In sport and victories, an inch is as good as a mile. The Wallabies won by a single point against the Pumas but the difference didn’t matter. The result mattered.
Like everything in life, winning is a habit, and so is losing. The Wallabies were in danger of getting into the habit of losing.
They went into the Test at Perth with successive losses to the British and Irish Lions, two also to the All Blacks and a massive loss to the Springboks.
The worst thing about all those losses was that in none of these matches did the Wallabies surge back into contention in the latter stages of the game.
This ability to hang in when things are going against you and then, somehow, escape with a victory was the mark of the great Wallaby sides in the John Eales/Rod Macqueen era.
These sides had the habit of winning. So when the going got tough, they got going. This current side was in danger of acquiring the habit of losing.
So for me the best thing about the victory was not the play of certain individuals or the game plan or the feisty play of the side.
No. The best thing was that with 20 minutes to go the Pumas, with the rain and the wind behind them, had taken the score line to 14-13 and were dominating in the scrums that the Wallabies lifted their game and finished on top of the Pumas.
A great tackle from Saia Faingaa was followed by a terrific steal by Scott Fardy which earned the Wallabies a penalty.
Christian Lealiifano missed the kick, one of his few misses this season. But you could see the Wallabies belief in themselves rising as they knocked over the Pumas defenders and somehow emerged from scrums without conceding penalties.
It was significant that Ewen McKenzie kept Nick White on the field the entire 80 minutes.
The point here is that in general White is a more abrasive defender than Genia. He has a better kicking game. And although his run-on debut was not perfect, he did do a number of good things to help the cause.
In general, he gave the impression, in contrast to the hang-dog, sometimes accusing look to his fellow players that Genia adopts when things are going awry, that he is going to do everything and anything to get the victory.
My guess is that McKenzie will play White as a starter against the Springboks at Cape Town, a windy city.
Genia, technically and most often in practice a far better halfback (at his peak one of best in the world) will come back into the side when it starts winning consistently and when his demeanour becomes more positive.
There was one aspect of the play of the Wallabies that puzzled me. I’m referring to the way wingers and other backs race in sometimes from 30m away to congratulate the pack when, say, it wins a scrum penalty.
This high-fives approach to mark every small triumph does not give off a good emotional vibe, in my opinion.
It says, ‘AMAAAZING we’ve won a scrum penalty’. This in turn suggests an underlying fear that the scrum, say, is going to be demolished at any time.
So rather than discombobulating the opposition, it actually confirms their belief that there is a genuine fear about the scrum by the Wallabies.
Is it an over-reaction provoked by relief rather than achievement, in other words.
The main purveyor of this nonsense was Tom Carter, the journeyman, long-time centre for the Waratahs. Carter seems to be a smart and likeable chap, off the field.
But on the field he was a pain, forever high-fiving and running in to congratulate a team-mate for doing something that was pretty ordinary, anyway.
It would have been much better for Carter’s career and the Waratahs, if he’d run with the ball as much as he ran without it to high-five his team-mates.
And this criticism applies to players like Nick Cummins (a player I admire for his work rate, his tough running and his guts) who lost concentration too often and made mistakes that put the Wallabies under all sorts of difficulties.
The Test looked as though it was going to turn against the Wallabies in the second half when the Pumas scrum started to demolish the Wallabies pack. They won three successive scrum penalties. They turned down shots at goal to launch attacks on the Wallaby tryline.
These attacks were repelled by a great tackle from Cummins and an almost-intercept by Michael Hooper.
But White was (correctly) penalised for a second time for a crooked scrum feed designed to relieve pressure on his beleagured pack. The Pumas converted the penalty. 14-6.
Then came another tremendous Pumas attack which made a mockery of the atrocious conditions. In the 63rd minute, the number eight Juan Manuel Leguizamon (part of an excellent back row) went across for the try which was then converted.
Game on!
Luckily there were no more devastating (as far as the Wallabies were concerned) scrums.
But Paul Cully in the Sun-Herald makes the obvious point about the scrum that ‘if it is not sorted out by the spring tour, they will be miracle workers to win three of those five Tests’.
The point here, as Cully observes, is that the new regulations have essentially taken away the massive first hit which Australian teams manipulated for about a decade to hide their scrumming weaknesses.
Now teams have to actually scrum. It is relatively easy now for referees to see which prop goes down, or fails to bind, or which front row comes up.
Too often the scrum committing these offences is the Wallaby pack.
It is pretty obvious, even to me, that the Wallabies pack hasn’t understood that the entire pack has to shove now, not only on their own ball when the scrum is reduced in effect to seven pushers because of the hooker having to hook but on the opposition ball as well.
