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The ARU’s handout on the selection of the 35-man Wallabies squad for the 2009 Spring Tour, including a grand slam series in the UK, led with the fact that seven uncapped players had been included and also that Robbie Deans has selected a new captain in Rocky Elsom and new vice-captain in Berrick Barnes.
My old chief of staff years ago and a great mentor at the Sydney Morning Herald, Keith Martin, would have tossed my copy into a waste paper basket if I’d presented him with this lead.
“Get your lead right, sonny,” he’d say in his terse way.
So into the basket goes the ARU’s lead.
The real lead is that Deans has set up a new leadership team for the Wallabies. The usual suspects, the former incumbent Stirling Mortlock and George Smith, the last Wallaby captain, have been discarded for two players, neither of whom are captains or have been captains of their respective Super Rugby teams.
Elsom is far and away the best Wallaby forward.
He is an 80 minute man in a pack that often has not much more than 40 strong minutes in it. He is hyped on victory. He is tough, brutal and passionate in the Simon Poidevin tradition. He might not make the best after-dinner speeches or mouth those platitudinous sound-bites that someone like George Gregan was adept at.
But he will be a fearless and uncompromising leader on the field, as solid as a rock as his name suggests, which is something the Wallabies have lacked for some years.
Making Barnes the vice-captain is a sign that Deans sees him as the brains of the backline, the playmaker who sets up plays for his outside backs and who takes the team around the field in a measured, calculating and smart way.
We had a story earlier in the week in the SMH from Greg Growden (who is well-informed on these inside matters) that Giteau is unhappy with the possibility of being taken out the play-making role of first five-eighths in favour of Barnes.
I hope the story is right, not the unhappiness part, but the likelihood that Giteau is being moved out, at least to inside centre or even further out to the wing (something I’ve advocated for a while).
Giteau is an instinctive highly-skilled player who is best suited as a strike weapon rather than as a playmaker, setting up plays for the other strike players. When I think of Giteau, the image of Carlos Spencer comes to mind.
Playing such gifted players at first five-eighths is the equivalent of playing them in straitjackets.
Barnes, as far as I’m concerned, is the ideal playmaker.
He has a good kick. He passes nicely. He can make a break while taking the ball to the line. But most importantly, he plays what is in front of him rather than what comes into his mind.
Both Elsom and Barnes are not part of the corroding faction within Australian rugby, a faction that is lead by some former senior Wallabies and disaffected former officials, and gets support from the RUPA (the players’ union) to bring down John O’Neill, the CEO of the ARU, who in his first incarnation as CEO tried to keep the greed of the newly professional players under some sort of control.
I can hear Keith Martin saying to me now: “How is this related to your headline, son?”
Well, one of the consistent themes of Deans’ selections since he took over two years ago has been the way he has tried to change the culture of the side from what may be described as a RUPA-like sense of entitlement without the achievements to back up the claims, to a side that puts playing well and successfully for the Wallabies above all other considerations.
He has tried to get rid of the corroding elements or put them in a position where their ability to influence (for the worse) the younger players is greatly restricted.
The headline “last throw of the dice” element in the selection relates to the gamble Deans has taken to discard the leadership of players who have been involved in the Wallabies for most of this century for two players of lesser experience.
Elsom has played 44 Tests. Barnes has played 21. Stirling Mortlock has played 80 Tests. And George Smith 105.
The other aspect about Elsom and Barnes is that they don’t push their agendas in public, and they don’t contrive to undermine the position of other players with comments that can be read as criticisms of what the coach might be wanting to try out with them and the other players.
For better or for worse, this is the leadership team that will take the Wallabies through to the 2011 RWC tournament in New Zealand.
Deans will want this new leadership to make a difference right now, for this is what the Wallabies need after a disgraceful Tri-Nations (aside from a glorious victory over the Springboks at Brisbane).
The Wallabies face a formidable Spring Tour.
They play the All Blacks at Tokyo, an opposition that has historically the best away-from-home record of any side in world rugby.
Then there are the Grand Slam Tests starting with England at Twickenham on 7 November.
England will have Jonny Wilkinson back, and he is back to his match-winning best. The referee is Bryce Lawrence (NZ) which should be a slight advantage for the Wallabies as they are familiar with his style from Super Rugby matches.
On 15 November, the Wallabies play Ireland, the form team in Europe.
The referee is the South African Jonathan Kaplan.
Kaplan has a reputation of being tough on the Wallabies. But he was the referee in Wellington who played a very, very long extra time and then gave a penalty to the Wallabies for John Eales to kick the winning goal.
On 21 November, the Wallabies play Scotland. The referee is R. Poite, who I guess is a Frenchman, but I haven’t seen him in a major Test.
This shapes up to be the easiest of the Grand Slam Tests, although Scotland has the biggest pack of the Home Unions.
The tour finishes on November 28 with the Test against Wales, who fancy their chances this year of defeating the All Blacks and the Wallabies.
The referee is Wayne Barnes, the Englishman who New Zealanders’ reckon torpedoed their 2007 RWC chances at Cardiff against France.
Barnes has been in New Zealand refereeing and it may be that exposure to Southern Hemisphere rugby might have enlightened him about the fairness of the methods and systems used in this part of the rugby world.
There is a mid-week match against Gloucester on 3 November which, even though the uncapped Wallabies will make up some of the team, should be a victory.
Given this, anything less than four wins out of the six matches would make the tour a failure.
The hope is, of course, that the Wallabies will emulate the famous 1984 side and achieve a second Grand Slam.
We need some context here, though.
The notes to the ARU’s handout suggest that this is the eighth potential Grand Slam tour. The Wallabies have won only one Grand Slam since the 1928/29 NSW Waratahs (the Queensland Rugby Union was not re-formed until 1929) first tried to pull off the sequence of four Tests wins against the Home Unions.
The Springboks and the All Blacks have both achieved four Grand Slams out of eight attempts.
2009, 25 years after the first Wallabies Grand Slam, is the appropriate time for Australian rugby to celebrate another Grand Slam triumph.
As the ARU notes point out, 17 members of the Spring Tour squad hadn’t been born when Alan Jones coached a marvellous team to a memorable sequence of victories against the Home Unions.