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Rugby is a team game. Fourteen players try to create a metre or two of space for the fifteenth man to run through and attack the opposition defence. But the very great players on their best days turn the 15-a-side code into a one-man band.
Think of David Campese in the 1991 Rugby World Cup, and Tim Horan in the 1999 RWC. And now Richie McCaw at Eden Park, NZ rugby’s paradise, in the second Bledisloe Cup Test in 2008.
If ever a player demonstrated the Power of One in a team sport that player was McCaw. He was everywhere, and with intent and effect. He tackled. He won lose ball in the rucks and mauls. He ran. He covered. He chatted the referee into a virtual submission. He took late tackles, early tackles and facial massage from Al Baxter (which Rodney So’oialo took exception to and gave away the first penalty), and put on ferocious hits himself (ask Luke Burgess).
If someone in 50 years time, a rugby historian perhaps, wants to know how well and ferociously rugby was played in the early 21st century by the greatest players, let him look at the tapes of this Test of McCaw’s play.
The mark of the greatness of his play, in the fiery engine room of the forwards exchanges, is that George Smith – the hero and outstanding player of the Sydney Test – was reduced to insignificance in comparison to his opposing fetcher, as the South Africans call the openside flanker.
The statistics of the Test tell the story, rather like blood stains at a murder scene: the Wallabies turned the ball over 27 times to the 14 times by the All Blacks. The Wallabies made 135 tackles and missed 22 and the All Blacks missed 19 tackles in the 139 they made. McCaw made 22 tackles and Rodney So’oialo 13 to top the tackle count for the All Black, and Wycliff Palu 13 and Mat Giteau 13 topped for the Wallabies.
Where were George Smith and Phil Waugh in the tackle count statistics?
They were buried in the rucks and mauls trying to win the contest with McCaw, which they lost. McCaw effectively took the two Wallaby fliers out of the match and did his own positive stuff when the All Blacks had the ball.
A couple more interesting statistics: the All Blacks had 52 per cent of possession and 59 per cent of territory. The Wallabies had 48 per cent possession and 41 per cent of territory. In other words, most of the Test was played in the Wallaby half of the field, with the All Blacks holding and running the ball. No wonder Robbie Deans said that the Eden Park Test was a ‘mirror image’ of the Sydney Test.
In Sydney (and in Dunedin, for that matter) the All Black coaches got the selection of their side wrong (especially playing three number 8s in the loose forwards positions), and their tactics wrong. In a case of third time lucky, they got the tactics right and their selections right. Having So’oialo at number 8 gave them much better coverage and spread in their defence when the Wallabies made their line breaks.
As it happened, the Wallabies made 6 line breaks and the All Blacks made 6 line breaks. Whereas in Sydney, where the All Blacks made 11 line breaks, there was no loose forward to link up and continue the thrust. There was at Auckland – Richie McCaw.
Robbie Deans made his first critical selection mistake playing George Smith and Phil Waugh together on the side of the scrum. The Wallaby lineout lacked a third jumper. As a consequence the Wallabies won 16 lineouts and lost 8. while the All Blacks won 9 and lost one. More importantly they scored a try directly from a lineout move and almost scored a second with the same move.
The Wallabies, as the TV commentators pointed out, have now lost 15 straight Tri-Nations Tests played out of Australia. Deans will have to make some tough selections for the South African leg of the 2008 series. Nathan Sharpe and Al Baxter will have to go, surely. Rocky Elsom’s return will give the pack some mongrel but more is needed from the pack particularly if the sorry record of not being able to win Test away from the comfort of the home ground advantage is to be reversed.
It’s the oldest truism in rugby but the most valid: big matches are won upfront. The Wallabies won the forward battle in Sydney and won the Test handsomely. They lost the forward battle to a McCaw-inspired All Blacks’ pack, and lost the Test easily.
Robbie Deans’ great test now as a coach is to get the Wallaby forwards to play away from home with the conviction and courage and mongrel they play with at home.