SPIRO: Ireland defeat Cheika's Wallabies with Jakeball

If there is such a oxymoronic event as a good defeat, then the Wallabies 26-23 loss at Aviva Stadium against a fired-up Ireland side playing Jakeball about as well as it can be played was such an occasion.

Losses are always bad – let’s get that very clear. Michael Cheika’s men have now lost two Tests in a row on their European tour. Next weekend they play England. The boots will be flying at the coach and his team if they lose three successive matches.

Once again, too, the Wallabies had a chance of winning the match and once again, for the umpteenth time this season, they failed to do this.

As any salesperson will tell you, the art of the deal is the art of closing a deal. The Wallabies seem to be unable to close the deal in tight matches. And until they can do this, their ranking in world rugby – which is slipping – will not improve.

There are many reasons for this inability to close out matches. The first and most obvious is that the Wallabies do not have a dominant pack. Teams that come from behind to win matches or close out matches ruthlessly almost invariably start to exert immense and in the end unstoppable pressure on the set pieces and the contact area.

Take the All Blacks, for instance. Against Wales they were behind a point with about 17 minutes of play left. Their dominant pack started to win a series of Wales lineout throws.

With this ball they gained field position and then more possession to exert pressure with their all-field attacking game.

The skills of the Wallabies, too, under pressure are not good, either. How many movements that should have resulted in a Test-winning try for the Wallabies, as in the Test against Ireland, have broken down with a dropped pass?

The sign of a really good side, the sort of side that can win the Rugby World Cup tournament, is that it has multiple ways of scoring points in a crises.

Nathan Sharpe rather acutely pointed to this in his assessment after the Ireland Test. The Wallabies, he said, did not have an alternative to their ball-in-hand game when it wasn’t working and they were under pressure to stop the flow of points against them or score points themselves to get back the lead with time running out.

John Eales made the same sort of point when he pointed out that the Wallabies second-method was just more of Cheika’s ball-in-hand game.

Once again, we need to look at the All Blacks. When Wales had them under the cosh, with the crowd rampant with nationalistic fervour and playing the part of a 16th and 17th player on the field, the All Blacks slowed things down by using a series of driving mauls that took the sting out of the Welsh defence.

On other occasions, the All Blacks did one-up hit-ups smashing into the Welsh defensive line like a series of tank charges.

Leading these charges was Richie McCaw, a captain of 100 Tests with only 12 losses. Part of the reason for this record, which is Bradman-like and which will never be broken, is that McCaw – now after the debacle of the quarter-final against France in the 2007 Rugby World Cup – knows how to influence the tempo of a Test to achieve a victory.

There is a time for all-out assault, generally most of the time if possible, and other times for some trench warfare, some attritional rugby to wear down the resolve and firepower of the opposition before the next series of attacks.

The Wallabies and their on-field leadership do not have this same sort of game sense that the All Blacks have right now. In the Rod Macqueen era, the Wallabies did have this game sense and the great players like John Eales, George Smith, Tim Horan and Stephen Larkham to put the tactics into effective play.

The test for Cheika in next year’s Rugby World Cup tournament is for him to create these sorts of leaders, players and tactics. He was able to do this in two years with the Waratahs. Can he do this for the Wallabies in one year and an European tour?

Michael Hooper, I believe, is just too young and inexperienced to remain the Wallabies captain. Most of the commmentators pick Stephen Moore to return to the captaincy. It would not surprise me, however, if Dave Dennis is promoted, a la Ben Mowen, if he makes a successful Super Rugby return.

This current inability, then, then to close out winnable Tests is a decidedly bad thing (along with the successive losses) about the current Cheika/McKenzie 2014 Wallabies.

If there is a good aspect to the defeat against Ireland it is that the Wallabies came back from a 17-0 after only 15 minutes of play to get the score back to 20-20 at half-time. A rout was a distinct possibility at this stage. But the Wallabies held their nerve and their courage in their ensemble game.

You have to admire a side with this sort of guts. It reminded of the famous Wallabies-All Blacks encounter at the then Olympic Stadium when the All Blacks raced away to a huge lead which the Wallabies pulled back to be level at half-time.

So the fightback was a good thing.

Nic Phipps led the Wallabies charge back with one of the great individual halfback tries by an Australian since the days of Ken Catchpole.

Where Phipps has established himself as the number one Australian halfback right now, it has to be said that Will Genia is not playing anywhere near the level of a couple of years ago when he was the best in the world.

Genia is running across the field before he passes, and once got caught before getting the ball away. Those long bullet passes, his speciality, seem to be a thing of the past, too.

