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Who do you rate the better player?
Smith fighting a Waugh of worlds
By Paul Kent
September 15, 2007
GEORGE Smith and Phil Waugh, the blood and bone of the Australia pack, renew their murderous partnership tonight. It's as close as they are ever likely to get again.
Waugh is back on the Wallaby bench after missing last week's match against Japan while Smith is, well, right now he is where Waugh wants to be. Open-side flanker.
After years of locking the Wallaby scrum together, the two have been battling for the one spot for near on 12 months now, turning a partnership into a rivalry, forcing two good men to square up on the other.
Michael Foley is the forwards coach instrumental in changing the Wallaby structure to a game plan requiring just one of them, yet he bleeds every time he sees the other miss his job.
"You can see the disappointment and pain in them," he says. "But they both battle on."
More often a Wallaby team is announced with one but not the other nowadays, but always whoever is omitted will seek out the other and shake his hand, no words needing to be spoken.
"We sort of have that moment and move on," says Smith.
The shift in strategy was to bring more height to the pack and make it more of a threat at the set pieces, the lineout and scrum.
It was a tough call for Waugh and Smith. While both are scrapyard dogs in phase play, the one quality nobody could coach into them was height. So they are stuck with the way it is.
Waugh co-captained the Wallabies along with Stirling Mortlock on last year's spring tour, Smith more often relegated to 23rd man.
But a knee injury in the Super 14s put the slows on Waugh's season and Smith took all the advantage he needed.
His form has been so good that Waugh has now been missing selection in place of Smith. As the vice-captain, it's tough to swallow.
"It's actually a pretty strange situation," he said. "We have known each other since we were about 14 or 15, and throughout that time it has always been really healthy."
They were northern beaches boys, living near each other, then Australian Schoolboys together, Australian under-21s, and Wallabies since 2000. Part of their bond is their closeness in style.
Foley remembers playing the Lions with Smith in 2001, when he was impressionable and green and he went into a maul and three Lions rolled right over the top of him.
"He not only got up, he got up with the ball," Foley says. "And he showed no emotion either."
He remembers Waugh, in a state match, on the receiving end of a shot from David Croft that shook the bolts loose in the grandstand.
"You knew it rattled him," Foley says. "You just knew, but he showed no sign of that. I thought, 'This bloke's made of concrete'."
Two warriors, they have played together, socialised together and their kids are almost the same age as the other's, yet a funny thing has happened as they battle each other for what is, for all intents, just one spot left between the two of them. They inspire each other.
Indeed, it is a rare friendship. Earlier this week Smith was talking about their rivalry, actually saying that Waugh has forced him to step up his game. Waugh said almost exactly the same thing.
"We're always pushing each other at training," he says. "Throughout the seven or eight years that it has been I think, without each other and the rivalry we have, we wouldn't be as good as what we are."
And while the rivalry has been intense, even personal, it has never spilled into anything they are not.
Waugh laughs, saying, "It'd be a lot easier if he wasn't such a good bloke."
Even when they do come head to head, the Waratahs playing the Brumbies, usually first lineout they take position and look across at the other and say a quick "How y'going".
"Then we know it's game on," says Waugh. It is something they treasure. "It's a unique thing that we have," says Smith.
Tonight they go around once more. Two old friends, two old warriors. Blood and bone, for old time's sake.
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