Over the course of my relatively brief time here on The Roar I have found that most of the times it is truly easier to write about other teams than it is writing about your own.

The reason for this is because it is always so much easier to evaluate a team objectively if you have no real emotional connection to it. You can’t be biased.

Here in the Republic you need to choose your words carefully when lifting an opinion about our rugby. It is a known fact that we South Africans are an openly arrogant lot when it comes to our respective teams. We have isolation to thank for that.

In those days we had no Springbok games, or rather once in a blue moon. Instead we only had the Currie Cup to keep ourselves occupied and make no mistake, we started treating the competition like a World Cup of its own.

The bottom line is that we are perhaps the most provincialistic nation in the world. The Stormers hate the Bulls and the Bulls hate us. The Sharks and the Lions have a thing of their own, but I could never understand why. The Cheetahs also hate the Bulls. The Bulls have begun taking flak from the Sharks so they too dislike one another. The Sharks and the Stormers have started humiliating one another on each other’s home fields so there too is a rivalry.

But let’s just make it simple. All our teams hate each other and whenever a Springbok team is chosen you will always find that we are not satisfied. We want more of our own teams’ players in the squad.

Before joining The Roar I had always thought that we were the only ones who did this. To my surprise, especially in recent times, I have noticed that Australia also do this.

Now I won’t pretend to know whether the Reds hate the Brumbies or the Waratahs or anything. What I do know is that the dispute among Australian fans, as is the case with us in South Africa, is getting in the way of converting all your support to the Wallabies who do in fact have a good chance to make 2015 a good year.

I have written this to lift my opinion on the Wallabies. I may be wrong and if I am feel free to correct me, but I have written this objectively and that was the point of it. So without further ado let’s take a detailed look at the Wallabies.

Michael Cheika
When selecting a coach it is best to choose one on merit. The ARU did this in selecting Michael Cheika whom I rate very highly. He does have a few anger issues, that much is definitely true. He should not have redecorated the coaches box at Kings Park last year when the Sharks smothered his team. But hey, every coach has one of those days, and it’s now water under the bridge.

But the man is one of the best coaches in not only Australia, but the entire world. He seems to have an iron grip on teams. He is the type of man you want if your players are screwing around off-field. It’s either Cheika’s way or the highway.

He didn’t have the time to organise his systems last year, so I generally disregard the results in Europe for the Wallabies in 2014. But now he has enough time to put his structures in place. He has the time to identify his own squad of players and to incorporate his own style of play. The Wallabies will be better prepared this year than they were before last year’s tour.

What I don’t agree with however is him acting as a double coach for both the Waratahs and Wallabies.

I have no doubt in my mind that Cheika is a very capable man, but the double commitment is just a bridge too far.

A long while ago I read a comment saying that national coaches don’t really do much for most of the year so it won’t matter to Cheika. This could not be farther from the truth.

I assure you that neither Steve Hansen or Heyneke Meyer spend half of the year fishing. They are hard at work. They have to spend inordinate amounts of time in front of their TV screens analysing their own players as well as analyzing the opposition.

I know for a fact that Meyer regularly attends as many South African conference games as he possibly can, especially when his teams are facing foreign opposition. He often talks to Super Rugby coaches before games, sometimes he speaks to our players at half-time when he attends their games. He attends training sessions with all the franchises.

Last year after the announcement of Jaque Fourie’s retirement he spoke with both Frans Ludeke and Allister Coetzee about his need to convert either Jan Serfontein or Damian de Allende to outside centre to compensate Fourie’s departure and de Villiers’ injury.

I am pretty sure that Hansen does the same.

The other threat Cheika’s commitment presents is even more dispute among the Wallaby fan-base. Should he select the majority of Waratahs players for national duty, it will only serve to fan the flames of petty arguments among fans.

We forget so often that players are not in solitary confinement. They have phones and computers. I am certain that they read what fans say about them. How must it feel to see millions of your own countrymen call for your head just because they perceive that the coach selected you only because you play under him in Super Rugby?

How many autobiographies have been published by accomplished sports persons wherein they state that they were damaged by the savagery of the public and local media?

In Jacques Kallis’ book, he speaks of how hard it is to play for your country when your own people regularly belittle you and don’t want you. Kallis, the world’s greatest ever all-rounder, shunned by his own people.

There are many problems that Cheika’s double commitments can create. Nevertheless he has been chosen to do the job, and he can succeed. All you need to do is put away the provincialism and stand behind the coach and his men.

The players
As always the Wallabies have a problem within their tight five. This has been debated to death so I’ll only touch on it before tackling the rest.

Yes, the Wallabies’ scrum is a shocker. Their lineouts aren’t too shabby and their rucking and breakdown work lacks nothing of the sort.

