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The win over France in the first Test was a great result for the Wallabies and Australian rugby in general.
While the French were poor, the way the Wallabies played is likely to attract bigger crowds and more viewers to the next two Tests, particularly as the French will be much stronger with the inclusion of a number of their better players.
The quality of the French performance shouldn’t detract from the Wallabies’ performance. They were good and there’s plenty of room left for improvement.
There were so many positives to come from the match for the Wallabies but one massive negative – the injury to Stephen Moore, only 31 seconds into his captaincy debut and the subsequent news that he’ll miss the remainder of the season.
That’s two years in a row where the Wallabies have lost a key player within the first few minutes of the first Test match of the year – last year it was Christian Leali’ifano, the first choice goal kicker, who went down early.
However, the Wallabies dealt with the blow very well. Tatafu Polota-Nau came on and was good, Michael Hooper took over the captaincy and the team got on with the job they were there to do.
The halves combination worked well and players that many had questioned the inclusion of such as Sekope Kepu, Rob Simmons and Tevita Kuridrani justified their selections.
We’ve subsequently learnt of the injury to Sam Carter, which is a real shame as he made such a good debut.
The only other real negative from the match was the way the Wallaby scrum capitulated in the last ten minutes. The scrum right on full time disintegrated and surely no-one questions whether a penalty try should have been awarded.
Obviously there will be at least two changes to the team for the second Test this week. Polota-Nau will start in place of Moore and Nathan Charles will be on the bench in his place. I think James Horwill will partner Rob Simmons in the second row with Luke Jones coming on to the bench.
I’d like to see Scott Sio on the bench for Pek Cowan and this may happen. I’m not sure that Paddy Ryan will be replaced on the bench with options being few and far between. I wouldn’t change the starting props – James Slipper was fantastic and Kepu also did well.
I can’t see any changes being made to the starting backline or bench backs.
Here are my player ratings for the first Test.
