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The thing about writing with a few sorrow-drowning beers and the inevitable tag-alongs on board is that conclusions can be jumped to.
But this was very deliberately not written on Saturday night, which is a shame, because I’d have much rather have written about the two-tries-to-one narrow loss I now choose to remember than the thumping it really was at Eden Park.
Conclusions were jumped to, though, and if there is a common theme to those thousand-plus comments post-match on the site on Saturday night, and another thousand-plus in the 48 hours since, it’s that Quade Cooper should never wear Wallaby gold again.
Blaming Quade Cooper feels like a fad at times, but this fad has lasted longer than yo-yos, Rubik’s puzzle that wasn’t the cube, and the Macarena all put together. Suffice the say, Cooper wasn’t the sole reason the Wallabies still don’t hold the Bledisloe Cup. But don’t let the facts stop a headline or interrupt a good rant.
What I do know is that blaming Cooper alone is a popular but misguided position to take. Now that the fog has cleared from my liquid-infused post-mortem, I can only conclude that James Horwill, Scott Fardy, Michael Hooper, Israel Folau, and maybe Adam Ashley-Cooper emerged with reputations intact.
And I won’t for a minute lay any blame on Nigel Owens, either, as an email I received on Saturday night attempted to (if I may borrow one of Spiro’s lines).
The point in all the Bledisloe post-mortem is that when the All Blacks put the foot down straight after half-time, the Wallabies weren’t able to keep up.
And the Wallabies should’ve known this was coming. Going into the match, New Zealand had scored six of their ten tries in the Rugby Championship between the 40 and 60-minute marks. It couldn’t have been more obvious if Steve Hansen stood on the sideline and turned on the green light himself.
In the seven minutes before the penalty try was awarded, New Zealand won the early kicking duel to make an early net gain, made the advantage line with great regularity once inside the Australian 10-metre line, and almost always took ground off the Wallabies when in defence.
Whenever the ball entered the All Blacks half, they kicked it back. Half-breaks were capitalised on, offloads were popped and stuck on all but one or two occasions. They contested Australian scrum feeds more vigorously, and charged down box kicks. And then Nehe Milner-Skudder made a break and offloaded to Aaron Smith…
Until that point, the score was still only 13-6, yet the Wallabies already looked like they were chasing the game. That’s where the game got away from them, not when Cooper tried to wrap up the All Blacks No.9.
Cheika’s kept the players guessing about the Rugby World Cup squad, so here’s mine
If Michael Cheika took nothing else out of the Auckland loss on Saturday night, it’s that surely he could put a line through a few names on his Rugby World Cup ‘possibles’ list.
From that team that played in Auckland, I can’t see how Henry Speight’s and Kane Douglas’s names feature among the names read out in the Qantas hangar in Sydney on Friday. I have a thought around flyhalf, too, but more on that shortly.
And just on the timing of the announcement, why Friday? Why couldn’t it have waited until Monday, with a number of guys being sent back for the opening weekend of the NRC? I’d argue 10 or a dozen players in the current squad could do with another run.
Thirty-one names will be read out, and I’m expecting the breakdown to be five props, three hookers, four locks, six backrowers, three scrumhalves, five midfielders, including outside centre, and five back-three players. And while there might be some coin-flipping, I can’t see anyone coming in who we haven’t seen in 2015.
The four squad props are easy, and you can flip a coin between Tetera Faulkner and Toby Smith for the last spot. Likewise at hooker, Stephen Moore and Tatafu Polota-Nau are easy and James Hanson is the obvious next in line behind them.
Horwill, Dean Mumm, Will Skelton and Rob Simmons fill the lock spots. Sam Carter now won’t get an NRC chance to state his case, but I’d still rate him ahead of what Douglas showed in Auckland. And it’s a real shame we didn’t see what Rory Arnold could offer in the early games.
Michael Hooper, David Pocock and Fardy are the easy and obvious backrow picks, and Ben McCalman isn’t far behind. But I’m not sure there’s room for both of Scott Higginbotham and Wycliff Palu; it’s one or the other, and I suspect it might be Palu. Sean McMahon is the last spot smokey, covering both sides of the scrum.
I don’t know what the pecking order of scrumhalves is, but Nick Phipps, Nic White and Will Genia all have to go. Matt Giteau was serviceable in Sydney for 10 minutes, but wasn’t used in Auckland and that tells me that he’s not a serious option for cover at No.9.
And here’s a scary thought: with Nic Stirzaker recovering from shoulder surgery and not playing in the NRC, if one of these three go down mid-Rugby World Cup, who’s the next best Australian scrumhalf?
I’ve grouped the midfielders together, and Giteau, Matt Toomua, and Tevita Kuridrani are the easy picks. Like Palu and Higginbotham, I don’t see how you can now take both Bernard Foley and Quade Cooper, so pick whichever one takes your fancy.
Neither enthuse me much, currently, and neither has really grabbed the chance to become the first choice flyhalf. Cooper is a high risk/high reward prospect, while Foley is the polar opposite and therefore not really any better. So in the last spot, Christian Lealiifano can cover 10, 12, and goal-kicking.
Of the back three options, Rob Horne is perhaps unlucky as I go with Ashley-Cooper, Folau, Joe Tomane, Drew Mitchell and Kurtley Beale. I don’t think Speight has done enough, and nor do I think Taqele Naiyaravoro’s three World XV tries against Japan is a compelling enough argument.
But within those groupings, there are players who can cross boundaries. Fardy can play lock if required. Ashley-Cooper can play 13 – and might be worth trying, with Kuridrani a long way off, currently – while Beale can cover 10 and 12 at a pinch, as well as this hybrid wing/fullback spot he seems to be playing.
Even with the Bledisloe still missing, presumed dead, and even though his selections in Auckland left me scratching my head, three wins from four tells me that Cheika knows what he’s doing.
I just hope that becomes clear to the rest of us some time soon.