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The central talking point of Ewen McKenzie’s first Wallaby Test side is Matt Toomua has been selected as fly-half ahead of Quade Cooper.
I’m waiting for Greg Martin to scream out McKenzie is an All Blacks, Springboks and probably Pumas Trojan Horse.
My guess is, though, Martin will go along with the selection and the explanation Cooper will come on after the hard stuff has been dished out and received by Toomua.
The theory is Cooper will then cut loose against a tiring All Blacks side and, with his fresh legs and bag of tricks, create such mayhem the All Blacks will be blown away.
Well, it is a theory. It may or may not work. My guess is that it won’t.
But if the tactic means Toomua starts and stays on the field, if he plays as well as he has for the Brumbies this season, then we should all go for it.
The point is, too, Cooper needn’t come on as a fly-half. He could be slotted into the fullback position and play in the line when the Wallabies are on attack.
I don’t believe the claims the move will unsettle the All Blacks. Steve Hansen was talking about it to New Zealand journalists well before the Wallabies were officially announced:
“Our information is telling us he (McKenzie) is going to pick the other bloke, Toomua.”
He also predicted the Wallabies would employ the Brumbies’ rush defence, a system that almost worked against the Chiefs in the Super Rugby final at Hamilton.
I say ‘almost’ because the Chiefs scored their decisive try late in the second half from a scrum inside their 22. The Brumbies’ rush defence was given the slip, the break out was made and a try followed some phases later.
The rush defence is a bit like the offside trap in soccer. When it works, it is brilliant. But one slip up can be extremely costly.
If, say, the Brumbies had drifted in defence following that fateful scrum, the Chiefs would have booted the ball out. But the rush defence allowed for a gap that was exploited and it was game over.
Hopefully, the Wallabies will be a bit smarter than this with their rush defence.
The All Blacks have a clever running fly-half in Aaron Cruden, who likes run-around plays to open up defences and Ma’a Nonu is big and fastish and can bend the line to allow for pop-up passes to get runners behind a rushing defence.
Aside from the Toomua selection, McKenzie hasn’t taken any other chances with the backs.
When I wrote about my Wallabies side on The Roar I had Tevita Kuridrani at outside centre and Adam Ashley-Cooper at fullback. I expect this arrangement sometime in The Rugby Championship.
But, having taken the gamble of starting Toomua at fly half in his first Test, McKenzie was unwilling to play another newcomer in the vital outside centre position.
The backline as selected has plenty of potential to be a strong and effective attacking unit, but Jess Mogg will have to discard his Brumbies game of always kicking for territory inside his own half. Remember, the Crusaders monstered this Brumbies kicking game at Canberra earlier in the season.
And Israel Folau will have to greatly increase his work rate in running the ball back from All Blacks kicks.
When I made this point in The Roar by pointing out Folau was a lazy player, I was taken to task by many readers of The Roar. But I notice John Connolly, a former Reds and Wallaby coach, made exactly the same point on Thursday.
If the Wallabies are going to run into trouble, it shouldn’t be in the backs. Or the back row.
Michael Hooper will be the fastest forward on the field. Ben Mowen showed against the British and Irish Lions he is a genuine Test match player.
There is a question mark over Hugh McMeniman. On paper, he has every attribute to be a great player. He is big, fast, athletic and smart. But somehow he hasn’t achieved the greatness that appears somehow to be his destiny.
He reminds me a lot of David Codey, a magnificent physical specimen of player in the Alan Jones years who never really delivered.
If he stays uninjured, though, this could be a break-through year for McMeniman.
The front five is where the worry is for the Wallabies. McKenzie has picked two props who are good around the field, except when the scrum is packed down.
And Rob Simmons is surely a Reds (or former Reds) coach’s pick. Simmons has tried to show some mongrel in his play this season, but it does not come naturally to him.
He was one of three of the Wallabies front five for Saturday night who were out-played in the Crusaders-Red qualifier final.
I reckon Kane Douglas, for his size, or Scott Fardy (a reserve), for his real mongrel and work rate, would have been better choices.
