White had 1 win and 8 losses away from home in the Tri-Nations.

White was Henry’s great nemesis, however, even if he never beat the All Blacks in New Zealand. Now Henry has Deans and potentially De Villiers.

Sydney wouldn’t have been so bad if we weren’t coming off a loss in Dunedin. Even losing would’ve been tolerable had we played well. Still, it’s only the half way mark I suppose.

On the whole we played much better against South Africa. There was more of an unknown quantity against a Deans coached Wallabies side and they’re riding a home wave that’s important for Australian rugby. Now that we realise Deans has a lot of counter attacking structures in place, I suggest we figure out how to beat ourselves! These are New Zealand structures he has put in place.

Does he think, that the AB’s can field 2 teams that can beat the Wallabies and Boks away, if so he deserves to lose the games and lose his position as coach.

He is selecting who he thinks will work best to his plans and combinations, it just so happens he has it wrong.

I hope, just like with flatline back play, he is convinced he is right and keeps the same personnel and strategy.

For the future when he is fit I think Leonard is your best halfback option.

Nonu running at Giteau, Barnes or even Viliers and Jacobs just is not working. Nonu back at wing maybe or on the bench as an impact player. The biggest trouble is at O/C.
If you have someone else at 12 then Muliana at 13, and McDonald at 15.

The tight 5 are fine. With McCaw back at 7, and Soiolao moved to his rightful 8 then the only weakness is at 6. I do not know why Kaino is not used at 6, mind you I would pick Read.

While I’m very happy with the Australian performance and the result from the weekend, I can only agree that there is nothing to say the AB’s won’t reverse the result this weekend. It’s a new game, the scores are back to 0-0, different conditions, different teams etc. And for mine the AB’s weren’t nearly as bad as you would think from reading the reactions today. To keep the cliches flowing, it’s very much a game of inches – they were close to scoring 2 or 3 times, should have got a penalty in front for the Hynes tackle on Sivivatu (though not a penalty try in my view – Tuqiri was too close for a try to be probable) and you can’t say how that might have changed things, and I was a bit surprised the Australian player in the ruck got away with grabbing the foot of the AB defender standing out of the ruck immediately before the Horwill try. Take that off the final margin and it doesn’t look such a debacle.

I hope the Australians keep improving as they have been, so it doesn’t matter how well any of their opponents play, but it’s very early to be writing the AB’s off.

Enjoy your summer, it’s wet & cold in Melbourne

The earth might spin off its axis if a South African coached New Zealand.

Would he really understand New Zealand back play?

The mention of White does bring up an interesting point. White had complete faith in his under-21 boys, even if it meant South Africa lost a hell of a lot of Test matches leading up to the WC.

The idea in NZ is that the under-21 guys go through the provincial level, step up to Super 14 and so on. We’re not likely to see another Baby Blacks team any time soon, since we’re in a bind over that Adidas contract where we’re supposed to win 75% of our Tests, but I wonder how the NZ public would react to us losing as many Tests as SA did if it meant we won the WC in 2011?

Or do we want to have our cake and eat it too?

Peter made some excellent comments. I think our performance at the breakdown is killing our back play and not helping Ellis in the slightest (and that guy is trying hard, he really is), but I keep waiting for Wayne Smith to make some adjustments. Seems like I’ll be waiting all summer (it’s summer in Japan.)

A smart assessment of the test (in other words, I mostly agree with you) but with the following qualifcations: firstly, the rotation policy must be dropped, for the moment at least. We’re too far away from the next world cup to be worrying about building depth. We need instead to rebuild confidence, which only comes from winning. In crunch games, and surely this was always going to be one of those, you put on your best team, which means Smith in the centres for Kahui. At test level combinations are crucial, and as Deans showed with a depleted Crusaders team this year, they work at other levels as well. The fact that the AB team on Saturday night had never played before told heavily against them. I know that this has been true of every Henry team, but this was also a team with very patchy test experience in the backline–Kahui, Tuituvake, Ellis and Nonu are all relative novices. True, the Wallabies also had new players, but Deans’s great gift, as he showed with the Crusaders, seems to be to get 15 players quickly functioning as a cohesive unit no matter the personnel. The AB backline on Saturday night did not function as a unit, I think for reasons I’ll give below. As you say, Smith has more nous and experience than Kahui at this stage, and these count for a huge amount when the pressure goes on. The point was, though, that Kahui hardly ever (perhaps never) got the ball in a regulation backline move and so never got a chance to show his strengths. He looked slow and bewildered in broken play, but that has much to do with the higher speed and pressure of internationals. He’ll learn, but not until the northern tour, I hope. Which brings us to Nonu: as I mentioned in an earlier posting, his trouble is that at Super 14 level his ability to break a tackle makes him dangerous, but at test level he needs to use the abilities of those around him to create tries for others, as well as occasionally score them himself. In other words he needs to pass, and not just as he’s going to ground. Against England he was offloading intelligently, and as a result Smith and Sivivatu were given space and looked very dangerous. On Saturday Nonu reverted to type, trying to smash his way through rather than distribute the ball. This meant that it never went to the wings in a flowing movement (‘no look’ pass situations are desperate attempts to get out of jail, not serious attacks, even if some times they pay off.). So, Sivivatu and Tuituvake never got the ball in the situation that best suits them: one or two men to beat from 30 metres out. Most of the time Sivivatu was running it back from 80 metres into a wall of Wallabies. You don’t score a try a test for 30 tests if you’re a one trick pony. You do score a try a test if you are asked to finish off a sustained and coherent backline move by a team moving the ball swiftly and creatively, which the ABs only did sporadically on Saturday. The real culprit in the backline, though, was Ellis, whose slow pass and Gregan -like lateral running cut down room for all those outside him. Apart from an inadequate pass, Ellis is not strong or aggressive enough (see Piri Weepu, Justin Leonard, Byron Kelleher) to rip the ball out of rucks and mauls and get it back quickly into play. Typically, he stands waiting for the ball to come out. The AB backs need quick ball to keep overall momentum going–Ellis retards the backline, so that by the time the ball gets to Nonu the opposition is right on top of him and he goes back to what he knows best, crashing up the middle. By then the backline continuity is lost and the 4 guys outside Nonu are wasted. In a backine of 7 men, that’s a big waste. Additionally, Ellis has no real running game to speak of, and so causes no uncertainty among the defending team (again compare Weepu, Leonard, Kelleher). I’ve criticised Cowan before as being Marshall Lite,but he does get in an mix it (see his try against the English). The neglect of Weepu has come back to haunt Henry and Smith. Perhaps injury will give him his chance. I hope so.

