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Although the Sanzar fixture this week listed a break in the Rugby Championship, it’s doubtful that any of the four coaches involved will have used this opportunity for a weekend family ski holiday.
While they may have been spared the pressures of game day, there is much for all to mull over as they plot their next moves. But which coach was able to put his feet up, at least for an hour or two, and relax just a little?
Michael Cheika is hardly the feet-up type, and with his first crack at the All Blacks only days away, one imagines he has already played the match in his mind a number of times already – each time with a different run-on combination.
His weekend mood wouldn’t have been helped of course by the Michael Hooper disciplinary hearing dragging on for longer than a John Farnham farewell tour. Whatever the rights and wrongs, Cheika will need to act swiftly to ensure the matter is consigned to history.
The Wallabies have not beaten the All Blacks for four years – turning that around is difficult enough without being bogged down by a matter unrelated to the match.
For their part, SANZAR deserves the lorry load of criticism it is receiving for what has been a very messy process. And Nicolas Sanchez deserves shame and discredit for being the antagonist.
But those running the victim line for Hooper and the “unjustified stain on his record” should quit while they’re ahead. Whatever the provocation, Hooper struck another player in the head, forcefully, and deserves to be sitting out a Test match for doing so, not some convenient club match he was never going to be part of.
Without the benefit of a telepathic link to Cheika’s mind it is pointless speculating here on what his final starting XV in Sydney will be. Suffice to say he will do well to ignore calls for placing Kurtley Beale on the wing – the sound you can hear is the New Zealand outside backs rabidly salivating at the thought.
He should also pass on the idea of using Matt Giteau as reserve halfback. This is no midweek tour experiment but a big-time occasion demanding the strongest selection in all positions.
With that in mind, a refreshed Wycliffe Palu, after running out of petrol in the Waratahs’ semi-final loss, will return to add starch to the Wallabies forward effort. He has been handled well by Cheika who, it must be said, does not benefit from the same Super Rugby rest and rotation policy adopted by New Zealand.
Heyneke Meyer no doubt took advantage of his spare weekend to pop the blood vessels in his neck back into place. He will also have been thinking hard about how to get an eighty-minute effort out of his match day squad.
The Springboks have played much of the best rugby of this Championship series – a compelling mix of the abrasive, urgent and skilful. As a result, many supporters seem as content as can be for a side coming off successive losses, knowing that a small change of luck and a matter of timing their run into the World Cup is all that required.
On the other hand, Meyer still needs to improve on what he already has. Wingers Cornal Hendricks and Bryan Habana seemed to lack a tick of speed and penetration against the All Blacks, and he must resolve a developing issue at halfback. Either Cobus Reinach needs more serious game time or needs to be moved along.
Losing to Argentina so close to a World Cup would be unthinkable and unlikely. What Meyer needs is another assured performance, only this time to be reflected on the scoreboard.
Puma’s coach Daniel Hourcade has the comparative luxury of having lower expectations placed on him than his counterparts, yet he must be aching inside for a truly competitive effort from his side.
Without the benefit of Super Rugby to keep his best players primed, he nevertheless has had many of his wider Test squad together for long periods this year.
Perhaps opposition like Urugauy has not provided enough of a Test, or perhaps some of his key players, Juan Martin Fernandez Lobbe for one, have updated their Facebook status from “combative warrior” to “tired old warrior”?
Regardless, they currently look exactly like you’d expect a distant and fading world ranked eighth side to look like. Fullback Santiago Cordero aside, the Pumas backs lacked penetration against Australia, yet it is the forward pack which should be causing Hourcade most concern.
The renowned ‘Bajada’ has been conspicuous by its absence, and save for two nicely constructed lineout tries against New Zealand, the pack has lacked cohesion, presence and aggression. They can and must do better.
One wouldn’t blame All Blacks coach Steve Hansen if his weekend off consisted of scribbling names on the inside of bottletops, swishing them around inside his beanie, and picking out the lucky World Cup starters. However Hansen is smart enough to realise that, whatever is in the back of his mind, he must be squarely focused on not relinquishing any advantage to Australia this week.
He certainly does have selection problems to solve, even if they are “first world problems” of the highest order. Daniel Carter needs more game time, but without putting more games into Beauden Barrett, Colin Slade and Lima Sopoaga, how can he finally determine his back up?
Richie McCaw is on something of a victory lap, keen to wring every last minute out of his playing career, yet how can Sam Cane best be kept up to speed?
And so it goes on. With Julian Savea to reclaim his left wing spot, does Hansen keep Charles Piutau going while he’s hot, or perhaps throw a little more rope to the electrifying Nehe Milner-Skudder?
Previous coach Graham Henry was pilloried for pursuing a rotation policy prior to the 2011 World Cup yet here we are four years later with effectively the same strategy at work, and hardly a whisper of discontent in the air. Hansen is his own man, but in this case, he is definitely the beneficiary of Henry’s spadework.
Also unexpectedly having the weekend off, courtesy of a 2 and ½ day Test match, Australian and England cricket coaches Darren Lehmann and Trevor Bayliss will have been thinking hard about their next moves in this wildly oscillating series. Lehmann urgently needs a functioning middle order, and Bayliss a new opening bowler.
It isn’t too much of a stretch to think that whichever of them solves their problem first will win the Ashes.