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Wallabies squad isn't that bad, and Hayne delivers for the ARU

25th August, 2015
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Quade Cooper getting tackled. (AAP Image/Dave Hunt) NO ARCHIVING
Expert
25th August, 2015
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7125 Reads

We are in the nitpicking stage. During this fallow period between the end of the Rugby Championship and start of the World Cup we are reduced to pulling on loose threads and pondering.

So let me pick a few nits and tell me if you agree.

The Wallabies’ Rugby World Cup squad isn’t that bad
The Australian rugby world kicked into a bit of frenzy last weekend when Michael Cheika finally unveiled the roster of players he’d take to England to try and bring back Bill.

I was part of that scrum of instant reaction on Twitter.

Ultimately, however, Nic White and James Horwill are the only two players who have much of a grievance.

Horwill because he put in almost two full great game performances across three matches and was a starting second row when we beat the All Blacks in Sydney for the first time in ages.

However, throughout this Super Rugby season it appeared as if Horwill didn’t have much left to give – I have a distinct memory of him laying in the grass after missing a very easy tackle against the Crusaders for a try. And no, that wasn’t me getting mixed up with Dan Carter skinning him in the Eden Park Test, despite the similarity in circumstance.

Cheika obviously went with the larger run of performances over the season than a short turn around. I’d have included him, but there were strong reasons not to.

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White may feel aggrieved after being a hot rod off the bench against the All Blacks in the first Bledisloe match and decent in the second one, but he is merely a victim of Cheika’s decision to only bring two halfbacks. He has clearly been Cheika’s third choice for a long time and has duly been included in the training squad of 10, along with Horwill.

There’s a clear logic to the decisions even if you don’t agree with them. But say Cheika did include Horwill and White in the squad, at the expense of, say, Kane Douglas and Joe Tomane, would you feel significantly more confident about winning the World Cup? I didn’t think so.

It’s interesting how we fixate on particulars occasionally, as we all did here.

I personally felt sorry for Horwill. Seeing a warrior of Australian rugby in a final World Cup squad four years after he was unexpectedly named captain would have been fantastic. But omitting him is not an unarguable case.

Not bringing a third hooker is the weakest part of the squad
What hasn’t received as much coverage as Quade Cooper making the cut, our French foreign legion receiving tickets, or the exclusion of world-class game-changers like Horwill and White, is the fact that only two hookers were selected.

Will Genia’s injury history is a worry at halfback, but Nick Phipps is a fairly sturdy unit and at a last ditch Matt Giteau probably passes as well as Phipps at halfback if needed. I’m not too worried about only having two specialist No.9s in the squad.

Where I am worried is at hooker. Stephen Moore is an incredibly important player, but will probably be benched in each of the games against the lesser pool teams, at least. This gives ample time on the pitch to Tatafu Polota-Nau, not to mention time training (given Cheika’s fixation on having two full teams to use I’m guessing they’ll spend the entire four weeks in game-situation training).

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What are the chances of Polota-Nau lasting six weeks? Not good. I love the bloke but there’s a track record there.

Can the Wallabies name a team without a hooker on the bench if they have to for a random pool? Will they have to call someone up and rush them, jet-lagged and all, to the sideline without having trained with the squad? How much rest will Moore get throughout the tournament leading into the big matches?

These are the questions that worry me most about the squad Cheika selected.

More support for the National Rugby Championship from the ARU and Waratahs please
I lied a little bit in my lead, writers are occasionally allowed to do that to make a point I’ve heard. We aren’t in a completely fallow period right now; we have the NRC to follow through its second season.

The first round was a good start, with all teams except one scoring four tries. Five of the eight teams passed 30 points in their first outing. Some good young players are being noticed as well.

The NRC is a good idea, but it needs more support. People aren’t aware of it yet, and the ARU and Waratahs/NSW Rugby could certainly do a better job of helping #growthegame in Sydney.

Look at the Wallabies’ and @Waratahs’ Twitter accounts. It’s only one metric to go by, and I’m sure there’s a little work going on behind the scenes, but in terms of effort required it doesn’t take much to be active on Twitter.

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The Waratahs’ Twitter account retweeted seven tweets about the NRC between the first game last Thursday and when I checked on Tuesday night. They posted one GIF of their own in the lead-up.

No live scores. No results across the weekend. The Rugby Union Players Association received about as much action as the NRC.

Across the same period on the Wallabies’ account they retweeted five NRC tweets. They don’t appear to have posted anything of their own about it.

I know they’re building to the World Cup, but the NRC is the future of rugby in Australia – literally, because of the young players coming through, and financially, due to the extra games available for consumption.

There is a decent new NRC ad on television at the moment, for those who have the channels to see it, but not doing simple things like flooding all the available social media accounts with competition information during the first weekend is a shame.

The Wallabies’ Twitter feed has almost 150,000 followers and the Waratahs almost 35,000. There’s a strong chance more people will see a tweet from those accounts than will be watching an advert on Fox Sports at any given time. It’s a waste of available reach to leave the NRC off rugby’s major feeds.

Hayne is hitting his straps at just the right time for the Wallabies
Let’s end on a more exciting and enterprising note. The ARU should be thanking their lucky stars for Jarryd Hayne right now. His exploits during the pre-season in the San Francisco 49ers jersey is switching American attention to ‘rugby’.

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I put air quotes around rugby because of the 320 million people in the USA, only about two million are able to tell the difference between rugby league and rugby union.

Hayne is over there doing crazy things like catching punts over his shoulder (shock!) and running it back better than his teammates do (legitimately great), and opening the minds of 320 million Americans to whichever rugby they might be thinking he is from.

That being the case, with the Wallabies playing the USA Eagles at Soldier Field, Chicago – home of the NFL’s Bears – Hayne is absolutely blitzing the field in terms of ARU’s advertising budget over there.

The Wallabies staff should be smart about media appearances and do their best to tie the talents of Israel Folau at fullback to Hayne – also a fullback and essentially a modified version of that position when returning punts – to maximise the interest over there.

Quick thought: are there any Wallabies who would be able to make the switch to the NFL as Hayne has?

Nup.

Consider your nits unpicked.

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