As to the forwards: Lauaki was terrible, but his one-handed running always had disaster written all over it at test level. Your don’t need to tacle him around his thighs when all you have to do is tackle his wrist. Even before Saturday night he regularly lost the ball in the tackle. Being the biggest kid on the park at Super 14 doesn’t matter at test level. Handing over the ball to the opposition 7 times in circumstances where momentum and continuity were essential was criminal. This let the Wallabies off the hook again and again. Worse than that, it gave them a chance to counterattack or simply to hoof the ball down the field, forcing the ABs to score from 80 metres, an increasingly impossible task as tiredness compounded the pressure. “Here, equally tired opposition under the cosh, you have the ball. Oh, and while you’re at it, have a breather, use up time, get on the front foot and get your self-belief back” I’m not saying the ABs would have won had Lauaki NOT touched the ball in the last 25 minutes, but it must surely have helped. Braid was outplayed by Smith, although that was to be expected. Again, though, it meant that ruck and maul ball was slow, or lost. Assuming McCaw returns fit this week, expect more quick ball with a consequent improvement in the backline performance. And while Smith and later Waugh made key tackles, I can’t remember Braid doing the same. Perhaps I’m being harsh here, but several times potential tries were stopped by massive Wallaby tackles. Clearly Alli Williams was not 100%, and this cutdown the lineout options, causing poor throws, and the important loss of ball on either attack or defence. Again, in tight games, gifting the ball two or three times to you opponents is of itself enough to sink you. Do it 25 times. . . . .

Can the ABs win this week? Despite the doomsayers, of course they can. Surely they won’t cough up the ball 25 times two week on a row, and with McCaw back they should get better ball. If Williams is fit the forwards might work more as an aggressive and cohesive unit, which they failed to do on Saturday. This should get the ball to a backline with Smith in the centres and ( I hope) a new halfback.

Which isn’t to say that the ABs will win or that Wallabies didn’t deserve to win last Saturday, because they did given how the game panned out. They played to their strengths, were more committed in tackle area, quick on defence, and they rode their luck. They created their luck as well, and they scrapped hard. It was a gutsy performance, though, rather than a classy one. But I’m sure Wallaby fans will take a gutsy win over a classy loss any time. I know I would.

The only point I disagree with is the following:

“Firstly, the AB players did not loose this test match, the coaches did, from poor player selection and incorrect tactics.”

Henry’s not responsible for every mistake the All Blacks made. The players need to shoulder some blame for the handling errors, lack of commitment and poor defence. Henry got it wrong with his tactics, selections and subsitutions, but the players themselves couldn’t execute at pace, kept turning the ball over in their own 22 and defended poorly.

It took Carter two or three clearance attempts before he bit the bullet and opted for touch. It’s no wonder our forwards blew up. I realise he had a brilliant attacking game, but I don’t think he ran the game particularly well.

I stated before the tests against SA that even our proud and formidable record at home offers me little solace this year as the longer a winning record continues, the closer you are to your first loss and only the most faithful will be seeking refuge in the All Blacks record at Eden park as a lozenge to soothe the choke hold the Wallabies had over us on Saturday night.

So far 2008 is looking eerily reminiscent of 2004 for NZ. Back then we impressed against the world champions England and won both home Tri Nations tests against SA and Australia, then the wheels fell off spectacularly with away losses, the last one an absolute thrashing in the republic with Marius Joubert scoring four tries. SA won the Tri Nations and were voted IRB team of the year and Jake White coach of the year. Australia and Robbie Deans are heading down the right track to emulate that achievement.

Bledisloe 1 perfectly captured the difference in the psychology of the two coaches with regards to selections for the 22 man squad. Deans rewards people with selection who have earned their spot and can make a difference, nobody’s position is guaranteed but you’ll keep your spot as long as you keep performing. Henry is still hellbent on building depth by rotating players which only works when your strongest first selections are performing and he will need to rethink his position on certain players within and outside the squad.

The Wallabies don’t fear us but where in the past few years they may have lacked the self belief they could beat us, you can see the confidence growing in this side and they won’t roll over for anybody.

Is Nick Evan’s even in the ab squad?