Regarding the scrum I can only assume their problem lies within their technique, not as much with their players. They don’t scrum as a unit, their locks aren’t set right and their loose-forwards don’t support the tight five.

James Slipper and Sekope Kepu have good techniques at scrum time. They bind the right way, their angles are good and their crouch positions are adequate. And yet they are shoved back when push comes to shove. Why?

As I mentioned, the positioning of their locks just isn’t right. They scrum too far apart and this subtracts the support given to the hooker and number eight. Essentially the hooker and number eight are on their lonesome in the middle. Compare this to the Argentine and All Black locks who scrum closer to the focus of the scrum. They in turn let their flankers support their props.

The Wallaby loose trio detach too early. Michael Hooper is especially guilty of this. They do not support their front row and detach the moment they see their scrum is being shoved back.

A few days ago I read niwEyaJ’s article of Hooper’s performance against the All Blacks in their last game. The summary showed that Hooper is an energetic player, but that he has little effect in the tight and predominantly features in the loose. In the article he did state that this was purely one game of Hooper’s, but it is the game widely accepted to be the Wallaby’s best in 2014. I concur with this sentiment. I also believe that it was the Wallaby’s best game of the season.

But Hooper’s best game of the season in my view was against the Springboks at Newlands. In that Game 1 was certain that he would claim the man of the match award by the 60th minute.

The Springboks never got good, fast, clean ball. Hooper along with Scott Fardy made a meal out of the breakdowns and because of this their team clearly had the upper hand for most of the game.

The game at Newlands shows not only that Hooper does have the capability to play the traditional role of the openside, but that contrary to popular belief, the Wallabies can in fact stand their ground against the most revered packs in world rugby.

The Springboks possess the most powerful and physical pack in the entire world and the Wallabies subsequently held them to a stalemate for 67 odd minutes. The Bok ball runners didn’t eat up the metres in contact and neither did they earn many scrum penalties.

The Wallaby pack on its best day can compete with bigger packs. The problem is that they don’t do it consistently.

For that extra bit of grunt you can always add Will Skelton who performed admirably in Super Rugby last year. But in my view at least, if you want him to play regularly he must lose 10 kilograms. That is mandatory.

Official stats put him at around 135 kilograms. This tells me that he is simply not fit enough. Let him cut 10 kilograms of weight to increase his aerobic fitness and add to his speed and flexibility. 125 kilograms is still monsterous, but he will be the better for it.

I make the most unlikely comparison between him and former Stormers centurion Andries Bekker. Bekker, a man standing at around 210 centimetres and 120 kilograms was known for his offloading skills, incredible speed and flexibility. But he always played the full 80.

Skelton already has the skill, he just needs the fitness. At 125 kilograms, I promise you he will still be dominant.

The other headache is which openside flanker to choose. Michael Hooper, David Pocock, Liam Gill and Matt Hodgeson are all fantastic players in their own right. I believe that either of them could do the job.

I lean more toward David Pocock for two reasons. The first is because he has had a major impact on games in the past and the second reason is that I really want him to play against the Boks again so we can repay the favour he did us in 2011.

The rest of the loose forwards can consist of anyone really. Scott Higginbotham needs to cut down the yellows. Wycliff Palu needs to be wrapped in the softest substances known to man. Sean McMahon needs to perform consistently and Scott Fardy needs to replicate his form at Newlands.

The backline is less of a problem as the Wallabies possess some of the best backs in world rugby.

I would pick Will Genia and Quade Cooper as my scrum and fly-half respectively. As a South African I seldom see the appeal in Bernard Foley, but that’s just my view. I have always been a big fan of Quade Cooper’s.

In the centres Tevita Kuridrani picks himself at 13, whereas 12 is bit more of a concern. Matt Toomua is a fantastic tackler and dependable on attack, but as far as Wallaby backline standards go I don’t see him as all that and would prefer either Christian Lealiifano or Kurtley Beale.

The back three are also pretty much sorted. Israel Folau will be given the duties at 15 while James’O Connor, Adam Ashley-Cooper, Joe Tomane and Henry Speight battle it out for the wingers spot.

The Wallabies have what it takes to win the Rugby World Cup this year, but to do so they need all the support they can get from their fan-base in Australia. So forget your franchise, forget your players. Forget the fact that Cheika is still the Waratahs coach.

The moment that Wallaby squad is picked you should support them, because they will see it if you don’t.

My Wallaby team:
1. James Slipper
2. Tetafu Poluta-Nau
3. Sekope Kepu
4. Will Skelton (If he loses weight)
5. Sam Carter
6. Scott Fardy
7. David Pocock
8. Ben McCalman
9. Will Genia
10. Quade Cooper
11. James ‘O Connor
12. Kurtley Beale
13. Tevita Kuridrani
14. Adam Ashley-Cooper
15. Israel Folau