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There should be peace within the Wallaby squad now that Will Genia is back in the starting line-up and James O’Connor won’t be there for at least a year.
The timing is important, on the eve of the battle for The Rugby Championship wooden spoon between the non try-scoring, poor defensive line-ups of the Wallabies and the Pumas.
The have-nots.
The Springboks have scored 35 tries and given up 13, the All Blacks 26 tries to just seven – both a binocular distance ahead of the Wallabies’ 9-22, and Pumas’ 8-29.
My gut feeling is the return of Will Genia will spark the Wallabies. In the last two games, Genia has played zero and 40 minutes respectively, a far cry from his usual 160.
Bench-sitting isn’t the Genia way, but he had to play second fiddle to Nic White for 120 minutes, at the whim of coach Ewen McKenzie.
To be fair, Genia was way below form when he was benched, making the last three weeks nightmare material for the play-maker.
But he has the ideal chance in Rosario to click with Quade Cooper, who in turn will let loose Christian Lealiifano, Tevita Kuridrani, the wingers Adam Ashley-Cooper and Joe Tomane, and let Israel Folau do what he does best – chime in more than stay out.
All that sounds good on paper, but the Wallaby pack is lacking in consistency apart from Michael Hooper, Ben Mowen, and to a lesser extent Stephen Moore.
The rest, including those on the bench, must lift the performance bar.
Especially skipper James Horwill, his lock partner Rob Simmons, and prop Ben Alexander.
If Ewen McKenzie is fair dinkum about the captaincy, this will be Horwill’s last chance, with Mowen the obvious choice.
Mowen, now there’s an interesting topic on The Roar. I’ve lost count of the number of Roarers who have criticised Mowen for not being big enough, not fast enough, doesn’t pull his weight where it counts, and when Scott Higginbotham returns from injury, goodbye Mowen.
Bollocks.
Nothing could be further from the truth. and even the ARU is being bloody-minded for not topping up his contract because he hasn’t been a Wallaby for two years.
So what? He’s one of the first picked this campaign, and barring injury will have won 14 caps by Christmas.
And he should be captain.
Hopefully the ARU will snap out of its blind spot as it eventually did with James O’Connor.
It would be churlish in the extreme to say we’ve seen the last of the 23-year-old loose cannon.
The ARU has left the door ajar for 2015, and now it’s up to the Western Force to have the final say if O’Connor is to stay in Australia for petty cash as compared to what he was earning, or head overseas and cop out.
If an even worse loose cannon in Todd Carney can get his act together for the Sharks, as he’s done so well this NRL season and all credit to him, O’Connor can do the same at the Force.
If he has the bottle. But the jury is out, and will be for some time.
But there’s no doubt the Wallaby shed will be a lot calmer and more positive with Will Genia back in business, and James O’Connor gone.
Have the Wallabies the bottle to beat the Pumas?
We’ll know by breakfast tomorrow while we are having our bacon and eggs if the Wallabies were hard-boiled enough to dominate possession, or the Puma pack has left them scrambled.