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Radke Samo of the Wallabies gets past the tackle of All Blacks captain Richie McCaw during the Tri-Nations rugby union decider between Australia and New Zealand at Suncorp Stadium in Brisbane, Saturday, Aug. 27, 2011. (AAP Image/Dave Hunt)
The Wallabies’ stunning victory over the All Blacks at Suncorp Stadium confirms the fact that the 2011 Rugby World Cup, like each instance since 1987, is likely to be a moveable feast. Seven countries have a reasonable chance of pulling off a tournament victory.
In order, these are New Zealand, Australia, South Africa, England, Wales, Ireland, and France.
The All Blacks remain favourites with the tournament played in New Zealand – under Graham Henry the All Blacks have won 92 percent of their Tests at home.
In this sense, their big matches in the Tri Nations were the two Tests they played at home.
A South African B side was thrashed and a strong, confident Wallabies side was comprehensively defeated.
What these victories demonstrated is that the home ground advantage is a very real advantage for the All Blacks. A proviso, though, to this is that both the Wallabies and the Springboks are getting used to playing in New Zealand.
Two years ago, the Springboks had a win there. The Wallabies, under Deans, are yet to win in New Zealand. They have, though, defeated the All Blacks three times in the last four years, in Sydney, Hong Kong and now Brisbane.
Saturday night’s victory was important because the Wallabies revealed tactics that unsettled the All Blacks.
It seemed for the first 40 minutes of the Test that the All Blacks had not even considered that the Wallabies would run their big forwards at Daniel Carter and Piri Weepu and that the outside defence would come in an attack the catcher if an overlap had been created.
The curious aspect of this is that these tactics were essentially the tactics the Springboks used at Port Elizabeth to keep the All Blacks in single figures of points for the first time in many years. Of course, the Springboks kicked rather than ran the ball as the Wallabies did.
And it was the Wallabies’ running game, with two break-out tries, that really undermined the All Blacks attempted fight-back.
Eddie Jones has been saying for some time that the Wallabies might be two years off their best with this team. He might be right.
The Wallabies need to win seven matches in succession to win the Rugby World Cup (or at least three finals matches in succession) and under Robbie Deans, except for the opening Tests of his tenure, they are yet to come anywhere near seven wins in a row.
But their last two Tests have been a Test win in South Africa against the best Springboks side available, and now a victory against a strong All Blacks side. If you want to take momentum into a Rugby World Cup tournament, there is no better way of doing it.
Getting back to Eddie Jones, the point I think he was making is that the forwards might not be tough enough to get through a long campaign. Deans will have to manage the playing time of Radike Samo and Daniel Vickerman, keeping them for the must-win matches in the pool rounds and subbing them in the finals if he can.
There is no doubt that both these players (and I was sceptical of Vickerman’s chances of making a comeback) have added a huge amount of shoulder and heft to the Wallaby pack.
Samo in his younger days was a winger and he showed remarkable speed, winger’s speed rather than the speed of a number eight to clear out just before half-time for the try that won the Test for the Wallabies.
20-3 is an impossible margin for any team, even one as good as the All Blacks, to come back, especially when the team with the 20 points on the board is playing before its home crowd.
The pack held up reasonably well in the scrums while Vickerman was on the field. But when he left, the All Blacks fractured it repeatedly. The Wallaby lineout, too, was awful at the beginning of the Test. But it picked up when the calls were sorted out.
But where the Wallabies were most impressive was their attack on the rucks and mauls. They threw bodies in with hard shoulder contact and literally scattered the All Blacks.
The All Blacks were not helped by the curious tactic of Piri Weepu of standing over the ball for seconds trying to work out what to do. This has always seemed to be a stupid tactic as far as I am concerned, and I imagine that Weepu, like Zac Guilford and Mils Miliaina, has blown his chances of being in the starting XV.
My guess here is that Israel Dagg will come in at fullback to give the All Blacks the sort of razzle-dazzle play of James O’Connor (if he makes it back into the starting side), Quade Cooper, Digby Ioane (whose new haircut is more spectacular than his play), Kurtley Beale and Will Genia (now in the pantheon, in my view, with Des Connor, Ken Catchpole and John Hipwell as the greatest of the great Australian halfbacks).
So the Wallabies now know they can beat the All Blacks on merit and with the right tactics. This was done with tactics that can work just as well in New Zealand as they did at Brisbane.
The two sides are scheduled to meet in the final at Eden Park, if all goes well. But you never know with World Cups. The key matches for the Wallabies are Saturday September 17 at Eden Park when they play Ireland.
In Rugby World Cup 2003 the Wallabies were a missed drop goal from being put out of the tournament by Ireland. And famously in 1991, the Wallabies had to score a try inside the last four minutes to get through to the semi-final against New Zealand.
On paper Ireland looked a good side in 2007 yet did not make the finals. They still look good and are still not delivering, except in the last Test of the 2011 Six Nations when they thrashed England with a magnificent display of ensemble rugby.
If they play like that, or are allowed to play like that, they will be a handful for the Wallabies or any other team.
The draw calles for the Wallabies to play England in the semi-finals, perhaps. England have had a terrible pre-Rugby World Cup tournament series of Tests culminating in a hiding from Wales.
But the England game of Jonny Wilkinson taking the points and the big forwards rumbling on is one the Wallabies find hard to defeat. The teams have played four times in World Cup tournaments. The Wallabies won the final against England in 1991, then lost a quarter-final in 1995, a final in 2003 and a quarter-final in 2007.
A final thought on the All Blacks. They are good at coming back from defeats. Last season after the Wallabies beat them at Hong Kong, the All Blacks went on to complete a Grand Slam of victories against the home unions.
I would expect them to re-group and emerge stronger than they have been in South Africa and Australia in their last two Tests.
A big part of their early problems was that they lost Kieran Read (and if he is seriously injured this is a big blow) early on. Adam Thomson played on with a busted arm and this allowed Samo to burst through his tackle on his way to glory.
But once the back row was re-organised, it did very well in the second half.
I am talking at Mosman Library on Wednesday night August 31 at 7 pm ($10) in an event put on by bookseller Pages and Pages, to discuss my book How To Watch The 2011 Rugby World Cup (Penguin). I’m sure there will be some interesting questions and answers (hopefully) tossed in by members of the audience.
The truth of the matter is that the Brisbane Test showed that there is no sure thing in world rugby.
Translated into the context of the World Cup tournament, this means that although the bookmakers have the All Blacks as favourites, there are up to seven sides that could actually win the tournament if everything falls into place for them.
As I often point out, tournaments are contrary beasts. They have a way, as the 2007 Rugby World Cup tournament showed, of writing their own history and disregarding what any of us thinks is likely to happen.