Particularly, on the opposition ball Ben Mowen, in particular, comes up almost immediately like a meerkat. The Wallaby scrum is immediately under pressure.
I saw on occasions Michael Hooper trying to dig his heels in like a quarter-horse trying to take a tight corner.
Andrew Blades, the Wallaby scrum coach, is supposed to be a guru on the scrums.
He claimed before The Rugby Championship that the regulations would suit the Wallabies. And to make the point, the best big-hit scrummager in the squad, Benn Robinson, was dismissed to play club rugby.
It must be time to at least bring back Robinson in the Test 23.
And I have another modest proposal. Early this year I attended a function to mark the launching of ‘The Art of Scrumming’ by Enrique Topo Rodriquez.
If my ancestor Aristotle had written a treatise on scrums (rather than on politics), this is the book that he would have written.
I believe that the great Topo Rodriguez knows more about scrumming, in practice and theory, and was one of the all-time props in the history of rugby, the rock that was the foundation of the 1984-86 Grand Slam and Bledisloe Cup-winning Wallabies, than anyone on this planet.
So a question for Australian rugby authorities? When are you going to make Topo the scrum-master of Australian rugby, a role that in New Zealand is filled by Mike Cron who advises the All Blacks, Super Rugby teams that want him, provincial sides and club sides.
The fact of the matter is that teams without a strong scrum find it difficult to put together sequences of wins.
What this means, unless the Wallabies don’t get on top of their scrum problems, that this victory over the Pumas is only a small break in the habit of losing, and not the beginning of the habit of winning.
Rugby is life
Guest
Hey Tighthead Don Any tighthead knows that scrummaging is an 8 man deal deal. Blaming any one player or giving credit to one player I generally suggests the commentator is ultracrepidating.
TIGHTHEAD DON
Guest
Anyone watch the Shute Sheild final? Robinson (and the Eastwood scrum had a really bad day.) The Uni Tighthead had a very good game against Robinson. Hmmmm it's a worry.
Crashy
Guest
When are Higgers, Pocock, TPN and Palu back? We need them...
SandBox
Roar Guru
"Performance anxiety in sports, sometimes referred to as 'choking,'is described as a decrease in athletic performance due to too much perceived stress. Perceived stress often increases in athletes on game day because (1) they have an audience and (2) they have extremely high expectations of their success..." If it results in a loss and melt down, then it gets remembered. If you fall over the line and win then it doesn't. The WB's, imho, over-performed in RWC03. I can't say exactly why, but perhaps their stress was unloaded as they weren't expected to get past the SF. I always try to remember what the great Tom Watson said about choking: "A lot of guys who have never choked have never been in the position to do so.” Personally, I try to learn from mistakes (mine and others) until I succeed in what I do, and try not to think of failure as choking http://sportsmedicine.about.com/cs/sport_psych/a/aa010603a.htm
SandBox
Roar Guru
completely agree. If this is Topo's post, then it needs to be a bigger story, not just on Roar, but all Australian sporting media
Enrique TOPO Rodriguez
Guest
http://www.independent.ie/sport/rugby/irb-must-bring-in-mole-to-dig-game-out-of-scrum-mess-29584627.html
Nigel Imrie
Guest
Why is there not an offer from the ARU for Topo to help out in the scrum department? As Topo said in his article the scrum is a 8 man movement, not a 3 men at fault or the locks with poor technique or Mowen packing between the loosehead lock and the flanker. It is a coordinated movement from all 8! What will it take for us to assemble a group of scrum doctors overseen by Topo or EM, so that we too can rival the rest of the rugby world!! Are we a smart rugby nation, yes or no?
Reality
Guest
For me it would be about promoting the code in Australia, if a few props are found that are decent and can make it in the Shute shield, then fair enough. But the objective would be to provide a stimulus to get bigger kids interested in rugby, show it has a place for them and the game suites their strengths, show them that the big guy can be a hero, and often are in other countries. Its just grass roots development in the reality TV age.
Mike
Guest
:)
Mike
Guest
"backrowers meerkat as a direct result of a weak scrum. ..." Not true. Other nations' backrowers manage to lock and push in their scrums and also know what is going on around them. In any case, if you have to choose between strengthening your scrum and trying to grab opportunities, the latter is poor tactics. Sooner or later it catches up with you, on a number of levels. First, due to the extra pressure you leave on your tight five, which eventually tells on them later in the game, secondly because grabbing the ball while your scrum is going backwards only works some of the time. Backrowers meerkat due to poor technique, which in turn derives from poor coaching. 1 "Second rows don’t bind together tightly because that’s what the scrum gurus have been teaching from the All Blacks on up" I beg to differ. It is precisely the difference between the All Black locks and our locks that I am talking about. "Sometimes, when you get guys like us who are 6’6″, it’s tough to get up underneath a shorter prop" ??? The locks for every side in the rugby champion are 6'6" or taller. And our props tend to be taller than the props of the other RC sides. Our shortest prop is Robinson who hasn't played. "When props go straight to ground..." There have been very few cases of props going straight to ground in the rc, no doubt due to the new binding practice. And when it does happen its as likely to be our opponents as us. We are getting beaten in the shove, for the most part.
