With wins against the All Blacks, Wales and Leiceister under their belts, the Wallabies will be aiming to make it four in a row overseas for only the third time since the turn of the century.
England will be hungry for their second win over their Southern Hemisphere rivals in this calendar year and will treat this game as an important yardstick for their progress heading into the RWC.
The Wallabies have lit up the field this year with scintillating back play as a pleasant contrast to games such as the 33-6 hiding at the hands of the All Blacks in Wellington last year. Under Robbie Deans, the Wallabies have scored at least one try in 38 of their past 40 games.
The weather is expected to play a major part in the expansiveness of Saturday’s game with wet weather forecast. A heavy wet Twickenham pitch may reduce the pace, speed and penetration of the Wallabies backs.
This will however also reduce the speed of English backs Foden and Hape who in particular looked very dangerous against the All Blacks last week.
If England is the country of the Angles, the teams’ kicking game will more than ever play a crucial role. Berrick Barnes and Rocky Elsom after the Leiceister and Wales games mentioned the importance of being able to play to the conditions. I expect this to translate to increased kicking from the Wallabies back three and Quade Cooper/Giteau and Barnes.
The Wallabies currently average 15 kicks per game, and kicked 16 times against the Welsh.
I expect this figure to return to the 20-25 (2009 Tri-Nations level), as the Wallabies will intend to turn the “rush defence” of the English around. With Foden at 15, and Beale (plus JOC and Mitchell) returning as well, any misdirected kicks could result in some excellent viewing.
An encouraging facet of the Wales game was the marked improvement in the defence of the Wallabies. Quade Cooper for example missed just two tackles and the team as whole missed 17 for the game, making 90% of all tackles attempted. This reflects a great improvement from the 81% recorded against the All Blacks in Hong Kong.
The logical flipside to the increase in kicking is the pressure on the Wallabies at lineout time, the retention of Stephen Moore will be crucial in this regard.
Whilst the lineout retention was below Tri-Nations levels in Hong Kong (71% success rate) it improved back to 86% against the Welsh. This is an area, that the Wallabies are building some strength in, limiting the All Blacks to 60% retention of their own ball in Hong Kong and maintaining the best lineout in the Tri-Nations.
The Wallabies need to continue this strength into Twickenham.
A re-united front-row of Moore, Alexander, and Robinson, should provide the much needed stability in the scrums. As Spiro mentioned, the Welsh front-row was a British Lions affair and props like Dan Cole, whilst promising, offer much less of a threat to the seasoned (compared to other Wallaby options) Wallaby front-row, who without doubt would have worked extremely hard this week.
Look for James Slipper to make a real impact off the bench.
Joubert as a referee can only help the Wallabies this week, although I will add, real attention to releasing the tackled player at the breakdown was largely ignored last week by Barnes and Poite.
Let’s hope this rule is enforced more vigorously to allow clear and quick flow of possession. An emphasis on requiring the tackler to roll away is also necessary to ensure rucks are not intentionally slowed down.
The Wallabies have focussed in training this week on getting numbers to the breakdown, potentially as a result of the Wales game, where they suffered a blitzkrieg from the Welsh forwards. This was because the Wallaby forwards tended to “hang off” after a good carry, par for the course in the Tri-nations uncontested breakdowns.
It will be interesting to see whether or not England will adopt the same tactics as the Welsh, especially because this was not the sort of game they played against the All Blacks.
It is crucial that the Wallabies forwards are capable of adapting their game to either tactic. Against Wales it was clear they were surprised out of the box, losing crucial turnovers, lets hope that they are more aware whichever tactic is chosen.
In terms of the Northern Tour itself, one cannot help but think that this is a tipping point game.
If the young Wallabies can beat the English in their conditions, at their home ground in front of thousands of English fans singing “Swing Low”, one feels that the grease will really be on the wheels for their tests in continental Europe with an expected win in Italy and a perennially tough game in France.
First they need to beat the English.
Let’s hope they can.
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