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Wayne Smith | July 24, 2009
Article from: The Australian
THE statistics shout otherwise, but Australian hooker Stephen Moore insists the Wallabies do not intentionally collapse scrums.
South African referee Craig Joubert repeatedly found fault with the Australian frontrow at scrum time in Saturday's Eden Park Test against the All Blacks. Far from providing the Wallabies with a solid platform from which to attack, the scrum became their achilles heel as Joubert time and again penalised tighthead Al Baxter for collapsing.
Collapsed scrums were a blight on last year's Tri-Nations campaign as well, but only in matches involving the Wallabies. In the three matches involving the All Blacks and Springboks, there were eight collapses and eight resets from 60 scrums. But in the six matches involving Australia, there were 65 collapses and 40 resets from 100 scrums.
There is no doubt New Zealand and South Africa tried to exploit Australia's poor scrummaging history by collapsing scrums in the jaundiced but often justified belief that referees would penalise the Wallabies on suspicion.
England loosehead Andy Sheridan employed that very tactic in the Cook Cup Test at Twickenham in November, but another South African referee, Marius Jonker, was having none of it and literally blew the whistle on the cynical ploy. That was the match when the Wallabies supposedly buried their scrum demons, but within minutes of the kick-off in the opening Tri-Nations Test for 2009, they were back, bigger and badder than ever.
"Last Saturday was a step back for us in the scrum," Moore admitted yesterday.
Asked if the Australian set piece would again become a focus of referees' attention and the target of opposing sides, he glumly agreed. "I guess so. But then I don't know if that will ever change, especially in the Tri-Nations. Both New Zealand and South Africa always attack opposition scrum ball."
While stressing that "there is always an element of foxing in scrums" that might partially explain why Tests involving the Wallabies have such a disproportionately high number of collapses and resets, Moore nonetheless was nonplussed by the statistical evidence.
"Sometimes you can't really explain a stat like that," he said. "It's never our intention to collapse scrums in games. That's something we don't aim to do. In fact, we work very hard to keep them up.
"But maybe what we do need to do is get better at adapting to conditions, whether that means adapting to the referee or to what the opposing prop is doing. We've got to get better at thinking on our feet."
All Blacks loosehead Tony Woodcock out-pointed Baxter in that regard, albeit aided by a referee who seemed not to notice that he was going into just about every scrum with his head and shoulders below the level of his hips. Worryingly for the Wallabies, whose next Tri-Nations Test is against South Africa in Cape Town on August 8, Springbok prop Beast Mtawarira employed much the same tactics, driving up and in to destroy England veteran Phil Vickery in the opening international of the recent British and Irish Lions series.
If ever a match against the Boks in South Africa could be said to present the Wallabies with an opportunity, it is this one. For starters, it will not be played at altitude. The Australians will have the advantage of having three uninterrupted weeks to prepare for it, during which time the Springboks will twice do battle with the All Blacks.
"It might not be a bad time to get the Boks, after they've gone hammer and tongs against New Zealand," Moore predicted. "You'll probably see a similar pattern to the Eden Park Test, with lots of kicking for field position and lots of box kicking from the halfbacks."
While Wallabies supporters have reacted badly to the Auckland defeat, with the rugby chat sites full of calls for the heads of everyone from halfback Luke Burgess to second-rower Nathan Sharpe to number eight Wycliff Palu and even to captain Stirling Mortlock, the players are convinced only "small changes" are needed to turn their fortunes around.
"Look back on the game we played at Eden Park last year, when the All Blacks scored four tries and claimed a bonus point win against us," Moore said. "This time we didn't feel that they beat us. We just didn't take our chances. But our defence was one of the highlights."
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au...015651,00.html
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