SPIRO: The brilliant Wallabies winners are finally grinners

The Wallabies 54 – 17 victory over the Pumas was their biggest victory in Argentina and their biggest win in the Tri-Nations/Rugby Championship, a tournament that has been running since 1996.

The seven Wallaby tries matched the number of tries the side has scored in all the other Tests this year.

The Wallabies scored their first four-try bag since defeating the All Blacks in Hong Kong in 2010.

Israel Folau scored a hat-trick, the wingers Joe Tomane (who made numerous line breaks) and Adam Ashley-Cooper scored a try each, Benn Robinson scored one and right at the end of the Test, Bernard Foley scored a runaway try in his first Test match.

How Foley scored his try was instructive.

The Pumas were desperate to rescue something from the Test in its last few minutes and they pounded away at the Wallaby try line.

A ball finally was spilled. Foley had the option of kicking it out.

Instead he ran the ball. A break-out, one of many by the Wallabies in the Test, followed.

Foley backed up, received a pass and scooted away for a try.

Since the third Test against the British and Irish Lions, where the Wallaby forwards were monstered in the scrums and the backs were destroyed in the tackle collisions, the Wallabies have been under siege, on and off the field.

The criticisms were valid.

They were playing dumb and dumber rugby on the field and this play was replicated by equally dumb and dumber behaviour by some individuals off the field.

During the week, James O’Connor, a brat who hasn’t grown up was virtually sacked by the ARU, and rightly so.

How would the players respond?

In the best way they could by showing that they wanted to move on from the dickhead behaviour off the field by playing responsible, clever and hard-shouldered rugby on the field.

For once, the Wallabies started well. There was a momentary early glitch when Tomane came out of the line and left a Puma runner with something of a dash to the try line, an attack that was just extinguished.

Then Tomane made up for his poor positional play and reading on defence by smashing through the Pumas mid-field defence after running on to a slick pass from Quade Cooper.

Early on in the Test, in particular, Cooper was impressive with deft, slick passes, short and long.

He took the ball to the line as well and this gave his runners gaps to run into.

There was an intercept pass later on, some wrong options taken on passes and a grubber kick that almost led to a Pumas try.

As I have often remarked about Cooper, he is like the little girl with a curl on her forehead, when he is good he is very, very good and when he is bad, he is horrid.

I still think that ultimately someone like Kyle Godwin is the answer for the Wallabies at inside centre with Tevita Kuridrani (who played with strength and pace) at outside centre, a pair that is big and aggressive.

Christian Lealiifano’s dead-eyed goal-kicking is a bonus for the Wallabies and his steadiness is probably what the side needs at number 10.

But this is for later, when Godwin is over his injuries.

The turning point of the Test came early on, just after Israel Folau scored his and his side’s first try after three minutes, in fact.

The Pumas forced a series of scrums on the Wallabies five-metre mark. They won five penalties.

They turned down all these shots at goal. And for eight minutes the two packs grappled with each other like beasts in a horror/sci-fi movie.

Before the scrumming began, Ben Alexander called out: ‘We know what’s coming here, guys.’

And the Wallabies, to their credit, gave away penalties, conceded scrumming rights but they heeded the implied advice from Alexander and stuck to their task with some fortitude and skill.

During this torrid period, James Slipper was given a yellow card for repeated infringements on the loosehead side.

He was replaced by Benn Robinson. Despite packing a seven-man scrum, the Wallabies, with Robinson making a huge difference, scrambled out of the hell they were in by Michael Hooper pouncing on a loose scrum ball and Genia belting the ball down field to relieve the pressure.

In this scrumming ordeal, Ben Mowen was penalised twice for pushing early.

He should be given a lecture, as well, about the necessity of staying in the scrum when the shove is on.

Invariably, his head popped up like a meerkat. This de-powered the Wallaby pack and forced the props to come up, illegally, to relieve the pressure on them.

Why isn’t Mowen coached to stay in shoving like the other number 8s in strong scrumming packs do?

