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If we’re all honest, we’ll admit that we do allow ourselves to get a bit giddy at the prospects of how a team might perform under a new coach.
More often than not, bars are set unreachably high and stylistic expectations are well removed from reality.
However, this time around, post-McKenzie and into the Cheika reign, I think the collective anticipation is about on the money.
Yes, there is some mind-numbing provincial carry-on hovering around that seriously bores me to tears, but it feels like the transition from one coach to the next will be relatively smooth.
And that’s obviously because Ewen McKenzie and Michael Cheika share more than a few philosophies on how the game should be played.
The McKenzie Wallabies scored more tries per match than did the Robbie Deans Wallabies, and the Waratahs have significantly upped their tries-per-game number over the last two seasons under Cheika as well.
Given the choice, both coaches obviously prefer the ball to be run back than kicked back.
Cheika, to his great credit, has said that he won’t be making any drastic changes on this tour.
He’s still finding his way at international level, and he needs time to find out what his new squad of players are capable of. In that regard, it makes a lot of sense that the team named yesterday for the Test against Wales on late Saturday night/early Sunday morning is not too different from what took the field in Brisbane.
But in last weekend’s match against the Barbarians at Twickenham, there were a couple of signs that Cheika has already made a few tweaks. And I have to say, I really like what I see.
The first tweak came from the very start of the match. Quade Cooper had the ball on halfway for the kickoff. Aside from fullback Israel Folau, who was hovering a few metres behind and would immediately float backwards into position, the rest of the Wallabies were back lined up on their own 40m line.
The ‘Tahs did a lot of things better than the other Australian Super Rugby sides this year, obviously, but they were consistently the best restart contester – and maybe even of all Super Rugby sides in 2014.
Back in June, on the Friday before the first Test against France in Brisbane, I wrote about one of several things I was hoping McKenzie would borrow from the Waratahs:
“I hope McKenzie has adopted their restarts, especially, where the ‘Tahs chasers start ten metres behind Bernard Foley, are never offside at the moment the ball is kicked, create a contest more often than not, and then win a surprising number of them.
“This has been one area the Wallabies have been consistently bad at in recent years.”
Sadly, I don’t recall this being adapted by the Wallabies at all prior to last weekend despite the large Waratahs presence in the squad. Save for the odd occasion where Folau or Adam Ashley-Cooper did get through in time, the Wallabies contesting their own kickoff felt like a rarity.
Even in this first kickoff at Twickers, Henry Speight, Ben McCalman, and James Horwill weren’t able to make a contest, but they were right there when the catch was completed, and did put pressure on both catcher and lifter.
They may not have created a contest, but it was the next best thing. The BaaBaas had to go into a ruck and then play for the clearing kick, rather than just clear straight from the kick reception.
This, to me, is all about attitude and is one of those little things in the game that gives you an idea of what a player or team is willing to do to win the ball back. So I like that Cheika has brought this in already.
And while the flatness of the attack might be the other obvious point to talk about, it was actually the increased physicality that caught my eye.
It wasn’t something that could be pointed to with every carry, or every tackle, but there were signs that the Wallabies were prepared to start throwing bodies around.
Horwill really impressed me in this department, with lock partner Sam Carter also charging into ruck clean-outs with noticeably more presence than I’ve previously observed. Cheika obviously noticed this too, retaining Carter in his first Test side despite giving Horwill a big rap this week.
“I thought James Horwill had a really good work rate,” Cheika was quoted in the Fairfax press this week. “He probably understood the new system in the forward pack the best and by consequence he was able to get a really high work rate.”
“I think there are a few opportunities for guys to push themselves into space,” Cheika said.
With Horwill named alongside Will Skelton on a nine-man bench, and with Cheika also suggesting Skelton would be eased into international rugby, I’d expect Horwill to survive the bench cull before tomorrow night.
The one guy who definitely has pushed himself into space is young Melbourne Rebels flanker, Sean McMahon, who fresh from claiming the Super Rugby Rookie of the Year and NRC Player of the Series awards a fortnight ago, has now earned a Test Debut on the back of a storming performance against the BaaBaas last weekend.
Here was a young player, probably just happy to be on a Wallabies Tour, thrust into the action well ahead of possibly expected timeframes, and not just getting involved but properly having an impact. McMahon‘s physicality was impossible to ignore in both attack and defence, shifting blokes with refreshing regularity.
The tweaks are subtle, but already evident, and McMahon is proof that everybody and anybody in the squad is a chance of playing under the fresh eyes and perspectives of Cheika.
And it’s hard not to be excited about that.