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After the Wallabies loss to the Springboks on the weekend, let’s examine what constitutes a good outcome – should it be judged on wins and losses, or how the team plays?
You can’t ignore the wins and losses column but I focus more on how the team plays.
While the Wallabies won their last two Tests, against Argentina on the Gold Coast and South Africa in Perth, they didn’t play well in those matches.
Last weekend they were soundly beaten by the Springboks but the Wallabies played better than in their previous two matches. Unfortunately, they could only sustain their form for 71 minutes and 2 seconds and that’s never going to be enough to beat one of the top teams in the world.
I’m not suggesting that the Wallabies had played really well up to that point – they had made some poor mistakes with decision making and execution – but there were some positive signs.
Tevita Kuridrani showed again why he’ll be the Wallabies 13, barring injury, for some time to come. His power in attack offers the team the wide go-forward platform that suits them best. We saw the threat he poses in the wide channel towards the end of last season and we’ll be seeing plenty of it over the next twelve months. The concept of moving him to the narrower 12 channel makes no sense to me.
Having a big, crash-balling centre at outside centre, rather than inside centre, is something that has been a feature of Wallaby play since the game turned professional. Stirling Mortlock was the most prominent example and it’s different to the way the All Blacks approach their game.
The Wallabies game plan is a simple one – move the ball one or two passes away from the ruck with forwards running a little wider, then off the back of quick ball move it on the next phase to the 13 to crash the ball over the gain line. The aim with that crash-ball phase is to spread the defence and move it backwards, then on subsequent phases, play what’s left in front of you.
I saw really good improvement from Scott Fardy in this match and improvements from Sam Carter and Rob Simmons. Saia Fainga’a also played well, while James Slipper is consistently one of the Wallabies’ best.
James Horwill and Scott Higginbotham both worked very hard off the bench in defence and at the ruck. Horwill isn’t making the same impact he used to when carrying the ball but his work rate in that second half was really good, with 20 tackles attempted (3 missed) in forty minutes.
The top two forwards in defence in the match were Michael Hooper, with 25 tackles attempted (5 missed), and Sam Carter, with 23 attempted (1 miss), both who played the full match.
Nick Phipps, Bernard Foley and Matt Toomua were all solid without playing well. Phipps continued his inconsistent form with too many poor passes, Foley isn’t playing as well as he has this year and Toomua was good in defence but needs to do more in attack to threaten the defensive line.
The most concerning thing about the play from the Wallabies backline was the kicking. Foley kicked seven times and of those and I rated three as good, Toomua kicked six and I only rated one as good, Folau kicked three times and all were poor, Phipps kicked twice and both were poor, Adam Ashley-Cooper kicked twice, one good and one poor, and Kuridrani’s only kick was poor. That’s twenty-one kicks of which only five were good!
If you accept that it was a tactic for the Wallabies not to put the ball out when kicking from within their 22, then you can make it twelve good kicks from twenty-one. If that was a tactic to make the Springboks play from deep kicks rather than let them play from lineouts, I don’t think it disrupted their attack much, so wasn’t a successful tactic.
The two kicks that were the worst were the grubber kicks in behind the line – one from Toomua and one from Phipps.
Toomua took the ball just short of halfway in the 51st minute and gifted possession to the Springboks by kicking a grubber straight to a defender. The outside runners knew the kick had been called as they were up very flat and only just onside when Toomua kicked the ball.
But the grubber from Phipps in the 49th minute was diabolical. This wasn’t something Phipps decided on, it was a pre-planned move on the first phase from a scrum inside the Springbok 22. With the score line at 10-8 in favour of the Wallabies, the best the Wallabies backline could come up with for a first phase play was a grubber kick!
There were four chasers (so the other players knew what was on) and there was some space in behind the line but when you use a grubber kick, you’re relying on the bounce of the ball and none of the opposition reacting quickly enough to cover up. However, Jean de Villers did react, recovered the ball comfortably, and cleared it from inside the 22. It was a terrible play that wasted a great attacking opportunity.
These basic errors with decision making and execution must be addressed or the frustrations of ‘what might have been’ will continue.
Now, to the real negative from the match for the Wallabies – the last nine minutes.
Why was I not concerned about the last fifteen minutes? Because up until that last nine minutes the Wallabies were right in the match, only trailing by one point and had just repelled 29 phases from the Springboks before they eventually took a drop goal.
That 29-phase passage of play started at 65:25 when the Wallabies had a 22 dropkick, and ended at 69:17 when Patrick Lambie kicked the drop goal. Those four minutes were some of the best play we saw from the Wallabies in the match. They made 41 tackles and only missed 2, they conceded some territory but despite what the Springboks threw at them, they refused to buckle, maintained their discipline to not concede a penalty and forced the Springboks to accept only three points.
The six players who did the majority of the work for the Wallabies in that sequence of play were Horwill (seven tackles attempted, one missed), Rob Horne (five tackles attempted, one missed), Scott Higginbotham (four tackles made), James Hanson (four tackles made), Fardy (four tackles made) and Kuridrani (four tackles made). Obviously four of those players came off the bench.
In the second half the Wallabies had very little possession so not surprisingly none of the players stood out in attack but overall most of the bench made a good impact in defence, where the work was required in that half.
The effort involved in repelling that sequence of play from the Springboks would take a lot out of any team at that stage of the match but it was only at 71:03, when Phipps threw a forward pass trying to hit Benn Robinson at the line, that the Wallabies finally wilted and failed to shut down the ensuing counter-attack.
Of course they let in three tries in the last nine minutes and that’s just not good enough if they want to compete with the top teams in the world.
The Wallabies only had 39 per cent possession in the match (97 rucks to the Springboks 168). They also had to attempt 284 tackles compared to only 173 for the Springboks. Give any team that much possession in a match and they should win. Ask any team to do that much defence and they will probably not be able to play at the intensity required for 80 minutes.
The Springboks also played a big role – the quality of the players on their bench was always going to cause trouble for the Wallabies.
The biggest issue for the Wallabies was the lack of possession, not being fit enough to play with such little possession. No matter how much fitness work the players do they’ll probably fall short in other matches as well unless they can get a better share of possession.
How can the Wallabies get a better share of possession? The answer is simple – don’t kick the ball back to the opposition as often, concede fewer penalties, and make fewer errors in possession. While you can’t control the players the opposition have in their team or if they play really well, the Wallabies can control these three areas.
I’ve already discussed the kicking but the other area the Wallabies were really poor in was the number of penalties conceded. The final count was 12-4 in favour of the Springboks and I don’t have an issue with any of the penalties awarded against the Wallabies.
The two most contentious penalties were probably Ashley-Cooper being penalised for taking out Bryan Habana in the air, which three years ago may not have been a penalty but is today, and Sekope Kepu penalised for pulling back Handre Pollard in the chase after the charge down by Michael Hooper.
Is there any question that Kepu grabbed him? No, and that’s the end of the argument as far as I’m concerned – regardless of the impact you just can’t expect to grab a player without the ball and get away with it. On both occasions the player needed to show more discipline.
I’m sure people can make a case that there were other potential penalties that might have been awarded against the Springboks but Nigel Owens had a good match, so it’s the Wallabies that need to improve their discipline, not the referee that needs to even out the penalty count.
Combine the poor kicks and penalties conceded with crucial errors made by the Wallabies when they were in really good attacking positions and they gifted the Springboks too much possession to be able to hold on for 80 minutes.
The worrying thing about the next match is whether the compounding effects of the fatigue from that massive defensive effort and the travel to Argentina will leave the Wallabies flat against the Pumas.