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What can explain the cataclysmic loss to Scotland this weekend? How could a team which last year looked in better shape to challenge for the World Cup than anyone else be reduced to a stumbling wreck, lacking direction, quality and the faintest glimmer of confidence?
With strange results the causes are strange and complex, and this is naturally case here.
It starts with the man at the top.
John O’Neill decided on the basis of some positive results last year, that it would be safe to lose a player or two in the interests of cost-cutting and marking his position of strength on the players, as the national resources were good enough to maintain the team’s competitiveness.
He therefore allowed Dan Vickerman to feel undervalued and leave, refused to assist the NSW Waratahs in the recruitment of Karmichael Hunt, fired Lote Tuqiri, allowed the Waratahs to bench Timana Tahu while paying him a huge salary and thus frustrating him into abandoning the sport, and was unwilling to pay Hugh Mcmenniman a little more in order to prevent him moving to Japan.
O’Neill’s calculation was the following: it’s highly important to show players that we will not allow them to make excessive financial demands (Vickerman, Hunt, Mcmenniman), or to behave badly in a way disrespectful to ARU authority. The playing resources of Australia are strong enough for the Wallabies to be competitive even if we lose a few players.
That explains O’Neill’s part, but why did Robbie Deans go along with this? Why didn’t he protest at the cavalier disregard of precious high quality players?
The answer is that Robbie Deans is a New Zealander, an ex-All Black whose last international coaching job was with the All Blacks. Blessed with an incomparable supply of talent, the All Blacks can simply lose a few players here and there and still trump the opposition.
Deans seems not to have realised yet that Australia does not contain the same abundant riches. As a result of this, the All Blacks are able to demand iron discipline and take an authoritarian stance towards their players, as if one or two leave there are several equally good possibilities to take their place.
This perhaps explains Deans own authoritarian streak, his cheerful collusion in Tuqiri’s sacking and philosophical indifference to Tahu’s departure. He comes from an environment where the playing weaponery is unlimited and the mindset that of a conquering army: the thinly supplied guerrilla mentality of the Wallabies is something he has yet to adapt to.
To add to the loss of quality in the side, the firing of Tuqiri devastated the team’s harmony and buzzing attitude.
So the Tri-nations began and the Wallabies, lacking all the energy and positive freshness of the year before because one of their senior player had just been summarily fired, slipped to a series of heavy losses.
Performances were still committed but lacked energy and in the end nothing could hide the fundamental inferiority of the playing group to their opponents. O’Neill’s five squandered players were absent where they were most needed, and the slide began to take speed.
With continued losses confidence began to fall away as well as energy, and to top it all, key players such as Stirling Mortlock began to get injured. Although towards the end of the Tri-nations a growth in confidence began to emerge, it was not enough and the repeated battering from the media and even the coach began to wear on the team’s ruined sense of its own value.
Without Tuqiri, Vickerman, Mcmenniman and Tahu the Wallabies are just too short of real talent.
Now the culmination of this descent has been reached. The Wallabies confidence is crushed. For whole epochs in rugby terms they camped on the English and Scottish lines, failing to score due to nothing more than a terror of failure.
Lote Tuqiri stands on the sidelines as a TV pundit watching Drew Mitchell and Peter Hynes, two wings of vastly inferior talent, taken down quickly by feeble Scottish counterparts whenever they touch the ball.
Ryan Cross with endless possession makes minor inroads where Timana Tahu would have wreaked havoc.
Dan Vickerman and Hugh Mcmenniman’s absence leave the Wallabies packs unable to out muscle a second-rate if large Scottish outfit as well as incapable of line-out dominance.
The worst thing however is that after a series of disastrous losses and scything internal disruption, the team as a whole has lost all bluster, inner strength and self-belief.
O’Neill’s terrible plot has run its course and the Wallabies sink to the most dreadful loss conceivable.
What next? How can Australia possibly recover from this?
The only answer is the following: players, players, players. Get the old ones back, get in new ones.
Watching Tuqiri on the sidelines couldn’t help prompt the following thought: is it possible to imagine the Wallabies losing to Scotland with him on the field?
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.