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The Wallabies are about to play their final tune-up match before the 2015 Rugby World Cup in England. Before I preview the game against the USA Eagles at Soldier Field, Chicago, I’ll run through a few thoughts on the All Blacks’ squad.
Is it even possible to pick a perfect squad?
The All Blacks squad was named at the New Zealand parliament. What a signifier of the centrality of rugby union to the national psyche that is.
The Wallabies’ announcement took place in a shed with a plane in it. I mean, the shed was really big and it was a real plane and it looked pretty cool. But it’s not Parliament House.
Did the parliamentary sovereignty rub off on the names announced by New Zealand rugby chairman Brent Impey? Was the mix of players, unlike the Wallabies list, perfection?
Well, no.
All Blacks management has selected three hookers, which is sound judgement, and three halfbacks, which is recommended by most. Tick, tick.
However, the All Blacks are still only one Brodie Retallick brain snap or Sam Whitelock concussion away from a makeshift lock taking a spot on the bench.
Two of their four outside backs have a combined three Tests between them. And Nehe Milner-Skudder, as much as I enjoy watching him play, even scoring against the Wallabies, looks like he might be an injury risk at international level, where the hits are bigger and the defending stronger.
The other one, Waisake Naholo, was the best wing in Super Rugby this year, but has only played one Test match. Do we know what he’ll be like under pressure yet? Julian Savea is a known commodity, but needs to go on a carb-free diet for the 20 days before the first game.
To bolster this area the coaching staff has picked Beauden Barrett and Colin Slade, two fly-halves able to move simply to other positions, but that’s a contingency with a knock-on effect. Dan Carter is injury-prone at this point and Slade has been.
But seriously, this All Blacks squad is really good. There are lots of great players in here and fiddling around the edges could be done to any team. There’s always going to be flaws, compromises and holes in whichever list is produced.
The truth is, it’s pretty hard to pick a perfect squad of 31 players for a game that has 15 positions and 23 players in any game-day list.
Wallabies versus USA Eagles
The Wallabies’ last match before the World Cup is fast approaching. In a good bit of news for rugby exposure, the NBC Sports Network has decided to air the match in primetime across American cable.
NBCSN is the main network carrying the English Premier League in the US, so the natural audience on that station is likely to be cosmopolitan and open to sports not in the typical American stable.
They won’t be in line to draw the same ratings as HBO on a good night, but NBCSN is available in over 80 million homes across the United States. That’s a great boon for the game of rugby in the US and hard-to-buy exposure for the Wallabies.
On the match itself, it’s hard to know what to expect from the Wallabies in their final World Cup tune-up. The last time the Wallabies played against the Eagles in America they snuck home 26-22. I’ll be hoping for something more convincing than that.
The fear leading into this match is the inevitable feisty, ferocious play of the hosts as they defend their own turf doing what it sometimes does to Michael Cheika teams – dragging them into a fist fight.
The US will rightly play on the edge and compete hard at the ruck while defending their turf, and the Wallabies need to be accurate enough to break that strangle-hold after the first 15 or 20 minutes so as not to get caught in an arm wrestle.
Waratahs fans will know that type of team – in the mould of the Western Force for instance – sometimes gets the better of a Cheika-coached side. It might be because the team focuses on physicality instead of accuracy and creating moments on the field that favour their superiority, I’m not sure.
With that in mind I’m looking for the Wallabies to monitor their own breakdown and keep it clean, prove they can boss their own lineout and push the Eagles scrum around.
On top of that I want to see good tactical awareness from the likes of Will Genia (let’s hope he gets another run before the real stuff), Matt Giteau and Bernard Foley. They need to control the pace of the game better than they have this year and against the Eagles should be able to target parts of the game where they have an advantage.
If that turns out to be lineout dominance or scrum pressure that goes in the Wallabies’ favour then they need to bring that into play.
It might be a weakness in the Eagles’ defensive line that becomes apparent; the Wallaby playmakers need to set the team up to exploit it.
More than a high score, I’m expecting World Cup poise from the Wallabies. Come the tough games of a World Cup the ability for a team to sniff out a weakness and exploit it goes a long way towards winning.
Join The Roar rugby editor Christy Doran, former Wallaby Matt Toomua and a cast of regular and special guests as they look at the biggest issues in the game on The Roar Rugby Podcast. If you’re looking for great odds on the next game check out Aussie bookmaker PlayUp. Chances are you’re about to lose. Set a deposit limit.