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There’s plenty of good news, but there’s a major piece of bad news for the Wallabies following their solid win against Los Pumas in Perth on Saturday night – and that’s aside from the injury to sabbatical-bound David Pocock.
The good news first.
Despite going for large tracts of the game without the ball and in the wrong end of the field, the Wallabies managed an emphatic five-tries-to-two bonus-point win.
They did this by blitzing the start – racking up three converted tries inside 12 minutes – then tackling anything that moved in blue.
By halftime the Aussies had made 98 tackles to Argentina’s 22 – having had just 24% of the ball, yet controlled the scoreboard 21-6.
By game’s end the home side had been forced to make 143 tackles on the rampantly off-loading Pumas and had the ball just once for every three times their opposites did, yet were runaway 36-20 winners.
The huge defensive effort was led by giant new second rower Adam Coleman who should suck his food through a straw more often, having been forced onto a liquid diet all week after splitting his lips in three against the Springboks the week before.
The new lock on the block threw himself into everything, with 16 tackles on top of flying into roughly 3,000 rucks. It was another impressive, full-blooded display from the Force enforcer who, in just four Tests, has established himself as the Wallabies dominant second rower.
Not far behind him was fellow big-unit newbie Reece Hodge. The left winger made a habit of stopping burly South Americans in their tracks with a series of crunching head-on hits.
Others from the class of 2016 who came of age: outside centre Samu Kerevi had easily his best game in gold, literally finding his voice at this level, while Dane Haylett-Petty showed that he is an inventive attacker to be reckoned with, despite playing out of position on the right wing.
But it was the brilliance of one of the team’s elders, Will Genia, nudging career-best form, that was the most decisive factor.
A knee injury had restricted the 28-year-old to a handful of games for Stade Francais since he signed with the French club following the World Cup. The enforced lay-off looks to have done wonders with Saturday’s dazzling two-try effort a return to his brilliant, instinctive, game-changing best.
Form that’s rubbing off on his old partner in crime Quade Cooper. The enigmatic pivot is a more considered beast these days, maybe due to his rather humbling experience in Toulon when shunted out of his favourite position by the stars studding that backline before bailing halfway through his two-year contract to re-join the Reds for 2017.
Seemingly where there’s a Will, there’s a way for Cooper to get back to his best work, which keeps defences second-guessing.
It was telling that the only two inside balls Cooper threw all Test sent players directly to the try line, with Haylett-Petty’s score in the opening minutes and Michael Hooper’s in the closing.
Throw in Hooper’s typically workaholic display and big, bullocking impact off the bench from Sean McMahon and Tatafu Polota-Nau and you had a visibly pleased and relaxed Wallaby coach Michael Cheika in his post-match interview with Fox Sport’s Rod Kafer.
He conceded a big work on is with the ball in the collision zone “we lost a few balls there we really shouldn’t have… (we have to) try and get a bit more continuity in attack.”
However, he was pleased that his “biggest work ons, our D and set pieces… we’re improving those, a bit at a time, it’s coming.”
Which brings me to the bad news.
After the series whitewash to England and two thumping losses to the All Blacks, the Wallabies look finally to be on the right track with some settled combinations, the unearthing of some young nuggets in gold, new-found spark on attack and resolve in defence. But on the right track to where, exactly?
To a place where they can seriously challenge the All Blacks in the third Bledisloe at Eden Park on 22 October?
Because, the problem for the Wallabies, and every other international team for that matter, is while they strive to catch up to the All Blacks, the All Blacks don’t oblige by standing still.
Instead they continue on their age-old quest to evolve and redefine themselves as an even better version of what they were before.
There was evidence of this in their six-try-to-one mauling of the Springboks in Christchurch on Saturday night.
The All Blacks unleashed a super-flat attacking backline alignment in the Test. A flat attacking backline, which can probably draw its lineage to Mark Ella as its first brilliant exponent, has long been a trademark of coach Steve Hansen’s All Blacks and is a particular pet of bis former attack coach and current defence coach Wayne Smith.
