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The knives are being sharpened for Robbie Deans

19th August, 2009
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19th August, 2009
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Wallaby coach Robbie Deans watches his team train in Sydney, Australia. AP Photo/Mark Baker

Wallaby coach Robbie Deans watches his team train in Sydney, Australia. AP Photo/Mark Baker

A Queensland inspired attack on Robbie Deans has been launched in the lead-up to Saturday’s Test between the Wallabies and the All Blacks. This Test is a must-win match for the Wallabies if they are to remain in contention to win the Tri-Nations tournament and to win back the Bledisloe Cup.

There is no way Deans will be replaced as the Wallaby coach before the 2011 Rugby World Cup tournament. Nor should he be.

But if the Wallabies don’t win two of their next four Tests against the All Blacks and the Springboks, then he can expect a bitter campaign to be maintained against him for the next two years.

The first knife to be flashed in this campaign was drawn by Andrew Slack, a successful Wallaby captain and an unsuccessful Super Rugby coach, who has pointed to the record of the Wallabies under Deans losing six out of their last seven Tri-Nations Tests, with five successive losses.

The Slack criticism was picked up by Wayne Smith, a rugby columnist for The Australian, who works out of  Queensland. Smith discussed an issue raised by Slack, namely whether the Deans’ mantra of “playing what is in front of you” is actually right for the Wallabies.

The Slack/Smith conclusion is that it is not: “Australian sides have flourished most when they have a certain structure about their play,” Smith writes.

From the article, it is difficult to work out what structured play means in this context.

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I think it means going back to the robotic play of the Eddie Jones era, when players were given plays that they had to follow come what may. If the play called for a pass and a gap appeared that could be converted into an easy run-in try, the pass was required to be made.

Smith knows all about this because he does not want the need for “certain structure about their play” to stifle the Wallabies “as the final days of the Jones era demonstrated.”

And here we get to the nub of the problem for Deans of resurrecting the Wallabies.

He inherited a game plan from Jones and John Connolly that did not produce results after 2004 for the Wallabies. A side with poor set-piece skills, especially the scrums (remember Bill Young’s failings?) and no composure, with a fatal tendency to give away penalties.

From 2004 to now, the Wallabies have lost 26 Tests. In 18 of those Tests, they have been out-scored on penalty goals by an incredible 73 to 23, and on tries only 43 to 32.

Deans has improved the scrum to where it can hold its own. But the Wallabies are still struggling with their composure and discipline.

In this year’s Tri-Nations, the Wallabies have been outscored through penalty goals by 12 to 3, a differential of 27 points. The combined loss for the two matches was only 18 points.

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Why hasn’t Deans been able to turn the Wallabies into clones of his Crusaders’ sides, which were noted for their discipline and composure?

The answer, I believe, lies with the coaches of the Australian Super Rugby sides.

They have been too tolerant of players not performing. It is a disgrace, for instance, that no Australian side was in this year’s finals.

Worse than this, none of the coaches this year has been able to lift the performance of more than a couple of players like Benn Robinson and Digby Ioane.

It would help, too, if some of the intense fitness training that Deans put his Crusaders side through was applied to the Australian Super Rugby players.

The worst culprit among the Australian Super Rugby teams, and this is true since Jones coached them after his stint with the Wallabies, are the Queensland Reds. It is ironic that the first criticisms of Deans are coming from Queensland, once a powerhouse of Australian and world rugby and now, in rugby terms, a failed state.

My sense of all of this is that Deans is slowly working his way through the playing list left to him by Connolly and dropping players when some talent emerges that is better than what is there.

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This time next year, for instance, it will be surprising if Al Baxter, Nathan Sharpe, Wycliff Palu, and Luke Burgess are in the starting line-up.

My guess, too, is there will be a new captain, even if Stirling Mortlock comes back into the side after his injury. Berrick Barnes (a possible captain) will be the first five-eighths and Matt Giteau restored to the inside centre position.

It tends to be forgotten that under Deans, the Wallabies achieved their highest winning score against the All Blacks – 34 points at Sydney last year. They also defeated the Springboks last year in South Africa for only the second Wallaby victory there in Tri-Nations rugby.

An irony about Saturday’s Test is that Deans was assistant coach of the All Blacks when they won back the Bledisloe Cup in 2003, after a Wallaby reign of five years. Now six years on, he is attempting to win it back for the Wallabies.

The ANZ Stadium is one of the few, perhaps only, ground out of South Africa where the All Blacks have a losing Test record. The scoreboard at Homebush reads 6 victories for the Wallabies and 3 for the All Blacks.

The other good omen for Deans and the Wallabies is that all the Tri-Nations Tests played so far this year have been won by the home side.

Is it the turn of the Wallabies playing at Sydney for a victory?

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