SPIRO: The Wallabies XV that should start against the Boks (but won't)

It is one of the most quoted cliches of sports that ‘winning is a habit’.

It is a cliche, though, because it is true. When I taught high school English, so many decades ago, I used to give my pupils a little poem to remember:

“Hush little cliche please don’t cry
You once were a bright word in days gone by.”

So the essential cliche for Michael Cheika right now is to select a Wallabies XV that will get into the winning habit by beating the Springboks. And, most importantly, to achieve this win in such a way that the method carries successfully through the Rugby Championship and on to the 2015 Rugby World Cup.

We had a special example of how the DNA of the winning habit can lift a team out of a dire predicament of a souring loss into the high lands of victory with the remarkable triumph of the New Zealand Maori (27) All Blacks against Fiji (26) at Suva on Saturday.

At half-time, the score-line was 26-10 in favour of the Fijians. Admittedly, Fiji had been playing with a swirling wind behind them.

But it seemed to me that the winning DNA of the New Zealand Maori All Blacks was the crucial factor in the turnaround. It was clear in the second half that they had an absolute commitment to winning the match, and an equally absolute belief that they would achieve this victory.

For the New Zealand Maori All Blacks is a team that has won its last 19 matches. Its last loss was back in 2003 to England. Over its long history, the New Zealand Maori All Blacks have won 62 per cent of its matches, the equivalent of Tests, against international sides. Only the Springboks and the All Blacks have a better record at this level.

The point here is that a crucial aspect of team culture, of the chemistry that turns a team of champions into a champion team, is the belief in its winning DNA. We saw that with Rod Macqueen’s Wallabies sides that won every trophy available to them, including the 1999 Rugby World Cup, winning a series against the British and Irish Lions, and winning and holding the Bledisloe Cup for five years.

So many Tests in this greatest era were won in the last minutes of play. The winning DNA was often the crucial factor in these last-minute triumphs.

Michael Cheika has identified the basic problem with the Wallabies since the end of the Macqueen glory days as, a terrible scrum! At best the Wallaby scrum has won parity. At worst, and this applied even against some second tier sides, the scrum has been under pressure throughout Tests and often demolished.

The French rugby theorists correctly described the scrum as the orchestra pit where the rugby music is made, or (as in the case, too often, with the Wallabies) not made.

Jake White, a noted rugby theorist, argues that any team with pretensions to winning tournaments must have the foundation of an immovable tighthead prop.

So my front row has two Queensland props, James Slipper at loosehead and Greg Holmes at tighthead. And Stephen Moore, the designated Wallaby captain, and the best scrumming hooker in Australian rugby, as the hooker.

Slipper and Holmes have been the stalwarts of a Reds scrum. The Reds pack stole the second most scrums against the head in the 2015 Super Rugby tournament.

Slipper is particularly good around the field, on attack where he often shows the skills of the five-eighth he used to be as a youngster and on defence.

Holmes is an old-fashioned scrummer. He is considered to be technically excellent in the dark arts of the scrum. At 32 he is no spring chicken, and he lacks a certain mobility. This is no great problem, though, if he can do his essential job of providing the foundation stone with his solid presence for the scrum.

Before we leave the front row, I must express my concern that Cheika has selected Tatafu Polota-Nau as the back-up hooker. For years now the sight of Polota-Nau going down after making a tackle, generally early on in a match, and then staggering to his feet to somehow carry on, has been a sickening spectacle.

I don’t want to sound too much like a old, very old-timer in fact, but we were taught as soon as we started playing rugby, and reminded at the beginning of every rugby season, that when you tackle you must make sure that your head is behind the tackled player’s back.

So when you both land on the ground, the two bodies are not landing on your head.

Polota-Nau has invariably tackled by launching himself without using his hands and arms at the ankles of his opponent. This is not only illegal, it is also highly dangerous as the invariable sight of him lying prone on the ground or staggering to his feet tend to reveal.

Why Polota-Nau has not been coached out of this very bad tackling technique is beyond my understanding. It is an indictment on the coaching standards in Australian rugby.

And why Cheika hasn’t made James Hanson, a strong scrummer and a far more accurate thrower than Polota-Nau, the back-up hooker is also beyond me.

The front row provide the core of the tight five, the engine room of any pack. It has been the lack of impact, strength and power of the Wallaby front five that has created so many disappointing Test results, since the Rod Macqueen era.

My answer to this weakness is to support a strong scrumming front row with the heaviest Wallaby ever, Will Skelton, and complement his massiveness with the tallest Wallaby ever, Rory Arnold.

Skelton is an impact player. In the Zavos theory of rugby, the best impact a player can make on a match is at its beginning. So he is a starter for me.

He is, shall we say, statuesque in the lineout. I would use him not as a jumper, but as a lifter.

What about Rod Simmons and his lineout jumping and calling of the lineouts?

The lineout calling skill is overrated in my view and Simmons is too much like a faux ferocious player for my liking. There is no sting or power in his game. Arnold is much more genuinely aggressive and can match the lineout jumping of Simmonds.

My back three are: Michael Hooper and David Pocock as Nos. 7 and 6 on the flanks. And Scott Higginbotham as No. 8.

