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Ewen McKenzie has made mistakes with his Wallaby team to take on the French in the first Test this Saturday.
Or so say many of us armchair critics!
The contentious omissions seem to be Scott Sio, Will Skelton, Luke Jones, Scott Higginbotham and Will Genia, together with the inclusions of James Horwill and Paddy Ryan.
My concerns are the omissions of Sio and Genia, and the inclusion of Ryan.
Sio must be considered very unlucky not to make the match-day squad. I didn’t expect him to start, given James Slipper was always likely to be first choice at loosehead, but I did expect him to be on the bench ahead of Pek Cowan.
Don’t get me wrong – Cowan has played well this season, but Slipper and Sio in 2014 have been well ahead of him.
I don’t agree with those who called for Slipper to be moved to tighthead. McKenzie was always going to select a player who primarily plays tighthead in Super Rugby, which limited the choices to Sekope Kepu or Ben Alexander.
Once Alexander withdrew through injury, Paddy Ryan became the next option from the squad initially selected.
Yes, Slipper can play tighthead quite well, but Kepu has shown more form at tighthead internationally than Slipper has in Super Rugby. Kepu has also played that position far more frequently than Slipper under the new law interpretations.
I don’t agree with the view that Genia’s been playing poorly in 2014 – in fact, when the Reds forwards have provided some go forward, he’s looked very good. However his decision-making and execution of kicks has been poor for the last two seasons, and this is an area he still needs to work on.
Genia is a much better distributor of the ball than either Nic White or Nick Phipps. That comes from a much better pass and the fact that he attracts defenders close to the ruck as he represents such a running threat. This reduces his opportunities to run himself, but opens opportunities for others just wide of the ruck.
He also delivers the ball just as fast as either White or Phipps when his forwards provide clean ball and he has running options outside him. What slows his delivery down at the Reds is that all too often their forwards don’t provide either the clean ball or options for Genia to use.
Those of you who claim that his darts across the face of defenders take time and space away from the runners outside him are ignoring the fact that this is the way most modern halfbacks play – and for a reason.
Passing straight from the base does nothing to hold the inside defenders off the ball runner. There is a time and place for passing immediately from the base of the ruck – every halfback needs to have variety in their game.
You’ll also see both White and Phipps dart across the face of defenders, although White doesn’t do enough of it.
The following images show a good example of Phipps using the dart across defenders two weeks ago to help set up space for the players outside him.
White’s form in 2014 means he deserves another opportunity to start, and I expect he’ll play well, but Genia should have been included on the bench ahead of Phipps.
Ryan can count himself very lucky to have been selected in the wider initial squad, let alone the match-day squad. His scrummaging this year has been very poor and even in the match against the Chiefs last weekend he still had plenty of problems. McKenzie and Andrew Blades obviously think they can fix his technical issues.
Blades has said publicly that Ryan’s technical issue is that in trying to get his body height down in a scrum, he focuses too much on getting his knees down low, but struggles to keep his shoulders down at the same height as his hips.
A tighthead’s primary objective is to hold their side of the scrum steady, which is made harder by the fact that with the offset of players in the front row the tighthead has to oppose the weight of the opposition hooker and loosehead.
The opposition loosehead knows that the best way to disrupt a tighthead is to get under him and drive up and in. Of course the angles in and up can’t be too severe or he’ll be penalised. A tighthead therefore must keep the opposition loosehead from getting under him in the first place and deny him the ability to drive up.
Good props do not need to rely on referees to make the correct call on angles of their opponent – that is too much of a lottery, so they deal with the threat themselves. To do this a tighthead focuses on keeping their right shoulder down and their right arm in tight to their body so that their chest is less exposed as a target for the loosehead.
If the tighthead has good technique and is keeping the opposition loosehead down they will keep their shoulders at the same height as their hips. Ryan rarely achieves this.
The following images from the Waratahs match against the Chiefs last week shows the poor position Ryan gets into. In the ten scrums he packed, he had this very poor technique in five. He collapsed under pressure in another two.
Fortunately he was up against Jamie Mackintosh, who doesn’t strike fear into most international tightheads.
If Blades can’t fix Ryan’s technical issues before he has to pack against the French on Saturday Ryan is going to struggle, so there is plenty of risk involved with his selection.
I’m sure many of you may have other concerns to me and will detail those in the comments section – that’s what we want at The Roar, interaction with other rugby fans. There is no right or wrong, just opinion.
Regardless, McKenzie knows a lot more than I or any of us here on The Roar do, and I’ll be getting right behind the team he’s selected. I’m really looking forward to this Test series.
Tomorrow on The Roar Rugby Show I’ll have a preview of what we can expect from France and the tactics the Wallabies may use.