Towards the end of the match the Wallabies had Kurtley Beale playing on the wing, Matt Toomua at inside centre and Quade Cooper at 10. They were all in the back line at the same time. This experiment of playing three play-makers was not able to be properly assessed because Tevita Kuridrani was off the field injured.

The three playmakers need runners to burst on to their pop-up passes. With Kuridrani off, there was a lack of fire power in the other runners. Somehow, Israel Folau had done his dash.

Henry Speight played pretty well, I thought and should hold his position. He is terrific on attack, bursting tackles and keeping the ball alive.

Like Luke Jones, though, he needs to adjust quickly to the requirements of Test rugby, especially against Ireland, and keep his shoulders as parallel to the ground as he can.

On defence, too, Speight was too often inclined to come off his his line and allow the Ireland wingers room to run down the sidelines.

In general the scrum is improving, although Ireland’s scrum is nowhere near as effective as the Pumas’. Unfortunately, too, the Wallaby scrum seems to have lapses into mediocrity from time to time.

There is a lack, as well, of power runners in the forwards. I would have liked to have seen Sekope Kepu used more in hit-ups, along with James Slipper who has some pace and a net step.

Right now, though, the missing ingredient with the Wallabies is a lack of nous with the way they play what is in front of them.

For instance, Ireland dropped back four players when the Wallabies had the ball. Why did Foley invariably kick long?

Last week, France played one player back and 14 in the defensive line. The Wallabies never exploited the space behind this French rugby equivalent of the Maignot Line.

Again, look what the All Blacks did with the Wales rush defence. They literally chipped away at it until inevitably the bounce of the ball came their way and a close encounter against Wales ended up in a cake walk to the All Blacks.

This is what the Wallabies should have done against France. And against Ireland, the Wallabies should have exploited the fact that there was a short defensive line against them by running around it or beating it with hand-to-hand passes (not cut out passes which are intercept bait), rather than kicking the ball away (for the Ireland back four to catch, kick high and win the contest for the ball.

Even Beale was guilty of a stupid kick when he should have been running the ball.

I believe there is a lack of deep thinking about rugby within the high levels of Australian rugby. Why isn’t someone like Scott Allen involved with the Wallabies, for instance? And we were reminded during the commentary that Ireland’s director of rugby high performance is – David Nucifora, a tournament-winning Super Rugby coach with the Brumbies and a high performance director with the ARU before he was effectively got rid off, unwanted in the Ewen McKenzie coaching regime.

Ireland are a very well coached side and a side that understands the limited game plan they have. As the game progressed, even when Ireland needed points, they stuck to their kicking game, especially the high balls and the determined contest of them.

As Johnny Sexton kicked yet another ball away it dawned on me that Ireland are playing Jakeball, with the addition of the smothering ball-and-all tackle to force a maul and a turnover.

It was smart Jakeball, though, because the Wallabies had two small players, Foley and Phipps covering the corners. They were easily out-jumped by the Irish jumpers.

Ireland also made the rub of the green for themselves when Tommy Bowe, in the manner of Bryan Habana, came in off his wing and snatched an intercept and galloped away for his ’14-point try.’ If Bowe had missed, the Wallabies would certainly have scored themselves.

Despite their strong field position for most of the Test, Ireland only scored two tries, the Bowe intercept and Simon Zebo’s effort from a Sexton cross kick where Bernard Foley’s lack of height was exploited (as it was many other times in the Test) by on-rushing Irish jumpers.

Ireland have won 9 out of their last 10 Tests, with wins this month over the Springboks and the Wallabies and two Test wins in June against the Pumas in Argentina. They are the current Six Nations champions and missed out on a Grand Slam with a loss to England at Twickenham.

They fully deserve their World Rugby ranking above England and Australia. And their hopes of Rugby World Cup glory are not pie in the sky dreams.

But there is the problem for Ireland, I believe, with their Jakeball method. Can it work out of Ireland against a top tier side with all their players available, and out of Dublin, in a Rugby World Cup tournament?

Personally, I think it is a too-restricted method to win a Rugby World Cup tournament.

The Wallabies play their last Test in Europe before the 2015 Rugby World Cup tournament against a lacklustre England side at Twickenham, a stadium England are trying to make – unsuccessfully this season – a fortress in preparation for the World Cup.

The next time the Wallabies play England, after the Test next weekend, will be in a Rugby World Cup pool round next year. This is the infamous Pool of Death, with England, Australia and Wales (who played with real spirit and power against the All Blacks) contending for two finals positions.

It goes without saying that a victory next Saturday at Twickenham will create an important psychological lift for the Wallabies.