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'Death cycle' has old heads troubled
- Wayne Smith
- From: The Australian
- August 14, 2010 12:00AM
IT is alarming that every surviving Australian coach of the post-grand slam era is concerned about the way the Wallabies are being prepared.
Some of the five _ Alan Jones, Bob Dwyer, Rod Macqueen, Eddie Jones and John Connolly _ have been openly critical. Others, having been in the same position as Robbie Deans, are keeping their misgivings largely to themselves, but all are utterly dismayed that the team once recognised as the smartest in the game is now playing such dumb rugby.
"I can cop the Wallabies being outmuscled by the All Blacks," one said. "But I just can't accept them being outwitted by them. For the first time, we're starting to see an All Black side smarter than us."
And Deans's implied rationale that Australians shouldn't be so dismayed at losing regularly to the All Blacks because some countries have never beaten New Zealand at all is a disturbing misread of the Australian psyche. Australians have always been prepared to accept that the All Blacks are an extraordinary team but never have they accepted the proposition that they are too good for us.
Indeed, just the opposite. Australians have always believed that when it is all on the line, the Wallabies can take the All Blacks down and two wins from two World Cup meetings suggests they are right.
"We're going down the wrong track," Alan Jones told Channel 7 last week. "We've got to turn somewhere and turn before there's a big accident further up the road.
"When are we going to get out of this death cycle and start playing rugby that's interesting."
Certainly, there was nothing interesting, let along inspiring, about the rugby played by the Wallabies in Christchurch last Saturday. What Dwyer describes as the "one pass, crash ball" approach was of so little threat to the All Blacks that at half-time the New Zealand brains trust of Graham Henry, Steve Hansen and Wayne Smith clearly made the decision that what was important was winning the Bledisloe Cup, not winning by a big score.
So they tweaked their tactics and had Dan Carter kick for the corners every time the Wallabies brought their wingers up, thereafter backing their defence to keep the one-dimensional Australian attack at bay -- which they did with ease.
The Wallabies did nothing to manipulate that defence. They presented halfback Will Genia with no choice of runners and they slowed down the recycling so much that it was no surprise Genia filled in the time by introducing "a little skip step to his pass", much to Dwyer's annoyance.
Where was the change of tactics from the Australians? There was none. The "death cycle" continued.
The Australian scrum is going backwards, literally and metaphorically, and while improvements have been made to the other set pieces, the lineout and kick-off, both came only after the Wallabies had been embarrassed there in Melbourne.
Once it was the All Blacks and the rest of the world reacting to Australian initiatives. Now it is the Wallabies who are playing catch-up and seemingly every time they plug one leak, another weak spot gives way.
Henry, Hansen and Smith are comprehensively outcoaching Deans and his staff.
It is very revealing that Henry, as annoyingly schoolmasterly as he can be, has surrounded himself with such talent. Hansen coached Wales at the 2003 World Cup, where his side gave the All Blacks an almighty scare during the pool stage, while Smith was New Zealand head coach in 2000-01.
Deans, by contrast, has as his back-ups Jim Williams and Richard Graham, neither of whom has held a head coaching position, even at club level. Both are good men but neither is yet in Deans's league as a coach and neither is going to challenge him, intellectually or in any other way.
The one coach who did challenge Deans, forwards coach Michael Foley, didn't survive beyond the first season. It is understood the two fell out in South Africa in 2008 over whether Nathan Sharpe should come back into the squad for the Johannesburg Test after Dan Vickerman injured his shoulder in the Durban victory. Foley insisted Sharpe was needed to run the lineout, Deans thought differently. The Wallabies, without Sharpe, lost by the biggest margin in Australian rugby history.
There is no question Foley is the best forwards coach in the country. He is no yes-man and his tendency to question everything, while admirable, can also be annoying. But he is needed back at the Wallabies, and quickly.
So, too, if he can somehow ease his way out of his contract with Ireland, is another former Wallabies assistant coach, Alan Gaffney. How galling that the Wallabies, so bereft of ideas whenever Quade Cooper is not at five-eighth, should have been denied victory in Dublin last November because of an old Randwick move Gaffney taught the Irish backs.
And perhaps, while we're at it, John Muggleton, the man who masterminded what for a decade was the best defence in world rugby, could be recalled as well.
Selections, too, are becoming a major concern. Nominally, there is a three-man panel to select the Wallabies: Deans, Williams and David Nucifora. All evidence suggests the real decisions are made entirely by Deans. That's not necessarily a bad thing given the head coach lives or dies on the team's success but some of Deans's calls have been baffling.
The grand slam never happened, the Bledisloe is gone for another year, so too -- almost certainly -- the Tri-Nations Cup and even the Mandela Plate will take some winning back on the highveld, despite the Wallabies being one-up on the Boks at present.
All that is left is the World Cup and as aggravating as it might be that the Wallabies are locking themselves into a Socceroo-like cycle of sacrificing everything to a four-yearly tournament, only a third triumph on rugby's greatest stage is going to re-energise the code in this country.
Before it is too late -- and Australia's campaign opens next year on the ill-omened 10th anniversary of September 11 -- the Australian Rugby Union must conduct a complete review of the Wallabies, including the medical operation which is coming in for oblique criticism from the players.
Too much is slipping between the cracks at present. If there was real attention to detail, players would cop a roasting for throwing forward passes in training. Instead, they go unpunished.
Tactically the Wallabies have fallen behind, technically they are off the pace and selections are too often askew. If it is not the wrong player being chosen, it's the right player being chosen at the wrong time and/or place. Surely, just as an example, it would have made more sense to select Anthony Faingaa for his run-on debut alongside his Reds five-eighth Cooper, not outside Matt Giteau. And just because James O'Connor doesn't pass the ball doesn't mean that wing is his position.
Although Australia has bottomed out in some positions, overall the talent pool is for once brimming over. "They've got a good group of players coming through," Jones said.
"There is an opportunity for Australia to create its own game, not to mimic anyone else's." But, from here, Australian rugby has to act smart and act smartly.
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news...-1225905090277
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