THE OUTSIDER: Five things we didn't want to know about the Wallabies

Pioneered by that redoubtable source of analysis Paul Cully, the nomination of five key points to summarise a previous weekend’s activity has become a popular vehicle of late, as a means of all-encompassing analytical summary.

I thought I might give it a try myself this week, but with a slightly different spin, focusing on five points that we now know, but perhaps would rather we didn’t, as a result of recent events.

Wallabies a rankings loser
I never used to place a lot of store in the IRB rankings, believing them to be purely a mechanism of the governing body by which to promote the game.

Over time, however, I’ve come to appreciate that the ratings do tend to reflect the consistency – or lack of – among the countries, and are seldom too far from the reality, in terms of how the teams generally match up.

Which is why this week’s release of the current rankings highlights how defining the closing two Tests of the Spring Tour are for the Wallabies.

Although the difference in ranking between teams three (Ireland), four (Australia) and five (England) are minute, that will change should the Wallabies lose to both of them before they come home.

Australia is only .01 ahead of England. This is significant given that fifth is the lowest the Wallabies have ever fallen in the rankings, after the quarter-final exit at the 2007 World Cup.

Should Australia lose to Ireland on Sunday morning, while England beats Samoa, the Wallabies will be fifth again.

If they finish the year with two further defeats, the Wallabies will end 2014 a fair way from fourth, which would be a concern – although it would probably be an accurate reflection, given it would mean that Australia had lost six of its final seven Tests of the year.

Ireland’s rise to its highest-ever ranking this week saw its Kiwi coach Joe Schmidt remark that no one wins anything for being third.
Schmidt is smart: he’s playing Australia this weekend and wants to dampen expectations that are already hitting fever pitch in the Emerald Isle.

He’d have to be quietly chuffed though. It’s a measure of how far his team has come, and a good indicator of the growing belief he will be hoping carries them through against Australia.

For the Wallabies, when you take away all of the personal agendas, and the denial that often perpetuates in the media, the statistical reality makes for grim reading as to how far our national team has fallen.

In 2011 after winning the Tri-Nations, Australia was second and just 1.71 ranking points behind New Zealand. The Wallabies were 3.15 points ahead of third-placed South Africa, 5.95 ahead of fifth-placed England, and 10.34 ahead of seventh-placed Ireland, holding onto second place for just a week shy of three years.

Now for the real scary bit.

As of today, three years on, we are 9.48 points behind first placed New Zealand, but just 8.75 points ahead of 10th-placed Japan.

It is not good enough!

Batten down the hatches Bill Pulver
It’s common knowledge that Michael Cheika and out-going NSW Waratahs CEO Jason Allen weren’t best of mates.

If I was Bill Pulver, I wouldn’t be holding my breath about staying on the Wallaby coach’s Christmas card list for too long, either.

Pulver’s often over-zealous behaviour post-game in the dressing room, which has already earned him the unflattering nickname of ‘the fan’, isn’t compatible with Cheika’s no-nonsense approach and is unlikely to be welcomed, especially in the aftermath of a Test loss.

For his part, I’m sure the ARU CEO wasn’t exactly wildly enthusiastic about his coach’s almost indecent haste to whistle up Kurtley Beale for the Spring tour, in light of all that had gone on before.

It came across as Cheika using his leverage to put boundaries in place, and assert emphatically that he was in charge, both in terms of the team and whom he included in it.

There might also have been a contract dynamic to the move as well, given that Beale remains – to this point anyway – unsigned for next year, although Cheika has made it clear he wants to keep him.

While Roarers are well aware of my sympathy for Beale, in this instance the Wallaby coach has got it wrong.

Rushing the player to Europe, and my mail is that it would have happened even earlier than last week but for a peripheral distraction, was always going to re-open wounds that needed healing.

Less than a month back, Pulver was rather foolishly telling ARU staff that Beale would have been sacked straight away had his misconduct been purely a staff, rather than a player, matter.

Hence the CEO has had his nose well and truly rubbed in it publicly by his coach.

Sure Beale might have copped his punishment, paid his fine, and been free to be selected, but what signal did the haste send to the public about the ‘sincerity’ of the ‘sentence’?

What has it told the players, especially those vying with him for a starting position?

