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The headline in The Sunday Telegraph celebrating the Wallabies 40 – 10 thrashing of an inept French side summed up the Brisbane Test well: Brawls, mayhem and Giteau magic.
For a so-called ‘Friendly Test, this was a match with a lot of spite and fist fights. Judging by James Horwill’s closed eye, France won the fight but lost the Test.
The brilliance of Giteau was a plus for the Wallabies. He seems to be learning the Deans system for five-eights which is to underplay your hand from first phase play and create play for yourself and your support runners when play becomes fractured. Giteau’s pass/kick to Peter Hynes to set up the first Wallaby try was straight from the Daniel Carter/Robbie Deans playbook.
Rod Kafer dissected the play in an interesting session on Fox Sports after the Test. He showed how Stirling Mortlock came in towards the middle of the field with an off-the-ball run while Hynes drifted further out towards the sideline. The French winger was sucked infield. And a perfect kick found Hynes by himself for the catch and the plant for a try.
The scrum was a curate’s egg. The Wallabies won two tight heads, one of them with a great shove that was reminiscent of the famous push-over try at Cardiff against Wales in the 1984 Grand Slam tour. This scrum emphatically announced the Alan Jones-coached Wallabies as a new and potent force in world rugby. It’s doubtful if these two great scrums should be seen in this light, just yet. For France retaliated and monstered the Wallaby scrum several times.
The fact is despite all the blatherings from the Channel Seven commentators about the power of the French scrum, it isn’t a great French scrum. Wales out-scrummed France in this year’s Six Nations tournament. NZ has regularly monstered the French scrum in the last few years.
And on the evidence of the titanic NZ-South Africa Test played just hours before, both these scrums would destroy a French scrum, and they will give the Wallaby scrum, improved though it may be, a torrid time, especially the All Black scrum.
Was it accidental that the improved Wallaby scrum came about with the absence of Nathan Sharpe? I leave the question hanging in the air for readers of The Roar to give their views on.
The Wallabies put on a record score against France. And this represents a good result. But … France, with a bits-and-pieces pack and tired legs (most of the side has played 40 or so matches in the last 12 months) won the battle for possession. The Wallabies scored only four tries. There should have been more, especially as France played from the 64th to the 74th minutes with a player in the sin-bin.
My cousin who has seen many decades of rugby said to me as we watched the match: “This is the worst French side I’ve seen. Where is the pace and flair in the backs?”
Admittedly, players from the top four club sides were still at home. However, the best players in those sides are outsiders like Byron Kelleher.
Professional rugby, especially in France with its savage relegation system for the top club premiership, seems to have produced a type of player who is niggly rather than creative, brutal rather than skilful and safety-first rather than adventurous in his approach to playing rugby. Thugby players (and hence the Brisbane brawls) rather than real rugby players.
Oh my Bonifaces, Maso, Sella and Blanco of so long ago …
For the Wallabies, you can only beat the teams put in front of you, and this is what they have done with Ireland and France, with the victories in the three Tests becoming increasingly comprehensive.
The Deans era in summary then: Three Tests played and won. The halves, Luke Burgess (another brilliant run to his credit) and Matt Giteau beginning to provide the energy, flair, control and running abrasiveness you want from your halves.
Stirling Mortlock becoming dominant in his zones. The lineout working well. The scrum improving. The defence resilient and unyielding. The team playing as a team with an eye to creating tries. Execution, though, still leaving a lot to be desired.
As the old saying goes: Things still to be improved.
Whether all this improvement, and the improvement to come, will be enough to make the Wallabies contenders in the Tri-Nations remains to be seen.
The team is a better side that last year’s team. But its best years, one suspects, are still to come.
Read Spiro Zavos’s take on the All Blacks v Springboks match; and Inky’s analysis.