Mike
Guest
I agree with you about Mowen's work rate and his appearances. He is a real find for us, and has the potential to be the sort of workhorse for the forwards that AAC has been for the backs over many years. Don't worry about Zero Gain, he is a one-eyed Reds supporter, and he is particularly derogatory about players from Brumbies, who had the temerity to do better than Reds this year. ... :) But he is right about Mowen not pushing in scrums. Sorry, but he doesn't, at least in the rugby championship. As best I can recall he does push in scrums for the ponies but he has very obviously not been doing it in these last four tests. The fault lies primarily with the Wallabies forwards coach, but Mowen himself must also shoulder some of the blame. He is letting his pack down by not pushing.
Ra
Guest
Its like sand through the hour glass. I want to see topos story plastered all over the big newspapers back pages; in magazines; on prime television. If that is his posting for real because it begs a bigger audience and media space than buried in a comments section of roar - otherwise its just another story in the days of roarers lives
Rob
Guest
Who's the world class forward? Moore? Actually to be fair if we had Higginbotham, Pocock and maybe Palu were available they'd shape up a Lou differently. Add Robinson of course.
Tricky Dick
Roar Rookie
I have a couple of prospective answers. 1) backrowers meerkat as a direct result of a weak scrum. When you continually are under pressure in the scrum, the back row has to be especially mindful of a tight move from the attacking number 8 or any winger/fullback moving to insert at first receiver. Valid argument as to whether you'd rather the extra shove, or the quicker breakaway to cover the first two channels. 2) Second rows don't bind together tightly because that's what the scrum gurus have been teaching from the All Blacks on up. It even got imported over here to the States in the USA rugby camps. The bind arm helps stabilize and keep the push straight instead of angled, but with the width of today's front rowers, a looser second row bind is sometimes essential. Also, that open side lock has some defensive responsibilities at the first breakdown off the scrum and has to get moving. 3) I've noticed the packing height of the current second rows and all I can potentially see is that there's not a good fit between the crouch angle of the front rows and the second rows. Sometimes, when you get guys like us who are 6'6", it's tough to get up underneath a shorter prop, especially if he crouches in a certain way. It's really a fit issue, but correctable. 4) When props go straight to ground, they've either been badly tooled by their opposition in the scrum, or they were both trying to get their heads down and across under the opposition's chest and thus totally slipped under the initial hit.
Tane Mahuta
Guest
The ultimate fighter gives fighters opportunities for fame. Most of the champions it "produced" were either young fighters on the way up or established fighters. Most would have made it without the show or were already getting there. For example, Jonny "Bones" Jones applied and was turned down. He has since become one of the greatest figters ever. If he had been accepted he would have been considered another TUF "product". Its all smoke and mirrors imo. Reality TV is mainly a fabrication. They definately get a hand up and some may not have made it but I would suggest that most would have. Serra had already fought for the title before TUF. Griffin had already had 11 pro fights, some against former title holders and contenders. Edgar was on the way up and had had 6 pro fights. The guy it helped most was Rashad Evans.
Tane Mahuta
Guest
Spiro, any article on how Bismark was silly enough to elbow Messam in the throat after he was already on one yellow and therefore cost the Boks a closer loss to NZ?
Mick Gold Coast QLD
Roar Guru
Funny that. I spotted Topo here earlier today and wondered later why the ARU has not used his unquestioned expertise. I came to the same conclusion as you.
ohtani's jacket
Guest
By your definition, Mat Rogers choked in that final. And the Wallabies choked in '87.
ohtani's jacket
Guest
Choking is when you lose a contest you were favoured to win. You cannot choke and still win. The example sentence from that online dictionary is a golfer failing to win on the final hole. The All Blacks almost choked, but didn't because they managed to hold their nerve in the final quarter.
Adrian
Guest
Spiro et al. Good article, good discussion. What about Ma'afu ? Only keep Sio. Drop Kepu, Alexandee, Slipper. Add Ma'afu, Robinson, Palmer and maybe Ryan. See if Tatufu PN is fit. He's a potential tight head as well. The advantages of heavy fat guys are that they are stable in the scrums, and not mobile enough to get in the road of the backs. Meanwhile, send Slipper and Co to Argentina to play a year in club Rugby, and learn their craft. -- Comment from The Roar's iPhone app.