Cheer up Wallabies, you’re playing the Northern teams

 
Pot Hale Roar Guru

By pothale, 26 Oct 2009 Pot Hale is a Roar Guru

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Cheer up Wallabies – all is not lost for 2009. Having jetted off to Tokyo for their game with New Zealand, Robbie Deans should be looking beyond this meaningless match to seeing that his squad live up to the expectation of their tour name: achieving a grand slam.

And if they’ve been paying attention to the northern hemisphere season, the Wallabies will have good cause to be optimistic that they can deliver. (That’s my view from an independently biased Irish perspective. And why I devoted a good chunk of this article to the Irish team.)

Six weeks ago, the prospects of Australia touring Ireland and Great Britain and winning all their matches would have been rated 50/50 at best, with talk in some quarters of possibly Ireland, England and Wales all putting one over the most popular of the visiting southern hemisphere teams this year.

With players dropping like flies from the Irish and Great Britain teams, through injury or poor performance, the Wallabies should be breathing a lot easier at this point. To reach their tour objective, it may be that the toughest match of the tour will be the final one against Wales, with the timing of their match in the series a critical factor.

Up against their perennial southern hemisphere foes, England will be without any real strength and experience in its forward pack, and its backline is not looking healthy either.

Wilkinson will have a lot of expectation on his shoulders presuming Johnson picks him at 10. England won’t have played as a test team at that point and are going to have to go out on the pitch with a number of unfamiliar combinations throughout the team.

The fact that England will have to head into a southern hemisphere series without any of its four top props available should give heart to Robinson, Alexander and the rest of the Australian pack after their winter of woe against South Africa and New Zealand.

Added to that the absence of players such as Flutey, Cipriani, Armitage, Rees and Easter through injury should have Kidney, Robinson and Gatland thanking their lucky stars their players are not playing in the English Premiership.

Australia will have their match against New Zealand, and one of their mid-week games against Gloucester, over by the time they hit Twickenham. If he’s ironed out some of the wrinkles, Deans should be confident of securing a scrappy win.

Twelve premiership clubs feed into the England team as well as some players signed to French teams. In contrast, only 9 provincial or regional teams provide the players for the all of the test squads of Scotland, Ireland and Wales, with only one or two players plying their trade in England or France.

Scotland have two regional teams. Edinburgh are riding high in the Magners League, but their players, along with those of Glasgow, have not been setting the Heineken Cup alight and Andy Robinson will have his work cut-out for the series.

The Scots still have some worthwhile players in the likes of the Evans brothers, Cusiter, Danielli, Hines as well as the Scottish front row who might present the toughest prospect of the four home unions. Deans will have enough sense not to send out a Rookie XV at Murrayfield figuring he can get away with it. But he’s going to be counting on this match as a definite win.

By the time he plays them, he could well have two worthy scalps on his belt already. Ireland are second up for the Wallabies in Croke Park. Like England, Ireland will be playing together for the first time since April.

And so far, the signs have not been great from the Six Nations Grand Slam winners – they could be very undercooked.

Before the season started, Kidney probably had a choice as to whether to blood or try out some of the less-experienced players in the run-up to next year’s Six Nations and with half an eye on World Cup 2011. Now he may have no choice.

Two of the three provincial teams that make up the Irish squad have been playing nearly as badly as the Aussie Super 14 teams earlier this year. Actually, make that ‘as badly’.

Winning form and consistency of individual and team performance have been sadly lacking in Magners and Heineken Cup for Leinster and Munster. (They’ve only played 6 league games admittedly.)

Some of the key players haven’t had enough game time with their enforced post-Lions rests. But the dominance and ability to close games out that they would have done last season has deserted them so far this year. Players like Horan, Flannery, O’Connell, O’Gara, O’Leary, Earls, Heaslip and Fitzgerald, have not impressed so far.

Ulster have probably been the best of the provinces (they lead the Magners right now) and some of their players might merit a call-up to the Test XV, except only Paddy Wallace (12) and Stephen Ferris (6) have recent experience at Test level. The three provinces have one more round of Magners left next weekend, and then two weeks to prepare as a Test team.

It’s quite likely that Ireland will have to field a completely different front row from last season’s Grand-Slam line-up of Hayes, Flannery and Horan.

Flannery has been crocked since his pre-Lions tour injury, which prevented the Irish hooker travelling. Jackman and ‘A Squad’ player, Denis Fogarty, are just not as good but Kidney will likely have to go with one of them. (Ulster captain, Neil Best, is a long-term injury.)

Horan got a head knock in a recent game, and has been out of sorts since August. He’s likely to be supplanted by the form-loosehead, Leinster’s Cian Healy, who has taken on the No 1 shirt with relish. He’ll be one to watch.

James O’Connor was probably still in trainers when tighthead John Hayes was first called into the Irish squad in 1998. The most-capped player (with 94, he has two more than Malcolm O’Kelly), he is Mr Reliable in the front-row and still one of the best lifters around.

However, he’ll be badly short of game time, after an 8-week ban for stamping, so Kidney may be forced to look to the 30-year old Mike Ross of Leinster who has only two caps to his name. Or else, Brisbane-born Tom Court who got a couple of caps last season and has been playing well for Ulster in the last few weeks.

