Cattle, 'cash carries' and combinations for the Wallabies

Three distinct problems for the Wallabies also nicely alliterate for purposes of this article, with some poetic licence thrown in.

I’m certainly not doom and gloom about what played out last Saturday night, but think that we got dusted up in the basics of rugby.

Fix them and we shorten our odds considerably.

Cattle
I wrote in a comment not so long ago that I thought it was time for us to give up trying to match other teams for size and power in the forwards.

We need to find eight guys who will bust their arses to every tackle, breakdown and loose ball.

At any given time there were two or three forwards adding some grunt to the breakdown but because we don’t have the mass units to protect the ball the All Blacks had a field day disrupting the tackle area.

We need the urgency of every single forward who’s defending the breakdown to step up, play above their weight, use their speed and never leave the man isolated on the ground.

Also it’s up to our backline to not shift it wide when our forwards are being hammered in the middle, because no one is left to support the tackled player and brings me to my next point.

‘Cash carries’
I warned you of poetic licence but this refers to the old adage ‘earning the right to go wide’.

Rather than using our wide ball as an attacking weapon when we were on top, we were using it as an escape when we were on the back foot, or as soon as we find ourselves with even the slightest sign of gain line advantage.

We need to save the wide ball for when we’re clearly in a position to take advantage, not feel like we need to make the most of every opportunity.

The All Blacks were patient. They waited until the hard work had been done and found the results in the corner.

Of course every now and then something freakish will happen from nothing but I think we’re relying too heavily on that possibility to get us out of jail.

Combinations
This just comes down to experience. The more you play together the better the synergy (apologies for using that word) of the whole team becomes.

Toomua and Lealiifano have a combination at Super level but in their first outing in gold, it was always going to be a different story.

Toomua has always had Nic White’s huge boot to relieve pressure from the back and his clearance kicking was under more pressure than usual as a result.

Lealiifano and Ashley-Cooper did well as a combination because of their Lions experience and resulted in a great break from the latter.

The issue however from this was that James O’Connor wasn’t expecting Ashley-Cooper to bust through and therefore didn’t get himself in a position to support him.

Cam Crawford tails a lot closer to AAC in the Tahs and has benefitted as a result of these busts.

Defensively these combos also shows with O’Connor coming to cover AAC in defence when he didn’t need the help.

I’m willing to give O’Connor the benefit of the doubt because it’s been a while since he’s stood on the outer but he needs to get used to it again and quickly.

None of this is anything that wouldn’t be relevant to any club side. I think we get so caught up these days with the notion of tactics and we can become overly reliant on ‘game plans’.

Game plans are for teams that work as a XV and while I’m not touting their non-existence the Wallabies need to work out how best to play with themselves first than against another team.

Trust in each other will allow their own style to develop. To be fair to Ewen McKenzie he is apparently trying to instil a
‘full XV’ approach as opposed to ‘backs and forwards’.

I think this is the right way, but will take some time to see the benefits of it. Let’s just hope not too long though.