- Video
-
Club Roar
Captured a great grassroots sporting moment? We want to see it!Content Collections
The Roar Community
- Join
- Login
Well, it was another three-point loss, but whereas the close margin in Paris rather flattered the Wallabies last weekend, the 26-23 scoreline in Dublin was a fair reflection of how the game went.
The close scoreline showed how close the Wallabies ran with the Six Nations Champions, but also how Ireland was always just that little bit better.
And fair play to the home side, too. I haven’t seen enough of the November Tests to be able to say with any certainty that this was the best match of all of them so far, but it was certainly the best of the Tests I have seen.
Ireland found early success with their short precision kicking game, and would continue to take advantage of the space in behind the Wallabies defensive line and wherever Israel Folau wasn’t for the rest of the game.
Jonathan Sexton’s deft little kick after a turnover found a flying Simon Zebo in space to open the scoring, and ensured the covering Wallabies sweepers had plenty on their plate from there on.
However, despite being down 17-0 after what seemed like only a few minutes, I actually thought the Wallabies defence was much improved from last week. The missed tackle stats I looked at do show an improvement on the France Test, but it wasn’t just about the numbers, rather the method and the intensity.
The Wallabies, one week further into regime change, just looked that much more comfortable with the in-their-face method that new defence coach Nathan Gray has introduced. And the greatest improvement was the defensive organisation and pace that Matt Toomua brought to the Wallabies midfield.
Toomua was up in the faces of the Irish centres whenever they looked like getting the ball, and was instrumental in shutting Gordon D’Arcy and Robbie Henshaw down.
The most telling part of Toomua’s presence was the way the defenders beside him went with him, meaning the Wallabies more often than not presented a solid and not stuttered line as they did in Paris.
The Wallabies essentially did to the Irish backs what the French did to them the week before. This was pleasing.
It wasn’t just the backs though, all the forwards got through a mountain of work in defence. All but James Slipper, Rob Simmons and Ben McCalman made a double-digit number of tackles, and even then, these three weren’t far off. Michael Hooper was everywhere in defence, making 14 tackles and missing none.
The starting pack missed just nine of 88 tackles between them; their success rate was better than the team’s overall rate of 88 per cent.
However, the Irish were more than up for this fight, and as the second half became the grind that it did, I always had the nagging feeling that the Wallabies were playing into their hands.
That suspicion became a full-on knot in the stomach at scrum time, where once again the Wallabies’ pack lost the ground it was holding in the first half. I don’t know how this issue is resolved within a year, and now only five Tests before the start of the Rugby World Cup, but it just has to be resolved.
The Wallabies may not make the Rugby World Cup semis with the current starting scrum, but they definitely won’t with the bench pack.
But some credit where it’s due. I’ve been critical of Will Skelton’s scrummaging in recent weeks, and I saw a much improved body height on engagement when he came on against Ireland. He was still involved when James Slipper was penalised for collapsing in the 75th minute, but even in that case, you could see his head and especially his arse was a lot lower than it has been in previous weeks.
Just on Slipper, I thought he was a bit stiff on the 63rd minute to concede what would turn out to be the match-winning penalty from Sexton. Slipper was pinged for coming in from the side, right in front of referee Glenn Jackson, but watching it live and confirmed with several re-viewings, I thought Irish centre Robbie Henshaw quite obviously came in from the side himself and continued to clean out Nick Phipps well beyond the ball.
Slipper, in actual fact, came in with Sekope Kepu to clean out Henshaw.
The Wallabies made some major improvements with their offload and short passing game, with the big difference from Paris being that the early passes in Dublin stuck. This is important to note, because those passes sticking immediately allowed the confidence to grow as they gained more possession.
Indeed, there was no better example than Phipps’ second try, which originally started way back inside the Wallabies’ own 22. Toomua and Bernard Foley sent the ball wide to the right hand side of the field, where McCalman ran a very Kieran Read-like wide line before putting Henry Speight in to space.
Not very much space, but space nonetheless. Speight did superbly well to flick the ball back inside as he was about to be bundled into touch.
Foley picked up the loose ball, got a nice pass back outside to McCalman, who made more metres and presented quick ball.
The Wallabies went another phase down the short side before going wide, where Toomua found Foley on an inside angle and in space, before drawing the final Irish defenders and finding Phipps on the outside to score.
Contrast this with passes behind the man last week, offloads going to no-one and virtually no use of the inside runner that I readily recall, and it’s not surprising that France’s defence looked as good as it did.
In Dublin, Ireland’s defence was just as good – maybe even better – but the Wallabies supported the ball carrier better than they have before under Michael Cheika. And this was also pleasing, but also very encouraging, because it shows that the new approach and the new method is beginning to click.
Foley looked a lot better in attack for mine, and I can’t help but wonder how much of that is down to the return of Toomua at inside centre. Between the two of them, the Wallabies certainly asked more questions of the defence.
Impact off the bench was also an improvement for mine, with Quade Cooper especially slotting into the attacking patterns and method quite easily in the 16 minutes he played. I can’t help but think the Cheika methods of attack might actually be the re-making of Cooper as an international player.
I will, however, say I’m not sure if Cooper and Kurtley Beale can exist on the same bench though. In those 16 minutes they were on together, the Wallabies looked dangerous when Cooper ran with support, but contradicted when Beale tried to make the play from that roaming role he seemed to be playing. Coming in from the wing as he was, Beale appeared to cut off wider attacking options more than a few times when he popped up in midfield.
All in all, while the loss was a bummer, I was quite impressed with the way the Wallabies not just competed with the best team in the northern hemisphere, but genuinely pushed them on plenty of occasions.
And after England looked a bit ‘off’ against Samoa, I think there’s plenty of reason for the Wallabies to be confident at Twickenham next Saturday.