- Video
-
Club Roar
Captured a great grassroots sporting moment? We want to see it!Content Collections
The Roar Community
- Join
- Login
Congratulations to the Wallabies, and the long-suffering Wallabies’ supporters. The drought is over! I only wish you didn’t have to beat the All Blacks to do it (absolutely aware of the logical issues with that statement!).
Saturday evening saw a Wallabies outfit that I didn’t realise existed – a savage, aggressive, assertive beast that set about the difficult challenge of taking a few pieces of All Blacks hide with absolute gusto. And didn’t they just do that.
I haven’t seen the team play with that level of commitment and zeal since 2008.
The All Blacks were thoroughly and comprehensively outplayed in the first forty and last ten minutes of the match by a team that showed they have the aggression, ability and nous to win the World Cup.
Lote Tuqiri was right on the money when he tweeted, “I think the Wallabies will send a message to the other teams at the Rugby World Cup.”
As an All Blacks supporter, this loss really hurt – there’s not a lot of places you can hide from the fact that the Wallabies were absolutely the better team, that the ABs were outplayed, and that we’ve lost a trophy to Australia for the first time in a decade. And rightly so – the Wallabies were the deserved victors.
No doubt there will be a resurgence in the wonderful sledging we’ve come to enjoy from a vocal minority on The Roar, and fairly, too. Rest assured, I’d have been putting the metaphorical boot in after a performance like that. Both teams were there for the cup, there is absolutely no doubt about it.
I’ll also admit immediately falling victim to the Three Horsemen of the All Blacks Apocalypse – Panic, Dread and Pessimism – as they rode in after the sight of James Horwill lifting the Tri Nations trophy. Bolt the door. Hide under the bed.
The canny little buggers have figured out how to play the bloody game in the right bloody way and now we know they have the bloody credentials to bloody well sneak into New Zealand and steal the bloody trophy that’s rightly ours! Quick! To the airports! Slash the tyres of any Qantas planes, steal the Wallabies passports, tie their shoelaces together… do something!
Apparently my one-year-old daughter picked up on the vibe, too, because she hardly slept at all on Saturday, and during the 25 or so times I climbed out of bed half asleep to stop her crying and throwing things out of her cot, I reflected on the All Blacks performance, and the positives.
We now know what the Wallabies are capable of.
All Blacks? This is the benchmark, boys. This is what they’re going to play like in the finals of the RWC. They might even play a bit harder. Let’s work out how to surpass this. We know we can.
Over the ramparts.
The Wallabies subtly changed their style for this match, sending in forwards at speed into rucks to hit them really, really hard. What I immediately noticed is that a fair few forwards were ‘accidentally’ rolling over the top and down into the All Blacks side of the ruck, and further disrupting there.
I don’t have a problem with this tactic, illegal though it may be, because I’ve seen numbers 1 through 8 of the All Blacks pack do exactly the same thing in the past. However, it’s highlighted that we can’t commit low numbers of defenders to the ruck and defend round the edges as we have been, or the fringe defenders need to pull the oncoming players down over the back of the ruck and push forward as their momentum passes the centre-point of the ruck.
Defenders in the backline.
Ioane spends an awful lot of time in between All Blacks players looking for intercept passes. No more long floating passes on his wing – punch through a grubber behind him a couple of times and he’ll drop back into the line as pressure goes on Cooper to defend. Carter may need to stand a little deeper, too.
Quade Cooper has a red card in him, just itching to get out.
In the three international games where he’s faced Richie McCaw, he’s actively gone for McCaw when given the opportunity. I don’t know what McCaw did/does/has promised to do to Cooper, but kneeing the opposition captain in the face whilst he’s bound in a ruck and can’t cover his head is an immediate cardable offence, and had Barnes caught it Cooper would’ve been off the park for a minimum of 10 minutes. Just keep at him till he cracks.
55 phases, 17 points.
When David Pocock rejoined the field after half time, he had a look on his face that I have only seen in one other rugby player – Sebastien Chabal who is, frankly, insane – the look of the beserker! Twenty minutes later he was looking really, really worried, because the All Blacks had held the ball for a total of 55 phases and hung 17 points on his forward pack. One more play like that would’ve closed out the match – instead we went wide and expansive only for Beale to counterattack and reapply the pressure.
Margin:
That’s what it was, really. I doubt there are many Wallabies fans out there who would’ve been comfortable with that margin in the final 10 minutes – I think eight points would have been infinitely preferable.
Bad day at the office.
The All Blacks were absent for the first 20 minutes of the match. Chalk it up to a bad day at the office, or poor mental preparation, or whatever, but this was the difference between the Eden Park and Suncorp Stadium matches.
Scrummaging.
What Wallabies scrum? On two occasions the Wallabies were turned through 90, and the second should have been a penalty rather than a reset. Good news.
Lineout.
We won every throw on our own ball, the Wallabies failed to contest the penultimate one, and the Wallabies lineout was pretty suspect. Perhaps look to more of a tactical kicking game.
Inconsistent reffing.
I think this actually affected both teams as there were a couple of dodgy penalties awarded to the ABs which didn’t have a lot in them. But the TMO should’ve ruled a 22 dropout on AAC near-try, rather than a five-metre scrum, as Adam-Ashley Cooper had taken the ball over the line and Muliaina grounded it. Several of Cooper’s passes looked noticeably forward. Several occasions where there was some hands and feet in the wrong places of rucks. Obstruction ruled against
Ted’s gamble didn’t pay off.
There was certainly more riding on this game because of the Tri Nations trophy, so it should be noted that Ted gambled with the outcome of the Tri Nations by sending a weakened team to South Africa. Note to self: the gamble didn’t pay off…
Was this the RWC final performance two months too early?
Can the Wallabies can get that fired up again? At the end of a tournament, at Eden Park? It remains to be seen. There’s an awfully long road to walk, injuries to occur, games to be played against other teams with other strengths. If we do meet once more at Eden Park in the World Cup final, both teams will be markedly different, and there’s little about this game that can be inferred into the next game.
Pressure cooker.
Well, the worst that could happen has happened, and we’re faced with getting on with the job and rebuilding. That’s a good thing – there’s some relief in knowing that the team are capable of losing, and maybe backing off the pressure on them just a little. The team’s fallible. Losses hurt but are grounding.
In fact, based on this outcome New Zealand are *clearly* the underdogs in this World Cup, right? Not a chance of winning, most likely knocked out in the pool stages, every other team disrespecting them, right?
Final thought: Phil Kearns. What can I say? He is an absolute disgrace to commentary. Not professing that NZ commentators are better, but Kearns spent the majority of the match complaining about All Blacks infringements, criticising the ref’s calls, and blithely ignoring any of the foul or negative play coming from Australia. Case in point, Cooper kneeing McCaw in the head, which was cited.
I’m sorry to say, Australia, but you are starved of decent commentary, and he’s just plain wrong half the time! Commentary is how the average punter interprets the game, and it’s no wonder McCaw is viewed as being the anti-Christ when Phil Kearns treats every showing of the black jersey as an opportunity to denigrate him.
Each country is entitled to its passionate, patriotic supporters, but when the most enduring and noticeable voice in the box is a guy who is so blatantly biased you have ask the question: is the public being fairly served?
I’d rather hear P. De Villiers commentating than put up with Kearns, and had I been able to find a live audio stream from elsewhere, even if it were in a different language, I’d have used it. He is *awful*. And I have listened to commentators from all over the world.
Even the most strident Bokke commentators can’t match Kearn’s bias against and contempt towards the All Blacks. If I could boycott him, I would.
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.