should be all the same to us, we’ve all played rugby since we were tiny kids and nothing changes, you go out and do what you need to do.”

Think Tank: Julian Huxley and Simon Cron have worked wonders with the Rays this season – Photo: Karen Watson

One aspect of a campaign in any form of the game is the management of injuries, and the ability to cope should you lose a few key troops. That the Rays have reached the finals off the back of losing six of their squad – five of whom in Will Miller, Hugh Sinclair, Nick Palmer, Richard Woolf and Cam Clark are likely starters if everyone is fit – is a testament to the work done before a ball was kicked, and each and every week at training.

Strength in depth always loomed as a potential Achilles heel for the Rays but they’ve not been found wanting.

“It’s an eight round competition with two finals and we’ve lost five guys along the way that were pretty important for us,” says Cron. “But from the get-go we knew we had to coach the whole squad, so getting combinations and making sure we coach really deep and that the squad play well has been a focus. Everyone is competing for positions, which is good, and some guys have really stepped up.

“We take each game as it comes. On Tuesday we don’t think past Thursday and on Thursday we reiterate what we want to cover on the weekend. If we think past finals we’re not giving each match the proper attention. For me, it’s about everybody knowing their role because if we want to get into a higher level, if we want to make it in the NRC, then we have to be able to trust everyone in the squad. They also have to work and if they don’t, they don’t find themselves playing.”

The losses in the backrow in particular, where Ken Catchpole Medallist Will Miller and fellow Shoreman Hugh Sinclair have had their seasons ended prematurely, have meant a weekly reshuffle of resources in recent weeks. The one constant has been Wells, and despite the obvious need for his steadying presence with the revolving player door around him, he’s just happy to be picked.

“It’s the nature of the beast with everyone coming off Shute Shield or Super Rugby, people are tired and people get injured, so you need that depth and you need the competition for spots,” he says. “‘Demmo’ (Jack Dempsey) has been in and out, we had Scott Fardy come back for a game – and it’s not bad calling on a Wallaby – and Chris (Alcock) is an out-and-out Super Rugby starter, so having him come in was always going to be good.

“Michael Smith has been great, filling different spots whenever he’s needed and he gives a great impact off the bench, he just puts his body on the line and that’s what we want, and we’ve still got Harry Bergelin – a star in Shute Shield – waiting in the wings for a game. That’s what we’ve based our season on, having 35 guys in a squad and the realisation that they’re all more than likely to be used.

“I’m certainly not sure of a spot if I have a poor game either because ‘Cronny’ is pretty ruthless. He’s out there to win and we’re all out there to win, so we understand that if you don’t put in a performance out on the field there’s guys that are more than happy to take your spot.”

Victory in tomorrow’s match against a Rising side who simply must win, could see the Rays finish on top of the pile, depending on other results. But suggest to Simon Cron that a place in the top two and a home semi-final would be preferable in order for the Rays to progress further, and you get an unsurprising answer.

“I don’t care where we play to be honest, as long as it’s got grass and white lines on it. To me – home or away – its grass, lines and a rugby ball. That’s home, so just play.”