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Will Skelton, 203cm and 140kgs (or thereabout), is the biggest Wallaby ever, and on Saturday he made the most startling and impressive debut for a Wallaby since Israel Folau.
Within a few minutes of the Test starting, Skelton had won a lineout (admittedly from a short, sharp throw that required no jumping), scored a try by running through a couple of defenders and smashing the ball down over the line like a giant driving in a pile, and made several bursts through the French defensive wall.
Then at the beginning of the second half, when the outcome of the Test was still in the balance, Skelton took the ball to the defensive line, attracted two defenders and slipped a soft, sympathetic offload to a racing Folau, who galloped away for a sensational try.
Sonny Bill Williams at his best could not have unloaded the pass Skelton delivered more skilfully or with better timing.
The issue for Ewen McKenzie is to decide whether Skelton’s attacking impact is best left towards the end of a Test to seal or even create a victory, or for the start to set up the win.
Here I would offer the advice given to me a long time ago by Earle Kirton, an attacking All Blacks number 10, a successful coach and an All Blacks selector, “Always start your impact player at the beginning of a game, when he can have the greatest impact on its outcome.”
Ewen McKenzie is revealing himself as a smart selector, the key to success as a coach in my view, and I have no doubt that barring injuries Skelton will start for the Wallabies in the first Test of The Rugby Championship at Sydney against the rampant All Blacks.
As Skelton’s game develops he will give the Wallabies pack a scrumming second-rower who dominates collisions in the mid-field with his runs and mauling. This is what the All Blacks coaching staff developed with Brad Thorn, and in the last two seasons with Brodie Retallick.
The Wallabies have Rob Simmons and Scott Fardy as their main lineout jumpers, with Wycliff Palu and even Michael Hooper as the occasional alternate. And, as they showed with the flat hard throw to Skelton, they can win the occasional ball with a well-directed and flat throw to him.
I liked the way McKenzie solved the difficulty faced by the Wallabies at Melbourne of trying to break the French defensive wall. There was no Skelton at Melbourne and Tevita Kuridrani hardly got the ball at all. At Sydney these two players made a huge difference.
I would differ with my colleague David Lord on Kuridrani. David has seen more top rugby than most of us combined, and he has an excellent judgment on the worth of a player. But a big back like Kuridrani running at the defensive line has more chance of breaking or denting it than the smaller backs the Wallabies tend to use.
Let me explain the theory of the running game. It works if the defensive wall is bent, gone around or succesfully kicked and recaptured over. It does not work if none of these things happen.
This has been the problem for the Crusaders for several years. They have gone from one side of the field to the other, but they haven’t been able to break the defensive line. Ultimately a team in this situation makes a mistake or gives away a penalty.
What the French did at Melbourne was play everyone except the fullback in the defensive line. This meant the Wallabies faced a sort of magic pudding defensive line that always had numbers, no matter how many phases the Wallabies set up. In frustration, which came very early in the Test, the Wallabies tried unsuccessfully to kick bombs over the French trenches.
This is where Skelton and Kuridrani came into the play at Sydney. They are both big, powerful players and when they make their charges their impact is felt. They were used early in the phases to make dents in the French defensive line. Sekope Kepu and Palu also were used a lot, too.
The result was that the Wallabies backs were getting the ball on the front foot. They were able to bring Folau in on the burst, rather than using him as they did in Melbourne as a crash ball player.
The 39-13 scoreline was a result of the Wallabies monstering a French side that intended to take no prisoners at the start of the Test.
There were only a couple of complaints I would make about the Wallabies performance.
Nic White did the occasional aimless box kick which had the effect of merely giving the ball back to the French. Stupid play. Once again, the Wallabies should look to what the All Blacks do with box kicks. The coaching staff have worked out that if Aaron Smith kicks high and only 40m with 4.4 seconds hang time, the All Blacks can compete every time for the kick and generally win the ball back. All teams in world rugby should remember this ratio: 40m and 4.4 seconds hang time.
Occasionally, too, the Wallabies scrum was a big shaky, but then so are the scrums of England, South Africa, New Zealand, France, Argentina and Ireland.
The starting Wallabies side on Saturday afternoon, barring injuries, is the starting side McKenzie should go with against the All Blacks. Is it a good enough side to defeat the All Blacks? Who knows. As I once replied rather tartly to an ABC interviewer on the morning of a Test when he badgered me to make a prediction about whether the Wallabies would beat another rampant All Blacks side, “Peter, that’s why we’ve having the Test to find out!”
One of the main differences from this 2014 Wallabies side and other Wallaby sides, especially now that Skelton seems to have entrenched his position, is that the Wallabies are as big as the All Blacks and probably the Springboks. This hasn’t been the case for a long time.
In The Sydney Morning Herald on Saturday I made the point that professional rugby is taking the rah rah out of the game and making its playing population more inclusive of the current Australian society. This has meant a great increase in the number of players with a Pasifika background playing rugby and graduating to Wallaby status.
One of the greatest Wallabies of all time, George Smith started for the Brumbies and Wallabies in 2000, four years after rugby went professional. Smith, born and bred in Manly, has Tongan background, and actually spent a year at school in Tonga. Digby Ioane, who first played for the Wallabies in 2007, was the first Australian rugby representative with a Samoan background.
Both these players would have played league rather than rugby if the game had not gone professional in 1996. Now the flow of players, some of them stars like Israel Folau (league, AFL, and then rugby), came from league to rugby. This is to the great benefit of Australian Super Rugby teams, and the Wallabies.
The impact of this flow is represented by the Wallabies on Saturday, with eight players with Pasifika backgrounds in the 23-man squad: Israel Folau, Tevita Kuridrani, Sekope Kepu, Tatafu Polota-Nau, Wycliff Palu, Will Skelton, Laurie Weeks and Scott Sio.
We have to be careful about these matters of ethnicity and the cliches that are often tossed about. But the evidence is there that these players with the Pasifika background tend to be big, powerful, aggressive players. They have no fear about making an impact with collisions. They seem to be born to play the modern rugby game.
And in the case of Folau, there is a Rolls-Royce speed and swerve to his attack that makes him a potential Wallaby great, if he decides this is what he wants out of his career.
The Wallabies have emerged from their three-Test series against France with three wins. They have won seven Tests in a row, a sequence last achieved in the Rod Macqueen era of the Golden Wallabies. Is there a resonance here of a new golden era under Ewen McKenzie?
The Wallabies are a bigger and better side than last year. In the first and third Tests they played an attractive, winning, try-scoring style which brought the biggest rugby crowd ever to Allianz Stadium to see them – and especially Good Hunting Will – strut their stuff.
How much better the 2014 Wallabies are from last year, though, we will discover during The Rugby Championship. Game on!