Hayes’ understudy at Munster, Tony Buckley, one of the biggest/heaviest props in world rugby (6’5″ and 22st) has more experience (13 caps) but his form has dropped in the last 12 months.

Behind them, Paul O’Connell and Donncha O’Callaghan form a long-time partnership for Munster and Ireland. Of the two, it’s the Lions captain who has lost most form – alarmingly. Peerless in the lineout in some of his previous seasons, ably assisted by Hayes, O’Connell has gone off the boil – in play and leadership.

His Lions captaincy was viewed by many as less than stellar, and, presuming Kidney picks him, hopefully he won’t be laboured with the additional duties of taking over from Brian O’Driscoll to lead the team.

In the back-row, normally the combination of Ferris, Wallace and Heaslip would have any coach feeling happy and confident. Of the three, openside Wallace has made his experience show, scoring some close-in critical tries for Munster.

Heaslip made some barn-storming runs and scored some lovely open-field tries in the 6 Nations and had a much-lauded performance in the third Lions test, but he has been bull-in-china-shop for Leinster this season. As well as being the hardest tackler in the Irish team, Ferris is possibly the fastest blindside flanker around – his length of the field tries against SA opposition in the Lions series left some fleet-footed backs in his wake. He hasn’t had enough game time yet after a tour-ending injury, but if his form improves, Australia will have their hands full.

In the backline, Ireland has three tyros in the shape of Kearney, Bowe and O’Driscoll, all of whom can make game-breaking runs and score tries. Living in the shadow of Wales’ Lee Byrne prior to the Lions tour, Kearney made a name for himself in two of the tests with his catching and kicking skills – and when he gets a chance to enter the line, he’s not too shabby either.

However, it’s the other players around them at 9, 10, 12 and 14 that is a cause for concern, and is the weak point that Australia should focus on.

Fitzgerald on the wing has speed and dexterity going forward but his defensive and catching skills are his weaker points. Adam Ashley-Cooper and others should take note.

In the space of a season and a half, Ireland went from having just the perennial Gregan look-alike, Peter Stringer, linking at the scrum, to celebrating the talents of Tomas O’Leary and more lately Eoin Reddan and Isaac Boss. Of the four, O’Leary should be top dog, but like his Munster team-mates, has slipped in form – some of it possibly due to recovering from ankle injury that stopped him going on Lions tour. Kidney may still bank on him, with Boss as cover. One for Elsom to target.

Ronan O’Gara, the longest-serving 10 in the international Test game, is a shadow of the player he was last year. Whether his cock-up in the second Lions test is still haunting him, or he has just simply burnt out, the odds on him being replaced in Munster are shortening.

His place-kicking stats have dropped nearly 50% on last season, and that simply isn’t good enough. The emergence of Jonny Sexton in Leinster who kicked the winning points in last season’s Heineken Cup final may have something to do with it as well.

Except Sexton doesn’t yet have the reliability with the kicking tee as O’Gara. He makes some incisive bursts and runs, and stands up much better in the tackle, but his inexperience is going to be something his former team-mate Elsom and co. will target.

Actually, Elsom has the goods on a number of the Irish team. Outside of O’Gara, the incumbent Darcy is still plying his partnership with O’Driscoll. He isn’t good enough and like last season, Kidney may choose to go with Ulster’s Paddy Wallace who has been captaining his side to some solid victories. If not, Darcy is going to get found out, albeit his defensive partnership with O’Driscoll is still very solid.

This match is a tough one to call and is dependent on selections, but since Australia will have been playing, and Ireland will be starting cold, the odds shift to the Wallabies.

I suspect that the Australians will have the most respect for Wales. Not just because the Welsh beat them last year, nor that they are perceived to have the best running rugby game of the northern hemisphere unions, but also because Wales will be up to speed and raring to go.

They’ll have New Zealand and South Africa matches under their belt by the time they play. If one or both of those goes the right way, the final match could be a belter with a Grand Slam on the one hand, and another southern hemisphere scalp on the other, up for grabs.

The good news for Australia is that like England and Ireland, Wales will be without critical experience in the front row with Adam Jones out through a Lions inflicted injury. Lions scrum-half, Mike Phillips, is also out.

The four welsh regional teams, Ospreys, Scarlets, Dragons and Blues have had mixed results so far in the Magners and slightly better form in the Heineken Cup for the Scarlets, Blues and Ospreys.

Ryan Jones seems to have recovered his loss of form and is likely to lead the team out. Alun Wyn Jones and Ian Gough will possibly be the lock pairing and Andy Powell taking up the 6 spot. At 7 Wales have another pearler, with Martyn Williams returning from injury and getting back to form.

In the backline, Stephen Jones is locked in solid at 10, with Jamie Roberts, James Hook, Leigh Halfpenny, Shane Willams, Jamie Roberts and Tom Shanklin presenting a tough challenge for the Wallabies.

At the moment, I’m going with the Welsh on this one, because it may be be a game too far for Oz. But momentum carries a lot of weight, and if Australia arrive unbeaten in the Millennium with a game to go, and Wales have possibly suffered at the hands of New Zealand and South Africa, then the Wallabies could be going home with the Grand Slam in their bag as a small consolation prize for their Annus Horribilis of 2009.

So cheer up Wallabies, all is not lost yet.

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