Best behaviour ... Stephen Moore. Source: The Daily Telegraph




HOOKER Stephen Moore leads a list of bad boys who have to be on their best behaviour against the All Blacks - or else.


After two Test losses, where Australia gave their rivals a huge leg-up with soft penalties, coach Robbie Deans put his players on notice that any players continuing to show poor discipline next week in Sydney face the axe.

Statistics provided to The Daily Telegraph show that after the early Tri Nations encounters, Moore is the man at the headof the queue for the firing squad, followed by front-row ally Al Baxter and flanker George Smith.

Moore has cost his team five penalties in two games, just ahead of Baxter and Smith's four each.

Five players have conceded two penalties each and three others have been pinged once - showing that while there is no clear-cut dunce in the Wallabies side, there is lax discipline spread across the team.

Start of sidebar. While a solitary penalty might not sound like a big deal, several in a row in kicking distance can prove the difference between winning and losing against sharpshooters such as Morne Steyn and Dan Carter.



Even allowing for the removal of the ELVs, the Wallabies' average penalty count has blown out alarmingly from seven in 2008 to to 11.6 per Test this year.

"In the game in South Africa, the key area [was] our discipline wasn't great in that game, and it is something we want to rectify,'' Smith said this week.
"We didn't perform well in that area as well in Auckland. The players are very aware it is an area we need to clean up.''

To spell out simply how ill-discipline cost the Wallabies any hopes of victory consider this: They handed New Zealand 15 points in Auckland through penalties in their own half - and lost by just six.

In South Africa, Australia went down by 12 points and scored two tries to one but gave the Boks a whopping 21 free points. Seventy per cent of their 51 points conceded have come from penalty goals.

It's little wonder Deans alerted his side that players continuing to "drink from the trough'' of dumb and lazy behaviour would be removed.

But, given the names thrown up as repeat offenders, Deans will hope his bark is enough deterrence and the bite isn't needed. Dumping Moore, Baxter and particularly Smith would probably do more harm than good.

Smith is given licence to play on the edge at the breakdown to disrupt rivals' possession. The No.7 is the worst offender across all Tests this year with eight penalties conceded but will still be named as Wallabies captain next week.

Moore is still the No.1 hooker ahead of Tatafu Polota-Nau, whose lineout throwing continues to hold him back.

And Baxter and his front-row colleagues answered plenty of criticism against the Boks in the scrum at Newlands.

The tighthead also has a valid argument his high ranking is down to his getting stitched up in Auckland.

So perhaps the worried men should actually be the ones who've shot up the list by next Sunday morning.

MANLY winger Leon Bott has not been cited for the tackle that left Randwick winger David Dillon needing surgery to remove his spleen.

Dillon, the grandson of Bob Hawke, was hit early underneath a bomb in a club match at Coogee Oval last Saturday.

Bott, a former Brisbane Bronco, was sin-binned and that was deemed a sufficient penalty yesterday.

http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/spo...-1225761694368