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If the Wallabies are to be any chance of beating the All Blacks this weekend they’ll have to play as well as they can against an in form All Blacks team.
Relying on any complacency is not an option, so what can the Wallabies do to put some pressure back on the All Blacks?
Some of the many things the Wallabies will have to do well include:
• Securing the ball when receiving restarts
• Catching the barrage of high balls the All Blacks will use
• Matching the All Blacks physically in breakdowns
• Getting players into attacking rucks early to minimise the disruption the All Blacks can cause our attack through turnovers or slowing delivery down
• In defence, pressuring the All Blacks in the front line and then scrambling really well
• Making accurate passes and catching those passes under pressure
• In attack, converting the small number of opportunities they may get
• Getting support runners around the ball so the ball carrier at least two options to pass to
Do these general points constitute a game plan? No, the coaches will no doubt emphasise all of these things but they’ll also give the team more specific plans that are designed to exploit any weaknesses they’ve identified in the All Blacks.
It’s very hard to find any weaknesses with the All Blacks and if you base a game plan on something that happened in the last Test alone, it’ll probably have been identified by the All Blacks themselves and will have been rectified in their training this week.
Many people will say that the game plan has to be based on defence – that the key to beating the All Blacks is to stop them scoring tries.
If you could stop the All Blacks scoring tries as the Wallabies did in the corresponding match in Brisbane last year, you may achieve a result.
The Wallabies will really need to maintain their intensity in defence in the 20 minutes leading up to halftime when you consider what Brett McKay outlined in his article on The Roar today.
However, that result in Brisbane last year came against an All Blacks team who played poorly and I wouldn’t want to base a game plan on hoping for a repeat performance from the All Blacks.
The All Blacks scored an average of four tries per match in The Rugby Championship this year and 34 points scored per match.
It would have to be one mighty defensive effort from the Wallabies to contain the All Blacks in their current form so I think we have to accept that the All Blacks will score tries and we have to score more.
So I went looking for any weaknesses in the All Blacks defence and ways the Wallabies could pressure their defence as part of an attacking game plan.
Going into a match with an attacking game plan doesn’t mean flinging the ball around in an unstructured way or giving it straight to the back line – it requires a coordinated attack plan between forwards and backs.
I’ve identified one area of weakness with the All Blacks defence as you’ll see in the video below. That same weakness has shown up in most matches over the last few years but hasn’t been exploited by teams.
No matter how the All Blacks set up their defence, attacking the inside channel as I’ve shown you in the video will only work if the forwards have achieved some momentum through the middle first.
Obviously getting so narrow after a kick chase as shown in the video is an error but in general play the All Blacks are narrow most of the time.
Clearly their structure is designed with their priority in defence being not to allow teams to go through them.
They are prepared to risk teams going around them, backing their cover defence to clean up any breaks made wide.
Teams haven’t exploited this inside channel because they appear to have been too tempted by the wide space the All Blacks show in defence.
The Wallabies were particularly guilty of this in the first Bledisloe Cup match this year when they just shuffled the ball wide which played into the hands of the All Blacks and their defensive system.
I’m not suggesting that targeting this inside channel will lead to multiple tries or even line breaks as the All Blacks are very good in cover but it would put their defence under pressure.
If you can pressure a team’s defence then even if holes don’t open up where you had planned, they will likely open up elsewhere – it’s not possible to defend the whole width of the field.
As you can see from the examples in the video when individual players have come back in behind the drifting defenders the All Blacks have looked vulnerable.
What I’m suggesting is that this channel be targeted more regularly as part of a coordinated game plan.
The All Blacks are also very good at adapting to situations on field – if the Wallabies do target this inside channel they won’t need to wait until halftime to be told to adjust their structure so it’s not as narrow.
When that happens there will be more space for the Wallabies forwards to attack through the middle or alternatively if the All Blacks choose to square up their defence and not turn to the sideline and ‘jockey’, the space out wide will become another option to target.