- Video
-
Club Roar
Captured a great grassroots sporting moment? We want to see it!Content Collections
The Roar Community
- Join
- Login
Ewen McKenzie is convinced that among his current Wallabies squad there is a terrific side that is capable of winning the Bledisloe Cup, the Rugby Championship and the Rugby World Cup next year.
This thinking is akin to Michelangelo’s genius at looking at a block of marble and seeing a statue of David inside it.
For Michelangelo with his David and McKenzie with his Wallabies, after the visualisation, it is merely a matter of chipping away until the finished work is revealed.
I have a problem with McKenzie’s thinking about all of this. The squad does not include Benn Robinson, arguably the best scrumming prop in Australian rugby. The scrum was weak against the All Blacks in the second Bledisloe Cup Test after being helped considerably by Jaco Peyper in the first Test at Sydney.
This scrum weakness was one of the many lessons that McKenzie should have learnt from the Sydney Test, but failed to do so.
The two props from Sydney and Auckland, Sekope Kepu and James Slipper, are retained for the Test against the Springboks at Perth. As it happens, the Springboks scrum was monstered twice by the Pumas in their two Tests in TRC in South Africa and again in Argentina.
The probability is, therefore, that Kepu and Slipper will hold up at Perth. But when they come up against the Pumas they will probably be exposed in the way Bill Young and Al Baxter continually were during their careers as Wallaby props.
Slipper is good around the field, very good in fact. Apparently he played as a fly half as a youngster and he retains the skills learnt in this position. He is improving in the scrum. But this is the weakest part of his game.
Kepu is one of those players who looks to be, or should be, better than he really is. He can run the ball up strongly enough to be confused with Wycliff Palu at times. Like Palu, too, he doesn’t seem to have huge reserves of aerobic fitness. At Eden Park he was burnt by Aaron Cruden out wide from a turnover. He looked like an oil rig trying to keep up with a motor boat as Cruden easily slipped past him to set up a crucial try.
The Wallabies scrum has been a work in progress since the days of Bill Young and Al Baxter. Just when everyone thinks that the problem has been solved, the Wallabies pack is demolished and the rebuilding work has to start once more.
The answer is to find the best scrumming props and then back them up with second-rowers who can push, and flankers who stay on the scrum until the shoving is over.
In my mind, the front five that the Wallabies will present at Perth does not play to these requirements.
All the arguments in favour of Rob Simmons tend to revolve around his expertise in calling the lineouts. This is a useful skill but I would think that a more important set of skills for a second rower is the sort of play that the All Blacks second-rowers displayed in the lineouts, scrums and around the field at Eden Park. Impact at the collisions, in other words.
Then there are questions about the play of Wycliff Palu. He starts off strongly enough. But he is never available when breaks are made. And he is invisible when the opposition make a break-out. There is too much of the David Lyons about his play. Compare his one-up bash game, with few off-loads, with the sophisticated and powerful play in every facet of the game of Keiran Read.
When we get to the backs, we see that Ewen McKenzie has acknowledged that the experiment of Kurtley Beale as a number 10 is now over. Good. He is not a Test number 10. He is a Test player and a good one at fullback, probably at inside centre as well, and according to Bob Dwyer as a winger, too.
There have been suggestions that Beale should be played at fullback in the ideal Wallaby XV and Israel Folau played on the wing. There is some sense in this, I reckon. As a winger Folau can play all over the field, more so than he can at fullback.
A New Zealand rugby writer, for instance, has pointed out that when he played as a winger last year, Ben Smith scored a try each Test. But in the Tests this year at fullback, he has scored a just one.
Matt Toomua has been retained at inside centre for the Perth Test. Is he on a last chance? Or is he considered to be a long-term incumbent?
In this context, it was interesting that Kyle Godwin, the Western Force centre who would have played for the Wallabies some time ago if injuries hadn’t kept him off the field, was nominated by McKenzie as an potential outside centre. He has played a lot, and impressively as well, at inside centre.
Is he the answer to the puzzle about getting more attacking flair from the Wallaby backline? Or do the Wallabies need the Waratahs fabulous four of Nick Phipps, Bernard Foley, Kurtley Beale and Adam Ashley-Cooper? With Tevita Kurdrani and Henry Speight on the wings?
There is a lot of talent within the Australian rugby community. The NRC is revealing this. And the play of the Waratahs in winning the Super Rugby title revealed this even more. But most of the talent is among the players rather than the coaches – the exception being Michael Cheika.
The truest sign of good coaching is sound selecting and an improvement in the play of the favoured players. Despite the run of seven consecutive victories, the jury is out right now about whether Ewen McKenzie is passing these Tests right now for the Wallabies.
If this latest Wallaby XV and reserves – notice that Will Skelton has been dropped – don’t defeat the Springboks, more chipping away at the modelling by Ewen McKenzie will be required.