SPIRO: Watch out Wallabies, Fiji and England, here come Wales!

Late on Sunday afternoon, I received this email from a knowledgeable English rugby friend: “Wales looked good yesterday with a new strong front row going strongly. The whole XV looked pretty fit (not always the case!). Star man was reserve flanker [Justin] Tipuric. Perhaps Wales will play two 7s against the Wallabies.”

I had finished watching the Ireland-Wales ‘friendly’ Test that was played in Dublin and found myself in total agreement with the email.

Aside from the remarkable play of openside flanker Justin Tipuric and Dan Lydiate at No.6, Wales produced a very strong scrum, an important consideration given the emphasis one of their pool of death opponents, England, will place on scrumming.

There is also the matter of the Wallabies in the same pool and their (improving?) scrum to come into this equation.

What could decide the final outcome of which two teams go through to the finals, from what is officially known as Pool A (Australia, England, Wales, Fiji, Uruguay), could be how the various scrums perform throughout the tournament.

When I mentioned this point to a well-known Australian rugby identity, he exclaimed with some consternation in his voice, “Let’s hope the referee for the Wallabies-England match isn’t Romain Poite!”

He went on to vent his annoyance at the way Poite has seemed to revel in punishing the Wallabies’ scrum with successive penalties virtually from the beginning of a Test.

I had to tell him that his worse fears were in fact going to be realised. It’s official, the Frenchman Poite will referee England vs Australia at Twickenham on Saturday October 3, 2015.

England’s scrum was correctly penalised several times by the South African referee Jaco Peyper in their last friendly Test at Paris against France. Poite has a reputation for deciding quickly which team has the dominant scrum. If the Wallabies’ scrum, which is greatly improved, forces England on to the back foot, it is to be hoped that Poite rules according to what he sees, rather than from any previous experience.

The referee for the Australia vs Wales Test at Twickenham on October 10 is South African Craig Joubert. Joubert will rule on what happens in front of him. So if the Wallabies scrum goes well, they will be rewarded.

Joubert will also referee for an open match, given his instinct as a referee to enjoy seeing tries scored.

This will suit the Wallabies, presumably. But it will also suit Wales. I say this because in their Test against Ireland, which provoked the complimentary email, Wales revealed that they were a complete side for playing open, aggressive rugby.

There was the stable scrum, with the newcomer Tomas Francis playing splendidly in the crucial tight head position. He looks to be an ideal replacement for the seemingly irreplaceable Adam Jones. The lineout was strong, with Alun-Wyn Jones a tower of strength. The back row was terrific.

The back line featured any number of x-factor players from halfback Rhys Webb, blockbusting centre Jamie Roberts, dynamic wingers Alex Cuthbert and George North (the youngest try-scorer in Rugby World Cup history) and Leigh Halfpenny, who is the full quid as the most complete back in world rugby.

As Paul Cully noted in the Sydney Morning Herald on Monday: “Wales are strong where the Wallabies are strongest. In Sam Warburton, who sat out the Dublin game, and Justin Tipuric, who deputised for him and won the man of the match, they have two open sides who are both better than English captain Chris Robshaw. This Welsh side have a great appetite, and capacity, to play without the ball.”

This last sentence is a reference to the aggression and patience Wales showed when they were on defence. The years of preaching a rugby league-style defensive system for Wales by Shaun Edwards finally seem to be getting some reward.

I would make a note of caution, though, that Johnny Sexton early on in the match twice set up outside breaks by doing the old-fashioned double-around with his inside centre. The compressed defence Edwards likes to impose will need to be slightly widened to cover more of the field.

But in general, after this early defensive mistake, the Wales defence coped pretty well with most of what Ireland threw at it.

This was especially true at the end of the match, as a desperate Ireland mounted a series of drives towards the Wales line. A spirited defence from Wales stopped a certain try and the possibility of an Ireland victory when Halfpenny got himself under the massive Sean Cronin to prevent a force down in a tangle of bodies over the try line.

It helped on defence, too, that the Wales players appear to be very fit. The match against Ireland was played at a ferocious pace, with the ball in play for long periods of time. In the past, Wales could have been expected to wilt in the last 20 minutes, but this time they didn’t. They raced around the field with the same energy and vigour at the end of the match as they did at its start.

In selecting his Rugby World Cup squad, coach Warren Gatland has mixed some older players (but not too many of them) with younger players. James Hook, Mike Phillips and Richard Hibbert, veterans of many campaigns, have been dropped in rather the same way as Gatland dropped Brian O’Driscoll for the crucial third Test in 2013 between the British and Irish Lions and Australia.

Gatland has gambled by selecting the injured Samson Lee (Achilles tendon damaged in March) and Liam Williams (foot).

The tiny but electric Matthew Morgan (who looks and plays a bit like the immortal Cliff Morgan), joins a greatly improved Dan Biggar and Rhys Priestland as a playmaker to ignite a back line of great attacking quality.

Before the Ireland vs Wales Dublin Test, Ian McGeechan wrote an article in the SMH headed: “Battle-hardened Wallabies have edge on Welsh”.

The canny McGeechan made his point by noting that the Wallabies were ranked third in the world, behind New Zealand and Ireland, with England fourth and Wales sixth.

A week, though, is a long time in politics and rugby. The latest World Rugby rankings are:

1 New Zealand (92.89)
2 Australia (86.67)
3 Ireland (85.19)
4 South Africa (85.15)
5 Wales (84.63)
6 England (84.24)
7 France (80.90)
8 Argentina (78.39)
9 Fiji (77.04)
10 Scotland (76.10)

The Wales team McGeechan was writing off, with some gentleness admittedly, has become resurgent, at least in terms of the rankings.

McGeechan argued, too, that Wales “can take on anyone in the world” but with several players out injured “they can be very vulnerable”.

The winning result against Ireland, without their charismatic captain Warburton, indicated that this vulnerability might be more imagined than real.

The Wallabies, too, have beaten Wales in their last 10 meetings, “and that is bound to have an effect”, McGeechan insisted.

I get nervous when sequences like this are brought forward as evidence of some sort of perpetual dominance. The pessimist in me tends to believe that the sequence has been going on too long to continue.

In the 2011 Rugby World Cup, Wales missed the final against the All Blacks by a Halfpenny kick at goal that dropped a metre or so short of the French posts. They played most of the semi-final, too, with only 14 men, having lost Warburton to a controversial (but correct) red card decision.

The best players from that Wales side are back again to play in the 2015 Rugby World Cup.

Two teams out of Wales, Fiji, England and Australia are going to drown in the pool of death. My first fearless prediction for the World Cup is that the two Ws, Wales and the Wallabies, will be the survivors.