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In a shameless and blatant teaser for next week’s column for The Roar, last Friday I had the pleasure and the privilege of chatting with Rugby World Cup-winning and former Springbok coach Jake White.
In amongst a series of candid and frank responses, White mentioned something that stayed with me all weekend, and indeed was in the back of my head as I sat down to observe how the Wallabies would bounce back after the previous week’s shock loss to Samoa.
Simply, he stated, “I suppose in rugby you’re never going to get everybody happy.”
After a week of quality hand-wringing and Oh-my-God-ing from Wallaby supporters, and ranging in ferocity from moderate annoyance to full-blown blood-letting and “sack the lot of them, they’re bloody hopeless”, many a curious set of Australian eyes would be on the opening Tri-Nations clash against South Africa.
Wallaby coach Robbie Deans had made the changes most thought were required and essentially, we would be watching the First XV again.
If the biggest casualty/scapegoat of the Samoan loss was Matt Giteau, then that was quickly justified in just the first minute of play.
From a penalty and lineout in their own half, the Wallaby backline was set deep and wide. With Quade Cooper’s first two touches, he ran toward the line with three decoy supports in close proximity; firstly, it was James Horwill, Rob Simmons, and David Pocock stationed off each hip, then the next run he fired a pass to Kurtley Beale neatly between Pat McCabe and Digby Ioane on his outside, with Ben Alexander on the inside.
This is not a criticism of Giteau’s game, but those two plays so superbly contrasted the attacking preference of him and Cooper so effectively well. For starters, I can’t recall Giteau taking on the line with close supports the previous week.
Secondly, and most tellingly, whereas Cooper has the passing game to allow the ball to beat the man, Giteau nowadays almost always prefers to run toward the gap he’s trying to position a runner through, rather than passing into the space.
In those opening minutes, there was just so much to like, and so much that hadn’t happened in the previous game. True, the Springboks weren’t defending with the same line speed and bone-shattering intensity with which the Samoans rocked the Australians, but it appeared that the Wallabies were playing more intensely at the breakdown, with more patience in attack, and with so much more time to sum up the situation in front of them.
Happy days felt like they were just about to arrive.
Ben Alexander’s try – and I remain convinced there’s an inside centre trapped in that prop’s body – looked even better when you went through the elements in reverse. Firstly, it was really no surprise that he would be the support runner to score the try; he seems to have a happy knack of doing that.
Impressive, though, was how Alexander veered back to the outside after Rocky Elsom had beautifully drawn firstly Deon Stegmann and then Flip van der Merwe into the tackle before offloading. Elsom found himself in space thanks to the unexpected second and first receivers Stephen Moore and McCabe, who took the quick pass from Will Genia.
Genia was one of many Wallabies arriving in numbers as James O’Connor took the ball into the ruck, after perfectly shoving Lwazi Mvovo out of the contact, and having altered his support run to take in Beale’s outside pass and sum up the impending traffic.
Beale had added another forty or so metres to Cooper’s initial step and run-like-he-stole-something dash, if you’ll pardon the expression.
But what did it all start from? Elsom’s clever shovel out the back, after a brilliant Ben McCalman steal at the ruck. Every time I re-watched that play on Sunday morning, it just got better and better.
Just a minute later, from the restart, Genia never even looked at what Cooper might have been assembling on the open side; instead, his eyes locked onto the mouth-watering prospect of taking on prop Werner Kruger and ‘Boks captain John Smit down the short side.
He and Ioane took off, quickly developed the overlap, and from 85m and a cracking left-foot step, Ioane was crossing himself in celebration.
“Happy days for the Wallabies!” Greg Martin exclaimed, quickly picking up on my theme for this week.
It was hard to believe this had all happened in the first ten minutes, and on a heavy track, after Sydney had endured rain so heavy and constant that Noah himself might have been making preparations.
Any game in which you’ve secured the bonus point before the 50th minute has been born out of a dominant performance, and for everything the Wallabies did wrong the previous week, they did right on Saturday night.
McCabe and Adam Ashley-Cooper look like they’ve been playing in the centres together for decades and not just the two outings in the last ten days. Their combined unit defence and line speed was outstanding, and in attack they complimented each other magnificently.
At the breakdown, so enthralled was I watching McCalman and Elsom in tandem that I barely noticed Pocock, which after re-watching the game on Sunday morning and seeing Pocock’s impact, was rather surprising.
The tight five were great in the middle and performed quite well against a decent Springbok scrum. And of course, Genia, Cooper, Beale and O’Connor need no more superlatives than they’ve already received.
So I guess the question is Roarers, are we happier now?
Yes, there’s still room for improvement, no question. But after all the doom and gloom the previous week, this was almost the perfect response.
I think we’re entitled to be satisfied again.