Kiss will never reach the top until he learns beauty of penalties

Les “Glasgow” Kiss is currently one of the front-runners for the Wallabies coaching job, alongside Michael “Mad Dog” Cheika, Stephen “Formaldehyde” Larkham, Dan “Could be worse, I guess” McKellar, and Stuart “Stuart” Lancaster.

Amid that reasonably warm field, Kiss’s credentials are stacking up well. Not only are his Queensland Reds atop the Super Rugby Pacific table, in good form and impressing all and sundry with their style and toughness, his experience in the game is extensive and there is strong evidence that he has even been overseas.

So maybe Kiss is the man. But doubts still remain, and the biggest one is: is old Glasgow really, truly, down deep in his bones, a rugby man?

Let’s not forget that Les Kiss made his name as a player in rugby league, which was, at the time and remains to this day, a different sport than rugby union.

Obviously, there are many great men who’ve found success in both codes – Chris Roche, Garrick Morgan and Alan Jones to name but a few – but it’s never easy.

The cultures and philosophies of the two games can, at times, be several gulfs apart, and although it is easy to simply switch from one to the other, it’s another thing altogether to leave behind your rugby of origin and become entirely, in your soul, a creature of a new rugby.

I know. “But Ben,” you’re saying, “you are a gigantic idiot.” Well, that seems harsh, but I’ll hear you out.

“Don’t you realise,” you go on to say, “that Les Kiss has now been involved in the game they play in very wealthy schools for decades now, and all vestiges of leagueism have been expunged. Look at the way the Reds play, and you will see that their coach is a rugby fellow through and through, so completely steeped in the game that he could become a director of a merchant bank and no one would bat an eyelid”.

You make a good point, reader. I thought very similarly until an extremely disturbing fact came to my attention. A fact that I think should give us all pause.

That fact is this: in six games in Super Rugby Pacific this year, the Queensland Reds have scored 29 tries, 25 conversions and… no penalty goals!

Do you understand?

None.

Zero.

Null.

At no point during this season have the Reds knocked over three points. They’ve kept on looking gift horses in mouths and gone time and time again for tries over penalties.

Now, some might say that’s wonderful: positivity, attacking rugby, carpe jugulum etc. Yes it is very entertaining to watch Queensland breaking defences and linking with clever passes and having their hooker stand patiently behind the rest of the pack while they clear a path to the tryline.

It’s all very fine to score tries. But ONLY tries? No penalties at all? In six whole games? That smells a bit fishy. That smells a bit…rugby league.

Penalty goals have always been at the heart of rugby union. Where other codes pay only lip service to them or don’t have penalty goals at all, rugby puts them front and centre of affairs. It is why rugby is the most intelligent kind of football. It is not simply a bunch of men running about trying to maim each other.

It’s a bunch of men running about trying to maim each other who periodically stop for several minutes to respectfully watch one man think deeply about life before kicking a ball at some posts. It’s a beautiful thing. It’s a majestic thing. It’s the purest expression possible of the multiplicity of man as created in God’s image.

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Fifty-nine percent of points scored in World Cup finals have been penalty goals. Is that a tradition Queensland want to defend, or one they wish to tear down and vomit all over?

I understand where Kiss is coming from here. He is a veteran of the 1986 Kangaroo tour of Great Britain, where penalty goals weren’t necessary because the opposition was made up entirely of pensioners and asthmatics. It’s only natural that he’s gone his entire life dismissing the idea of penalty goals with that silvery laugh of his.

But if he wants to be Wallabies coach – indeed, if he wants to be embraced by the rugby community at all – he has to realise that this isn’t rugby league. Down our way, we have contested scrums, we throw enormous men up in the air, and we: Kick. Penalty. Goals.

Maybe Kiss hasn’t yet realised that in rugby union, penalties are worth three points, rather than the measly two they give in league. Maybe he doesn’t see the value. In that case, someone had better educate him quick smart, because currently the Reds are an embarrassment to Australian rugby.

Fraser McReight. (Photo by Bradley Kanaris/Getty Images)

Whispers are being heard all around Australia and New Zealand, smirks and sniggers abounding, about the so-called “rugby team” that won’t kick penalty goals. It’s only a matter of time before the snideness makes its way onto the field, and the Reds players suffer irrevocably hurt feelings.

It’s not like the Reds can’t kick goals. As stated, they’ve knocked over 25 conversions from 29 attempts so far this year. They have players who can guide the ball through the sticks – and they can win penalties. They have a strong scrum and players just as willing to get themselves hit in the head as any other team. But when the heat is on, when the pressure goes up a notch, when it’s time to separate the men from the outside backs, the Reds see the chance to notch three points, and they shrink from the challenge.

Now, maybe some coaches could get away with a team that refuses to kick penalty goals. But Les Kiss is not one of them. If Grant Fox or Hugo Porta were in charge of the Reds, it might not be such a worry: we’d know that, though they might not have kicked any penalties so far, they were in the hands of a man who believed in penalties with all his heart.

With Kiss, it’s nothing like so certain. We know his background. We know the dirty, dirty world he came from. The shadow has hung over him from the start. So when his team goes around scoring exclusively in fives and twos, it’s inevitable that dark mutterings start about blow-ins and interlopers and sinister conspiracies involving Phil Gould.

I mean, I don’t doubt Kiss – and I’m sure you don’t doubt Kiss. But it’s the broader rugby public, those loveable stupid masses, who can hardly be blamed for looking at scoreline after scoreline bereft of penalty goals and wondering what the hell is going on.

So, if Glasgow truly wants to become Wallaby coach and a rugby union legend, he needs to show a gesture of good faith. He needs to tell his players this weekend that when a penalty goes their way in the opposition half, they’re to point to the sticks.

Time to rack those three-pointers up and prove to us all that Les Kiss doesn’t just coach rugby; he believes in it.