Wayne Smith, Rugby union editor | June 13, 2009


Article from: The Australian

WHILE "the weakest All Blacks team of the modern era" steels itself for battle against France today and the Springboks lie chuckling in wait for the British and Irish Lions, the Wallabies quietly are going about the business of overtaking their two great southern hemisphere rivals.

No one was reading too much into the Wallabies' thrashing of the Barbarians last weekend, least of all Nick Mallett, coach of the Italian side that tonight in Canberra will provide the Australians with the first of their 14 Tests this season. (That's as many Tests as the late Wallabies captain Trevor Allan played in his entire career - and yet, deservedly, he was immortalised in bronze outside the Sydney Football Stadium just before the Barbarians match).

Mallett has a theory that if the Barbarians pick a side full of southern hemisphere stars to take on a northern hemisphere Test side, the sheer physicality and athleticism of those players will make them competitive, as was demonstrated when the Baa-Baas crunched England a fortnight ago.
But if they select a team chock full of northern hemisphere legends or even ageing southern hemisphere heroes playing in Britain or France, they will be found out. "There's no advantage, they're playing against equally physical, fast and aggressive players and they lose out in terms of structure and organisation," Mallett observed this week.
It's a good point, one that was borne out at the SFS, and something the ARU should keep in mind if it wants to make Barbarians matches a feature of the Australian rugby landscape.
As for the Italians, they will have the structure and organisation tonight, but whether they can keep up with the pace the Wallabies will play at is highly doubtful.
Naturally, they will try to slow the game down and those few misguided souls among you who have missed that legalised piece of obstruction known as the rolling maul should be salivating at the thought of the feast the men in blue will lay before you tonight.
(Interesting - at the risk of another Ronnie Corbett-esque detour - the observations about the maul from All Blacks forwards coach Steve Hansen, set out in yesterday's NZ Herald under the delightful headline: "I suppose a ruck's out of the question".

Anyway, Hansen believes that, after initially abandoning the rolling maul when the ELVs made it legal to pull them down, many teams had adapted and reinvented the manoeuvre without the need for the IRB to abandon the experiment at the behest of the northern hemisphere.)

Take out the maul and the scrum and that's pretty much it from the Italians traditionally, so it will be intriguing to see what elements of NRL-style "take the ball to the line" attack Craig Gower has been able to introduce to the Azzurri.
Still, given that Italy's average scoreline in the Six Nations this year was 10-34 and that Mallett estimates the Wallabies are 30 per cent better than the best of the northern hemisphere teams, the pass mark for Australia tonight is pretty high.

With due respect to the Italians, and even to the French who probably will be very relieved to cross the Tasman for the June 27 Test in Sydney after twice going up against the All Blacks, the northern hemisphere teams aren't the real measure of the Wallabies.

As ever, that's the role of the Blacks and the Boks, the former world No1 ranked side, the latter the reigning world champions. And they seem to be getting a little skittish about the rise of the world No3 team, the Wallabies.

The Kiwis, in particular, have reason to be nervous. While the "worst All Blacks team of the modern era" tag was a journalist's invention, and hence not to be taken seriously, it's still a bit of a struggle to recall a NZ XV with less fear factor.

No Richie McCaw, Dan Carter, Rodney So'oialo, Ali Williams, Conrad Smith, Richard Kahui or Sitiveni Sivivatu and yesterday winger Rudi Wulf was ruled out for six weeks with a fracture in his shoulder bone. Small wonder the French didn't even bother to hide the whiteboard on which coach Marc Lievremont had outlined his game plan when they had their press conference in Dunedin.

Certainly anyone who at the start of the season had picked an All Blacks backrow of Adam Thompson, Liam Messam and Kieran Reid would have been sent off to the funny farm for a rest. And pretty much ditto for anyone predicting a three-quarter line of Ma'a Nonu, Isaia Toeava, Cory Jane and Joe Rokocoko.

That's not to say the All Blacks won't still wipe the floor with the French but interestingly today's NZ side has an average age of 24 compared to the Wallabies' 25.6. Those stats will start to even out once the likes of McCaw, So'oialo and Williams make their way back, but even so, even without Lote Tuqiri and Phil Waugh, the Wallabies for once have the more settled, stable look about them.

Not forgetting that New Zealand had three teams make the Super 14 playoffs to South Africa's one - with Australia registering an embarrassing miss - before a shot has been fired. It's the Springboks who loom at the Wallabies' greatest obstacle in this year's Tri-Nations.

Mercifully the rules of rugby state you can have only 15 players on the ground at any one time. Not even Sir Clive Woodward was allowed to get away with sneaking a 16th player into the action. If the contest was all about quality in depth, the Boks would swamp Australia but at 15 vs. 15, the Wallabies measure up.

Scary as the Bulls were in the Super 14 final, they defeated a depleted, travel-weary Chiefs outfit, all the while enjoying the massive advantage of playing in front of their own hysterical "our blood is blue" home crowd.

Deservedly they will dominate the Springbok side to play the Lions, but let's not forget the Brumbies beat the Bulls in Canberra and the Force (29-32) and even the Reds (20-33) pushed them close at Loftus Versfeld, so their customary standover tactics should not intimidate the Wallabies. And having beaten them two Tests to one last year, breaking their long drought in South Africa with the Durban win, the Wallabies will have the advantage of two home Tests against the Boks.

Meanwhile, we're still at the fascinating skirmishing stage and the Wallabies will have been cautioned by Robbie Deans not to look beyond Italy tonight.

But the big picture is still out there. And for once it's looking good for the Wallabies.

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au...015703,00.html