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The rugby statistician par excellence, Matthew Alvarez, has sent me a couple of interesting statistics that may or may not throw light on the significance of the Wallabies 26 -24 victory over the All Blacks.
First: of the 73 Tests between Australia and New Zealand, the Hong Kong match was only the fifth time the Wallabies have won when the All Blacks have scored 20-points or more.
Second: the Test win, too, was only the 16th out of 61 Tests since 1996 (when the professional era started) that the Wallabies have won after being being behind at half-time.
Third: Adam Ashley-Cooper has now scored 6 tries in 14 Tests against New Zealand. David Campese (who else?) holds the record with 8 tries in 29 Tests and Matt Burke is second with 7 tries.
What do these statistics mean?
I once read that statistics are like bikinis: what they reveal is interesting but what they don’t reveal is vital.
Working backwards, the interesting aspect is that Ashley-Cooper has to be regarded as one of the Wallaby great backs. Why? Because he scores tries against the toughest opposition there is in world rugby, the All Blacks. As I wrote on Monday, that try he scored at Hong Kong from about 55m out was one of the great Wallaby solo tries of all time.
Coming from behind to win Tests, especially against the All Blacks, is an extremely difficult thing to do.
Greg Clark (a caller I like) gave the statistic on Saturday night on the Fox Sports commentary that the All Blacks have now won 80 of their last 83 Tests when they’ve been in front at half-time.
The problem with this splendid result, though, is that the Test was gifted to the Wallabies in the final minutes by Stephen Donald who played (in my reckoning, at least) the worst 20 minutes any All Black has ever played.
This is a big call, but he took the ball back into the forwards on the Wallaby tryline instead of drop-kicking an easy goal; he missed an easy penalty to give the All Blacks an 8-point lead with minutes of play left; he missed a tackle in the last frenetic minutes of the Wallaby attack; and gave away a penalty with a head-high tackle; and then he missed touch when the All Blacks got a turnover with only 37 seconds of play remaining.
I got a number of emails from irate New Zealanders, after the various euphoric posts on The Roar by Wallaby supporters pointing that the Test was a dead rubber, that the surface did not allow the All Blacks traction to impose their scrum power on the Wallaby pack and that there was an absence of ‘spark’ in the All Blacks loose forwards.
In other words, the Test loss as far as they were concerned had no significance other than “a young, immature Wallabies team” had a “moment of promise.”
On the other hand, before the Test I made the point that in 1990 the Wallabies won the third Test of a dead rubber against the All Blacks at Wellington and this victory set up a side that had been under the hammer from the All Blacks and rugby writers to win RWC 1999.
I’m writing a chapter, RWC 2007, for an updated version of my history How To Watch The Rugby World Cup (Penguin Books).
The Hong Kong Test result reminds me that in 2006 the Springboks had lost five Tests in a row to the All Blacks. They met in a dead rubber at Rustenburg.
If the Springboks lost this Test then Jake White was going to be axed, and along with him John Smit, Percy Mongomery and most of the experienced campaigners who pulled off the unexpected triumph for the Springboks in RWC 2007.
It’s history now that Andre Pretorius kicked a penalty from the touchline (shades of James O’Connor and his two conversions from the touchline) in the 78th minute of play to give the Springboks their narrow victory.
Of course, we will only know how significant or insignificant the Wallaby victory is at the end of RWC 2011.
My guess is that the victory is important for the Wallabies in that it has given a youngish side the self-confidence that comes from defeating a side that had recorded fifteen successive Test wins and ten in a row against the Wallabies.
My guess, too, is that the defeat could be important for the All Blacks.
There is a priviso here, and this is whether the All Blacks coaches have actually learned the lesson that came out of the loss. One of the lessons, obviously, is that Donald and Isaia Toeavo are not up to Test match rugby.
It’s time, too, for the plug to be pulled on Joe Rokocovo and Mils Miliaina.
Back to the Wallabies.
The Green and Gold website (a mine of useful information) has published a table showing the Australia-New Zealand points difference in their last eleven Tests. The first loss was a 29-point thrashing. Then in the next four Tests up to the retirement of George Smith the points differential was -4, -5, -6, -1.
Rocky Elsom’s first Bledisloe Cup Test as captain showed a points differential of -29. Then we’ve had -13, -21,10, -1 and +2.
You could argue from this that the last two Tests with the All Blacks assured of retaining the Bledisloe Cup were dead rubber affairs.
But before the Hong Kong Test, most of us made the point that Graham Henry had selected his strongest team and that he assured the New Zealand rugby public he wanted to keep the All Blacks boot on the throat of the Wallabies.
What we can be sure of is that the Wallabies have struggled to post back-to-back victories since Robbie Deans has become coach, even though the side is number two in the world rankings.
It may be that we will get a better indication of the significance from the way the Wallabies play against Wales.
A convincing win at Cardiff, with back-up victories for the rest of the tour, would suggest that Hong Kong is the tipping point for this Wallaby squad. A loss and questions will be asked of the Wallabies that are currently being asked of the All Blacks in the Test against England.