Had Beale been left at home to have a full off-season with the Waratahs, and then rescaled the heights of this year in next season’s Super Rugby, no one would have begrudged his recall.

Instead, Cheika’s decision has polarised, at a time when the game – and the Wallabies for that matter – badly need unity.

Will Skelton is just a boy
He was willing, but big and clumsy, when he arrived on the Tahs scene a couple of years back, and the last two weekends have shown that big Will Skelton has still got his training wheels on at Test level.

That’s not to say that Skelton won’t make it, but for now at least, he is a child in a man’s body.

It was possibly inevitable that he was seen as a direct replacement for Sitaleki Timani when he was promoted into the Waratahs senior squad a couple of years back.

The similarities were obvious. Both are big and powerful island boys who rely on brute force to overcome the technical deficiencies in their game.

The difference is that Timani had been around for a bit, and had been through two other teams (the Force and the Brumbies) before finally breaking through at the Tahs.

Skelton’s development was put on the fast track as soon as it became apparent that Timani was leaving, and became even more of a priority once Kane Douglas departed as well.

He’s just not ready yet, and it shouldn’t be held against him. If anything, he’s probably paying now for his stand-out debut in June.

Like Timani did, Skelton is struggling to adjust his technique, in terms of his body position, going into contact.

He is still going in too high, which is making it easier for opposing tacklers to get in under his ribs where they can bring the full force of their momentum to bear, while limiting his ability to drive forward.

Ultimately it’s a mind shift, especially when knackered, remembering to get as low as you can as you brace for impact. It’s something it took Timani a while to master as well.

Likewise, Skelton needs to retain his concentration in game, most notably in scrums.

There is no way the Wallaby scrum should be going backwards when a frame his size is packing down, but it’s been noticeable in each of the last two weeks that the scrum has got worse once he has taken the field.

Powerful tighthead locks are gold. Look at the decrease in power of the All Black scrum now that Brad Thorn is no longer around.

It’s long been an area of weakness for the Wallabies, save perhaps for Timani’s all-too-brief Test career, where his size and grunt meant that no one pushed us around.

There was also another side to the Timani game that is often underestimated.

The big Tongan is mean! A gentle giant off the field, but ruthless in the way he imposed his physical domination on it.

Skelton, like Timani, is naturally quiet off the field. He probably has a bigger vocabulary than Timani – but not by much.

The worry for me is that, by being over-exposed now when he is still at the early stage of his development, he will be targeted physically by teams, as the All Blacks did at Eden Park, become intimidated, and never reach his full potential as a result.

England doesn’t usually lose in threes
After losses to both the All Blacks and Springboks, it’s predictably become Pom-bashing season, but as much as we Aussies like to enjoy their discomfort, here’s one solid reason why we shouldn’t.

England seldom loses to all three Southern Hemisphere big guns during a November series.

In fact, since the IRB tours schedule was re-jigged into a format of one-off Tests 14 years ago, rather than multiple Test match series against one nation through the month, England has just twice gone through a November programme – where it has faced all three Southern Hemisphere heavyweights – without beating one of them.

And there have been worse England teams through this stretch than Stuart Lancaster’s outfit.

A final thought
With Bernard Foley seemingly having sewn up the flyhalf spot during the Michael Cheika reign, and Kurtley Beale likely to sign on again soon for big dollars, where does this leave Quade Cooper?

As a bench player at best, Cooper won’t be able to command anywhere near the big dosh he has been on previously from the ARU, and you can imagine that fact won’t sit well, with either Cooper or his larger-than-life manager Khoder Nasser.

Nasser will know that Cooper’s best chance of securing top dollar in Europe is now, given that there will be plenty of competition for the big contracts after the World Cup from the likes of Dan Carter.

While Beale’s manager, Isaac Moses, was undoubtedly active behind the scenes, with the press in particular, during the recent soap opera involving his man, Nasser has been strangely silent – with pro-Quade stories from his usual ‘organs’ few and far between.

The ARU could do without it, but the lack of ‘activity’ on Nasser’s behalf is ominous.

It smells like another storm could be brewing.

If so, it could be a real doozy, especially if Queensland was to be denied Cooper’s services for next year due to an ARU selection/contracting decision that has ultimately been made by the Waratahs coach.