Greybeards don't take it on chin
0
October 10, 2009
BEFORE Wallabies coach Robbie Deans starts thinking about winning Tests on the Grand Slam tour, he may need to think first about winning back his senior players.
Admittedly, there aren't that many senior players left in the Wallabies ranks these days, not after three more survivors of the 2003 World Cup final, Al Baxter, Nathan Sharpe and Phil Waugh fell by the wayside yesterday, perhaps to return some day, perhaps not.
With their departure, Deans-created Wallabies now outnumber those introduced to international rugby by his predecessors John Connolly, Eddie Jones and Rod Macqueen, 18 players to 17. That's as it should be, with age inevitably giving way to youth, but it's a process that needs to be managed with some finesse.
Rumbles from within the Wallabies squad would suggest that Deans has some work to do in this regard, and not just with Matt Giteau, who all too evidently feels his opinion carries no more weight than that of the rankest rookie.
It's an admirable goal to try to create a non-hierarchical structure but the evidence of every single World Cup is that teams with a hard core of leaders prevail. And while it sounds noble to suggest it's every player's responsibility to provide leadership, it's unrealistic to expect an uncapped Kurtley Beale to respond to the pressure of a cliffhanger Test as coolly as a 73-cap veteran like Giteau.
But with one greybeard after another being made to feel that they are just one poor game away from oblivion, the natural leaders in the Wallabies are having their authority stripped away from them.
All these sentiments have been simmering for some time. What brought them bubbling to the surface was Deans's scathing post-match claims that the Wallabies rolled over in the recent Wellington Test and didn't show the same pride in their jersies as the All Blacks did in theirs.
Deans's anger at that performance was hardly surprising, given how far his unchanged side had slipped from the lofty standards it set in its previous outing, when it comprehensively outplayed the world champion Springboks in Brisbane. Having finally seen his Wallabies put together a wholehearted, utterly driven 80-minute performance, Deans had every reason to expect they would carry on at that level.
But where the Wallabies had been brilliant a fortnight before in Brisbane, they were bereft of ideas in Wellington. They made one appalling mistake after another, starting with Giteau's failure to find touch from Australia's first penalty of the match. The All Blacks, by contrast, were at the peak of their game.
That's not to say they were playing especially brilliantly but by their barren standards this season, they were on fire. They were hitting rucks with a venom, the spark was back in their counter-attack and generally they were more desperate than the Wallabies in every contest.
That was hardly surprising given that the tag "worst All Blacks side in history" awaited them had they lost to become the first Kiwi side ever to go down in three home Tests in the one season.
But although the Wallabies always seemed a pace behind them, they were fighting hard. Even when one of Deans's discoveries, teenage fullback James O'Connor, made a meal of accepting a high ball and gifted the All Blacks a try that took the score from 6-9 to 6-16, the Wallabies kept pounding away.
As the clock ticked down, halfback Will Genia flicked one of his trademark sneaky inside passes to a flying Drew Mitchell, who threw himself at the tryline. But when the All Blacks defence held firm and stripped him of possession, just centimetres short of the score that would have set up a nail-biting finale, the rubber band broke. That's the point that Steve Waugh and his Australian cricketers always strove to reach, when the opposition begins to physically and mentally disintegrate under relentless pressure.
But to take in isolation the last 10 minutes in Wellington when the Wallabies conceded two tries, and to accuse them of rolling over and showing no pride in the jersey is to uncouple cause and effect. What happened at the death can't be divorced from what happened earlier.
It took 70 minutes of relentless All Black pressure to trigger
that disintegration.
Senior players who have served Australia well, some of them for nearly a decade, don't react well when accused of tossing in the towel. They're not being precious. They'll cop all the criticism that was warranted, that their ball-retention was dreadful, that they ran bad lines, were beaten in the air and on the ground and generally were outplayed. But they won't cop accusations that they rolled over, that they dishonoured the Australian jersey.
In too many respects, the Wellington Test stirred unhappy memories of the 2007 World Cup quarter-final loss to England. That, too, was a dreadful performance by the Wallabies but no one afterwards accused them of giving up.
Significantly, it was Rocky Elsom who publicly took issue with Deans over his post-match attack. "Even the most selfish and disinterested player would find it hard to roll over," Elsom growled earlier this week.
It will be interesting to see whether Elsom moderates his observations now that he has been elevated to the Wallabies captaincy. Hopefully not. If there is one thing Australian rugby needs right now, it's some plain speaking.
And speaking plainly, this tension within the Wallabies squad needs to be addressed before the spring tour gets under way. Deans has made a heavy and welcome investment in youth but the Grand Slam tour could quickly turn into a grand fiasco if the greybeards in the team remain at odds with the coach.
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au...-32102,00.html
Reply With Quote