McKenzie appears to be believe in Andrew Blades’ argument the new scrum regulations, where the hit is diminished by the props binding before the ‘set’ call, will somehow help the Wallaby props.
Blades argues the Wallaby props are better scrummers than they’re given credit for. I would say there is one very good scrumming prop in Australian rugby and he is Scott Sio.
I watched the Counties-Manakau v Wellington ITM match on Thursday night for some clues about the new scrum regulations.
There were only a couple of collapsed scrums by Counties-Manakau from a prop who couldn’t scrum effectively. The referee did not give any scrum penalties.
Presumably this sort of regime of understanding and working in the new system will be applued by Craig Joubert on Saturday night.
The Wellington scrum, especially when the All Black Dane Coles was hooking, was an extremely powerful unit which delivered great ball to the backs.
Set moves were tried successfully and the Counties-Manakau back row had all sorts of trouble getting away from the scrums to try to make covering tackles.
The forwards said after the game they had had to scrum more than they normally had to do.
All this makes me think that McKenzie/Blades might have got it wrong when they think that play around the field – which James Slipper and Ben Alexander, admittedly, do well – is just as important if not more so than scrumming.
McKenzie should have picked his best scrummers. This is what the All Blacks have done. They’ve got Andrew Hore as hooker and the old-timer Tony Woodcock and the tough Owen Franks in the front row.
They have also selected Luke Romano in the second row ahead of Brodie Retallick because Romano has played under the new regulations.
Where the Wallabies have five new caps in their 23-man squad, the All Blacks have only one, Ryan Crotty.
Ewen McKenzie is a reporter’s delight in that he is always willing to say things that are provocative and good copy. He reminds me a lot of Sir Clive Woodward.
Both these coaches had/have a penchant for attracting the cameras at games by standing as close to the field of play as possible.
Both of them, too, enjoy trying to play mind games with opposition coaches.
The mind games tactics won’t work very well on Steve Hansen. Hansen has shown he is not averse, though, at playing the mind games himself.
He is pointing out to rugby journalists that McKenzie is under enormous pressure to do better than Robbie Deans and “what happens if it doesn’t work?”
The Wallabies have the great advantage of the home ground, a gift to Australian rugby from John O’Neill, who negotiated the New Zealand Rugby Union to concede that the first The Rugby Championship match between the Wallabies and the All Blacks will be played at Sydney.
The Wallabies, also, may have an advantage in that McKenzie should come up with a new pattern and systems that the All Blacks may not have encountered with the Wallabies.
McKenzie, too, is claiming he knows how to beat New Zealand teams, and what better way to prove this is first up at ANZ Stadium on Saturday night.
Against this is the fact that this is a very good All Blacks side. It doesn’t have any obvious weaknesses, except perhaps in goal-kicking now that Dan Carter is out of action.
It is a well-selected side. And it is a well-coached side.
It is also a side that has a tradition of winning the must-win matches. On the NZRU statistics, Australia and New Zealand have played each other 146 times.
The Wallabies have won 41 of these Tests, six have been drawn (including the last Test in 2012 18 – 18 at Brisbane), and the All Blacks have won 99.
So if the All Blacks win on Saturday night they will be the first international side in the history of rugby to record 100 Test wins against a single opponent.
England’s 73 victories against Ireland are the next best number of Test victories against an opponent.
These statistics indicate the challenge and the honour the Wallabies have had in playing so many Tests against the All Blacks.
I said that these statistics were the NZRU figures. The ARU statistics include the matches played between New Zealand and the Waratahs in the 1920s, when the Queensland Rugby Union was out of existence (it re-established itself in 1929).
But on the Australian statistics there have been 117 Tests won by the All Blacks and the Wallabies have won 47.
The NZRU, then, is doing the ARU a favour by not including the Waratahs-New Zealand matches in the 1920s as Tests.
But, as the Wallabies will find out, win or lose on Saturday night, that is about the only favour New Zealand offers in trans-Tasman Tests in 110 years of competition.