SPIRO: So far, so good for Ewen McKenzie and his Wallabies

Ewen McKenzie has done the right thing with his selection of the 30 man squad to play the All Blacks in back-to-back Tests.

The first Test will take place on Saturday night at Allianz Stadium in Sydney’s Homebush suburb, with the second to be played at Westpac Stadium in Wellington.

Incidentally, McKenzie can thank the former ARU chief executive, John O’Neill, for negotiating the first Bledisloe Cup Test to be in Sydney for the forseeable future, thus giving the Wallabies the crucial home ground advantage for the first Test.

When the Wallabies, finally, win back the Bledisloe Cup, this first up home ground advantage will be like gold for their chances of retaining it.

This is for the future. The Bledisloe Cup has to be regained and McKenzie has picked about the best squad of the players available to him to this.

Scott Higginbotham is the main loss right now. There is a lack of an aggressive, physical, powerful and fast number 6/number 8.

The combination McKenzie will opt for, Scott Fardy at number 6 and Ben Mowen at number 8, equals about one Higginbotham, a player bursting into his prime with outstanding playing and leadership season for the Rebels before he was injured.

David Pocock and Kurtley Beale are the other absentees from the squad.

I have never accepted the argument often made on The Roar that Pocock is the best number 7 in world rugby. To me he is a two trick pony, he digs for the ball effectively and he has a powerful tackling game.

But he doesn’t run much or do much linking work in the manner of a Richie McCaw or a George Smith.

Pocock is an admirable man with decent aspirations, an inspiring lifestyle and supports a number of charities. But as a rugby player, especially as a number 7, I rate Michael Hooper (the probable starter on Saturday night) and Liam Gill (the super sub) as more influential players.

When Pocock does come back, I reckon his place in the Wallabies starting line-up is a number 6.

The new Wallaby squad has eight uncapped players in it. Possibly only Fardy, as a number 6 or a second rower, will be a starter among the uncapped.

I would like to see Scott Sio start, too. But McKenzie, an old prop himself, might see the front row – the ‘orchestra stalls’, where the rugby music starts as the French say – under the new regulations as too much of a burden for a youngster to confront against the All Blacks in his first Test.

This brings us to Benn Robinson. He and Dave Dennis, who has also been dropped, are suffering from the relatively poor performance of the Waratahs over the last couple of years. And in the case of Robinson, there is the factor of the new scrum regulations to be considered.

The new regulations require the props to bind rather than touch before setting. The point of the change is to take the hit out of scrumming.

Sides that lost the hit all too often collapsed the scrum until they got a hit they liked. Australian teams have been especially noted for this tactic, which covered up a scrumming weakness, for some years now.

With the hit, packs will have to scrum. Hookers will have to actually hook. The IRB says crooked feeds will no longer be tolerated.

I had a short chat to Robbie Deans about this change some time ago. He told me when he was playing in France, scrum practice was conducted under this early-binding mode. He said very strong loose forwards found they could out-scrum props with their upper body strength coming to the fore.

It may be that the short, tubby prop like Robinson, who can use his body shape to make the quick, sharp hit, will become a thing of the past and McKenzie is anticipating this by selecting props and hookers who are strong and also can contribute a lot around the field.

Albert Anae, for instance, the bolter from the Queensland Reds who is down on the team list as hooker/prop, is a converted loose forward.

One other point about the number of uncapped players in the squad – this is a good thing, even though only a couple of them will be starters, as it gives the squad a chance to grow.

This is something the Springbok selectors seem to have ignored with their squad, which involves bringing old timers back from playing in Japan and Europe.

The bulk of the squad comes from the Brumbies, with 11 players, and the Reds, with nine. This is right. The two best sides in the Australian Conference should have the majority of players.

There are six Waratahs, three Western Force players and one Rebel.

Ten of the Wallabies backs have fewer than 10 caps each. The team has an average age of 25, with Stephen Moore being the only over 30 in the squad.

There is, despite all this, some experience in the squad, which boasts of 575 caps.

Where McKenzie has made a significant change is the selection of Jim McKay to be the Wallabies attack coach. Note ‘attack’ coach, not ‘backs’ coach.

McKenzie is going back to a Rod Macqueen system of coaching the squad as a XV, backs and forwards together for most of the drills, rather than as two entities, the backs and the forwards.

I remember back in 1999 when Macqueen, the best and most successful of all the Wallabies coaches, explained to me it did not make much sense separating the backs and forwards.

In a game they are supposed to play as an ensemble. They should train as an ensemble, too, he reckoned.

McKenzie was an assistant coach with Macqueen, perhaps he picked up this idea and others from the great coach.

Incidentally again, I cannot understand why Macqueen’s input into the Wallabies hasn’t been more over the years. When he stood down he said he wouldn’t critique the Wallabies from the sidelines. This was admirable.

But it is more than a decade since he’s been away from the Wallabies. He should have the sort of elder statesman role with the Wallabies Sir Brian Lochore plays with the All Blacks.

Getting back to McKay, he was a winger with Randwick, had a stint at the Rugby Academy of the Leicester Tigers, and from 2010 has been the attack coach with the Reds.

This year the Reds have struggled to score tries. But in 2011, the Reds won their first Super Rugby title and also scored a record number of tries for the franchise since the Super Rugby tournament began in 1996.

This brings us to Quade Cooper.

There has been a lot of chat coming out of the Wallaby camp that McKenzie is still thinking about Matt Toomua as his number 10. I don’t believe it.

Cooper has been talking about running the Wallabies and in the Sun-Herald McKay said it, “has been a privilege to work with Quade”, at the training camp.

“As far as a coach goes,” he continued, “he makes things happen, he is innovative… 

“I back Quade because I know what he can do.”

I take from this the Wallabies will try to play the 2011 Reds game against the All Blacks, using Cooper’s passing and kicking skills to set up runners.

Cooper will play fullback on defence and will try to bring Israel Folau and James O’Connor (the probable wingers) into running plays.

Folau is lazy about dropping back, as Warren Gatland has pointed out, so hopefully McKay will get him to increase his work rate.

This game plan (if the Wallabies adopt it) is the opposite to that of the Brumbies. But there are a slew of Brumbies plays in the squad, like Nic White, who can go back to the kicking/territory/penalty game if this is needed as Plan B, or to close out a tight contest.

Of course, all this is theoretical. McKenzie and Cooper also talked a good game for the Reds in their qualifier final against the Crusaders, and the Crusaders, playing at the fortress in Christchurch, absolutely smashed the Reds.

So talking the talk is one thing, walking the walk is the important thing.

Saturday night will tell the story whether the McKenzie words can be converted into Wallaby deeds.