Having laid their scrumming siege on the Wallabies try line and failed, the Pumas seemed to lose a lot of their enthusiasm in general play.

Even in the scrums later on in the Test, there was a lack of intensity from the Pumas.

The Wallabies actually shoved them off the ball and won a tight-head and forced a crooked feed, as well.

The Wallabies need to take some confidence from this scrumming when they play the All Blacks at Dunedin.

The point is that the Wallaby scrum is not as weak as it looks but there are issues when Mowen doesn’t push and when Robinson is not one of the props.

No one in the Wallaby camp, either, is reading Scott Allen’s brilliant video analyses of the Wallabies sloppy work with their own kick-offs.

Allen revealed how easily the Springboks re-gathered the kick-offs and how they were able to rumble or put the ball wide immediately and get runners attacking Wallaby props.

The way the Wallabies rostered the chasers lead to too front five forward chasers hounding the catcher, with the consequence that the Springboks could drive easily, and too many of them out wide trying to catch up with the Springboks outside backs when they moved the out wide.

The Pumas were able to do the same thing to the Wallabies. The coaches just don’t seem to have got it into the heads of the Wallaby playmakers that it is the height of the kicks, rather than the length, that is the crucial factor. All kicks that are not intended to go into touch have to be judge on how contestable they are.

The sad fact is that the Wallabies don’t chase hard and they aren’t given much incentive because of the lack of height and, therefore, contestability, on the ball.

The actual winning of the Test came in an inspired eight minute period from the 31st minute when the Wallabies kicked a penalty to go to a 13 – 3 lead. Then following another Folau break, Adam Ashley-Cooper stormed away for a try 18 – 3.

And then Folau burst away again for another try, 25 – 3.

For only the second time this season, the Wallabies were in front at the break.

Rod Kafer was moved to remark that this was ‘the best half of rugby the Wallabies have played this year.’

And this was probably right, although in the first and second Tests against the Lions, the Wallabies played some impressive rugby.

Certainly, this was the best the side has played since Ewen McKenzie became the coach.

Mark Ella, in his Australian piece on Saturday, gently suggested that McKenzie might not be ‘ready’ for the Wallaby coaching job.

I think this performance, while not being perfect by any means, will silence this sort of talk for a while.

The impressive aspect of the Wallabies play was that they seem to have given away the crazy notion of dumbing down their game with the so-called ‘attacking kicking’ game.

They made only seven kicks in the first half, thankfully, because most of them were terrible.

But the incessant kicking that marred the Wallabies play against the Pumas at Perth was – thank goodness – nowhere to be seen.

You could see some method, at last, in the plays the Wallabies put on.

They spread the ball wide early on when the Pumas compressed their defensive line.

Then as the line expanded like a concertina, the Wallabies started going through the gaps in the middle of the field. This was the Wallabies six line breaks by half-time.

Of course, you could be critical of a number of aspects of the Wallabies play, the beloved ‘work-ons’ of the post-match interviews.

But just this once let’s enjoy the fact that an opponent that many feared or suspected would upset the Wallabies were put to the sword.

The Rugby Championship is the most difficult tournament in the world rugby, outside of the Rugby World Cup, to win.

The top teams in world rugby (and I include the Pumas in this, not on their IRB rankings but by their successes at the Rugby World Cup 2007 and Rugby World Cup 2011) play each other, at home and away.

The Wallabies played the Pumas at Rosario which is a hotbed of Argentinian rugby.

It is one of the hardest home grounds for visitors, perhaps a rung below Ellis Park, but not too far below. The Wallabies not only won there but won brilliantly.

Away victories, like the All Blacks sensational 37 – 28 over the Springboks at Ellis Park, always tell you more about the visitors than the locals. Like the All Blacks, the Wallabies went to the spiritual home of the local side and handed them a memorable defeat.

For the Wallabies, this sort of triumph was as unexpected as it was satisfying given the poor play and equally poor results of the year.

This is why I’m saying that the Wallabies winners are, finally, grinners.