- Video
-
Club Roar
Captured a great grassroots sporting moment? We want to see it!Content Collections
The Roar Community
- Join
- Login
In front of a parochial Kiwi crowd the All Blacks mercilessly punished the Wallabies in a show of just how far this team still has to go.
At the start of the match Richie McCaw’s name announcement was greeted with the loudest cheer of either side.
From there the crowd just got more and more behind a strong performance by the visitors who cashed in fully on the Wallabies many mistakes while making very few of their own.
The All Blacks performance was very ominous because of its team-wide effort. There were standouts (Richie McCaw, Keiran Read, Steven Luatua, Aaron Cruden and Ben Smith) but for the most part they weren’t head and shoulders above the rest.
The game was characterised by their ability to read and react as a unit, which will be the most pleasing part of the victory for the staff and leadership.
This is both a comforting sign for All Black fans, but one which points to further improvement.
The All Blacks didn’t hold the ball spectacularly well and in fact lost the possession stat 40/60%. And there wasn’t a whole lot of structured attacking play to unlock the Wallabies.
Now, the Wallabies didn’t present a strong enough line to force that sort of play but the All Blacks could still improve dramatically in their set play execution and bringing runners like Julian Savea (who was quiet) and Israel Dagg into the general playing pattern.
For Australia, it was a case of playing well without taking their own chances while offering too many to a team of the All Blacks quality.
The Wallabies pack wasn’t completely monstered but was certainly harassed and out-worked by the All Blacks. In that part of the game only Michael Hooper deserved to be in the conversation along with the best on the night.
In what might be a sign of his suitability as a Test number eight, Ben Mowen wasn’t able to create the same amount of havoc as he did against the Lions without another bigger body absorbing some of the physical pounding. Hugh McMeniman didn’t do that on this occasion like Wycliff Palu did for the back-row trio during that series.
Put simply, Hooper may have gone a long way to equal McCaw’s impact on the match, but McMeniman and Mowen didn’t stand up well enough to the heft and athleticism of Luatua and Read.
One area of team playing pattern that was starkly different between the two sides was in transition. By that I mean the moments just after possession changes, just after a kick is made or a run back is executed.
During those moments a team must communicate quickly and have a pre-established pattern in mind.
In this match, the All Blacks were quick to pounce on turnovers and convert them to attack with accuracy. On the other hand the Wallabies were slow to react and set their defensive line or contest the crucial first ruck when the attack may not be organised yet.
That went both ways to a degree; the All Blacks corrected their errors quickly and poured pressure onto the Wallabies whenever the game opened a fraction.
It’s especially notable that Genia’s try came from a lineout throw mistake by the All Blacks that set him away. The All Blacks team awareness was so good it took a 75m sprint for them to give away their first pie.
As a side note on Will Genia, I can’t understand why he was on the field for so long once the Wallabies were down by more than 20. Nic White needs time at this level and managing Genia’s workload should be smarter than that.
On the night, I came away thinking there were horrible problems with the backs. Having thought about it more I think there are teething problems, not wholesale incompetence.
Jesse Mogg wasn’t able to any of the skills you’d like in a Test quality full back. Two, in particular, were lacking and must be present if your full back is going to have a good Test career: composure and defence.
His game started by defusing a kick nicely, but he threw a very hair-brained offload in contact that wasn’t called for. Stephen Moore dropped it and that was the error you can trace the All Blacks first try back to.
From then Mogg just wasn’t able to settle and looked lost on the field for the majority of the match. His defence wasn’t great either, culminating with his horrible effort on Conrad Smith’s try that was bad enough to be his last action in the match.
James O’Connor’s defence wasn’t good as a wing. He rushed off his man in the first couple of minutes to let (my rugby-crush) Ben Smith in for the first of his hat trick. If you’re an international wing you can’t leave your man.
Even more than that, if you don’t trust Adam Ashley Cooper to make his one-on-one tackle, you haven’t been watching rugby for the last eight years.
Matt Toomua was fairly pedestrian compared to what many hoped for. He reminded me like Bernard Foley early in the Waratahs season this year; passing to the next man without properly selecting the best option, stabbing kicks through instead of purposefully aiming for open space or distance and unable to create much space for runners unless he ran himself.
The silver lining there is Foley has grown into his role after a number of games at that level. The hope will be, given Toomua’s competence at the lower level already, he should be able to improve at this level given time.
The simplest way to improve the backs for the rest of this competition may be to slot Quade Cooper in at full back.
One, change instead of many positional realignments, you’re not losing much on defence compared to Mogg’s output this week and you gain some creative vision in the attacking spaces.
So what have we learned from this outing?
Once again, we remember the age-old truth that one of the All Blacks greatest attacking strengths is the opposition’s mistakes. No team in the world makes you pay to thoroughly for making an error.
It’s apparent that the Wallabies absolutely must decide to make a nuisance of themselves in the rucks more next week. It wasn’t just the physicality they lacked this time, it was the way the All Blacks were more persistent in competing for the ball there.
We need to play the All Blacks in Brisbane far more than Sydney if a true home crowd environment is ever to be achieved.
Finally, we saw glimpses of the way this Wallabies team can attack and compete but also just how far they have to go if they aspire to being the best in the world again.
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.