Traditionally backlines were aligned deep to enable teams with the ball maximum time and space to cut their capers and manoeuvre the quick outside backs into gaps at top speed.
The flatline attack turns this theory on its head by minimising the time and space of the defending backline by getting in its face with players of speed of feet and hand, skill, size and courage willing to “take the line on.”
When done properly, square-shouldered attacking players in a flat alignment will ‘fix’ defenders by committing them to the tackle. Here they have the option of beating with footwork, getting a pass away before contact, during contact (an off-load), or taking the ball into contact to get across the advantage line and set up a quick ruck in which to go again against retreating, hopefully offside defenders.
Flat attacks bring the old rugby adage of “the ball beating the man” to the fore. The All Blacks have based a lot of their attacking success around the structure in recent years and have imbued all players, regardless of position, with the ability to catch and pass – that most fundamental of rugby skills – like world class inside backs.
This was amply demonstrated by All Black hooker Dane Coles providing brilliant last passes for three of the All Blacks’ tries on Saturday.
His first required super-quick hands to send Israel Dagg over, the second used an off-load a few minutes later to a flying Julian Savea on the other wing, and finally an exquisite 20m effort latched onto by Sam Whitelock that any international scrum half would have been proud of.
But the All Blacks flat line attack looked flatter than I’d ever seen it before at the weekend.
No doubt it was a strategy to further optimise the lightening-fast pass of the best halfback in the game Aaron Smith and the astonishing attacking prowess of his outside half Beauden Barrett to set the All Blacks’ backs alight.
It was in no better evidence than in the 21st minute. The Springboks had actually capped off a great first quarter with a well-worked try to their ageing strike weapon Bryan Habana following sustained, almost Lions-like multi-phase pressure, to lead 7-3.
Unfortunately, young five-eighth Elton Jantjies undid all his good work to this point by spilling the ball from the All Black restart 7m out from his own line.
That was the beginning of the end for his team.
Sky Sport New Zealand commentator, former All Black halfback Justin Marshall, noted how flat the All Black backs were and how wide Barrett was standing from the ensuing scrum.
“I just really like this formation,” Marshall told the viewers.
“You might be sitting looking at it and thinking ‘there’s absolutely nothing complicated about it, they’re just flat, and there’s no real variation, there’s no transition runners in behind that would be easy to defend’ and there’s not.
“If that pass goes really flat to Beauden Barrett, look at the amount of ground Faf de Klerk and his flankers have to cover before they can get to Barrett, look at that gap, that space and all of a sudden Jantjies, he has to turn in, just that formation would be hard, hard for the Springboks.”
And so it proved. Smith made a small run from the base of the scrum to commit defenders before feeding left to Barrett who had angled sharply back to get as much gainline advantage as possible before taking the tackle. From there the ruck was rapidly cleared for Smith to switch the play right with a great ball to Coles, who’s quick hands released Dagg for an untouched canter across the line – all before some of the Springbok forwards had managed to lift their heads up from the scrum.
Six minutes later the All Blacks flatline attack was at it again from a scrum 20m out from the Boks’ line that resulted in sending the Bus enroute to the line for his 43rd Test try.
The comparison to the Springbok back play, which was largely carried out deep behind the advantage line, was stark.
It’s the constant fine-tuning that keeps the All Black machine purring along while the likes of the Wallabies and Boks are forced to undergo full engine reconditioning.
Fortunately for the rest of the rugby world, England coach Eddie Jones has identified “significant weaknesses” in the All Blacks, all of which he is keeping close to his chest for the time being.
The trouble for Eddie is, that even if those weaknesses exist outside his imagination, they may no longer be there when his team attempts to exploit them the year after next.
So, flagging them now might instead suggest a weakness in Eddie’s thinking.
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.