Higginbotham is the most underrated forward in Australian rugby. He scores tries, which is always a good thing in any player. He is big, fast and skilful, in the Kieran Read manner. He is also a terrific lineout jumper and like Read can be used in the front of the lineout, as a substitute for the non-jumping Skelton.

Pocock is a strong and competent jumper. No. 6 plays on the short side of the field which will help with his lack of pace around the field. He is extremely strong over the ball, has nice hands as a passing link and is strong on short bursts. And most importantly for a No. 6, he is a tackling machine.

Hooper gives the Wallaby an x-factor in the forwards with his great speed. This complements the x-factor strength that Skelton brings to the pack. This pack could exploit the Brumbies five-man lineout system that worked so well for them in the Super Rugby tournament.

Coming to the backs, I would keep the Nic Phipps and Bernard Foley combination in the halves. The alternative, which the rugby writers are hinting at, of Will Genia and Quade Cooper is not robust enough for my liking.

Foley, also, is a better goal-kicker under pressure than Cooper. As Dan Carter showed for the All Blacks against Manu Samoa, picking up 20 points and missing only one shot at goal, accurate goal-kicking is the key to winning big matches.

Phipps and Foley are much better defenders and far more likely to make breaks against a tough defensive line than Cooper (now basically a passing No. 10) and Genia, with his injured shoulder.

Now we come to the big shift in the centres that I would make, which Cheika will undoubtedly not make. Tevita Kuridrani at inside centre and Adam Ashley-Cooper at outside centre.

It seems to me that that the era of the big inside centre is here. The theory here is that like chess and the imperative to dominate middle of the board, successful rugby sides are those that dominate the middle of the field.

When you push through the defence in the middle of the field, or even bend it, you then have two sides to send your runners down.

The defence becomes out-numbered on one or other side, the defending forwards become exhausted chasing towards the extremities of the field, and a sort of virtuous attacking circle of creating the mis-match of running backs on front row forwards is created.

Ashley-Cooper, too, as a centre can play the organising role out wide that Conrad Smith does so effectively for the All Blacks.

Kuridrani then plays the Ma’a Nonu/Sonny Bill Williams (although he was off his game against Samoa) role with his bulk, speed and deft passing game for the Wallabies.

With this big inside centre game, we need finishers like Israel Folau and Drew Mitchell on the wings.

Folau, particularly, is a finisher (as a wing should be) rather than a creator (as fullbacks should be). He is very good under the high ball, both on attack and defence (playing the Corey Jane role for the Wallabies). He is a natural winger, in my opinion, the position he played with so much success in rugby league.

Mitchell has the advantage of being a left-foot kicker which would get around the problem the Waratahs faced when they played the Highlanders and could not exit from the right-hand corner near their try line. He is also a very good broken field runner.

The modern fullback role, as exemplified by, say, Willie le Roux (three tries for the Springboks against the World XV) is to set up tries and score them, too, and especially to be the second playmaker, assisting the No. 10, especially on attack.

Kurtley Beale is my man to play this role for the Wallabies.

It needs to be remembered that the Wallabies’ 2011 Rugby World Cup campaign came unstuck against the All Blacks in the semi-final, partly because of Cooper’s poor play, starting with a botched kick-off, and partly because Beale was out injured. Before this injury, Beale had been outstanding at fullback for the Wallabies during the tournament, being their main attacking threat.

As I say, this is a fantasy team. It is based on the notion that if you have size in your squad, you should use it. As the coach of a successful Notre Dame ‘Fighting Irish’ gridiron squad once said: “Prayers work best when players are big.”

My point about having a big back line is that in recent years, essentially since Stirling Mortlock retired, the Wallabies have been too small in the middle of the field.

Watching the Wallabies against the All Blacks in recent years is to become aware of just how bad the physical mis-match between the two backlines is.

My team has bulk and strength where it is needed. It has a lot of pace to run off that power game from the front five. In my view, this would be a XV that even the All Blacks, and certainly the Springboks, would find difficult to hold back.

But I don’t hold out much for this XV being actually selected by Cheika. He has dropped Samu Kerevi, a big inside centre with loads of potential, from his squad. His options in this position seem to be Matt Giteau (who told Rugby HQ that he was most comfortable at inside centre), Matt Toomua and Kurtley Beale, none of whom can play the power game in this position.

And he has done the same thing in the forwards, opting for players like Dean Mumm and Sean McMahon who are neither big enough for the tight forward (Mumm) or No. 6/8 (McMahon) or fast enough for No. 6/8 (Mumm) or No. 7 (McMahon).

This gives Cheika’s Wallabies squad, both in the forwards and the backs, an embarrassment of muchness. There are too many in-between players in the squad. I prefer specialists, with at most one or two players, who can play adequately in several positions.

For instance, I don’t see Giteau as a starter in any side I would select. But he would be my super-sub in the backs, with his abilities to play every position in the backline, and also kick goals.

To get around this muchness element in Cheika’s squad, I would have preferred that Mumm and/or McMahon was dropped and Wycliff Palu retained. He is, at least, the real thing at No. 8. Although he has been injured a lot throughout his career, he does have a winning record for the Wallabies of over 60 per cent in the Tests he has played.

This brings us to a final cliche: nothing beats winning!