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My one piece of advice for Ewen McKenzie
wisey_9
Roar Guru
14th August, 2013
11
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Link - at the centre of a gossip-fuelled storm in Australian rugby. (Image: AFP/Patrick Hamilton)
wisey_9
Roar Guru
14th August, 2013
11

Rugby union isn’t a foreign game to me. Having grown up in the southern suburbs of Sydney, I pretty much lived and breathed all sports during the formative years of my life.

I can rattle off all of the Australian Open tennis champions from the ’90s just as easily as I can name the starting 15 from the ’99 Rugby World Cup.

To put it simply, if it involved competition, I was hooked. (Does anyone else remember when Channel Nine used to show the sailing during breaks in the cricket? That was awesome!)

However, I’m happy to admit my extent of rugby knowledge when it comes to on-field play and strategy is limited. It generally stems from three main sources:

1) Jonah Lomu Rugby. The amount of hours I spent playing that game on my Sega Saturn would make most normal people horrified. The gameplay is up there with FIFA: Road to World Cup ’98. Even writing about it now makes me want to track down a copy to play once again.
2) Gary Pearce. The former Wallaby and analyst for Channel Seven is a family friend of ours. But to be honest most of his insights and stories always centred around what happened off the field rather than on it!
3) The 15 or so games of rugby I played as a lock at high-school.

It’s from these games at lock – and all that knowledge and wisdom I gained on the field – that I now see myself as the perfect authority to give new Wallabies coach Ewen McKenzie some advice.

You see, my high school rugby team was a relatively inexperienced bunch – much like the Wallabies (stay with me here).

We had a decent understanding of the game, but the intricacies of some rugby’s rules were sometimes lost on a bunch of guys who played soccer, league and AFL on the weekends.

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Specifically, I remember being told off by the ref for having my hands in the ruck. To this day I still don’t really know what he wanted me to do with my hands.

Anyway, the point of this anecdote is that we did have one player who was more than half decent. His name was Laith and, apart from being Ryan Girdler’s cousin (a huge claim to fame in those days), he was a very good rugby league five-eighth.

Despite us forwards giving away penalties every few phases of play (much like the Wallabies again!), Laith was able to break the line and most of the time set the team up to score some tries.

He was so dominant that our halftime team talks from our PE teacher (who I’m sure had about as much rugby knowledge as we did) were usually pretty short and always with the same general instructions:

“Everyone keep working hard, tackling hard, and when we have the ball – give the ball to Laith!”.

Short. Simple. And it won us a fair share of games.

So, Ewen, here’s my advice for this weekend’s match (and please don’t see this as disrespectful to any of the other blokes on the field, I’m sure they are all brilliant players in their own right).

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Keep everyone working hard, tackling hard. And when we have the ball – give the ball to Israel Folau!

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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.

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