How did the Wallaby changes work out?

It is a given that in any series of matches between the same opponents, the team which has greater consistency of selection wins.

England only made three changes in the course of the recent series, and two of those (Luther Burrell and Teimana Harrison) only lasted half an hour before they were hooked.

Australia made seven as they struggled to find their optimal combinations across the field.

It’s a chicken-and-egg situation of course – you lose the first game and start looking for changes in personnel as a way to improve – but ideally, a head coach in any sport wants to keep the same group of players together to allow an understanding and a blend to develop.

Nowhere has this been truer for Michael Cheika than in the second row, an area where England were perceived to present a big challenge before the series began. Cheika ended up using all seven of the locks originally picked in his wider, 39-man playing group, plus an eighth (Scott Fardy) from the back row. The starting combinations have been different for every game.

Cheika will have been looking for some tasty ‘sausage’ (substance) beneath the ‘sizzle’ (promise or tantalising aroma of substance) from the men he picked in this area of the team.

Rory Arnold already offered a little a bit of both in the first two Tests. The question is, how much did Will Skelton and Adam Coleman offer at Sydney? Let’s take a look at what happened in various departments of the game.

Aerial combat – lineout and restarts
Rob Simmons proved that he is worth his spot simply as a lineout caller. Despite only lasting for 28 minutes at Brisbane (injury) and 40 minutes at Sydney (subbed off for Coleman), Australia won 6/6 throws or 100 per cent of their lineout ball before he left the field.

In both the first and third Tests, the Wallabies suffered at lineout after Simmons departed, losing 2 out of 6 throws (or 33%) under their replacement lineout captains – James Horwill at Brisbane and Adam Coleman at Sydney.

Coleman’s two lost calls occurred in the six minutes after the half-time break and cost Australia ten points:

Although Chris Robshaw failed to ground the ball in the first example, England scored from a no.8 pick from the ensuing scrum. In the second, they were able to develop a driving maul off Courtney Lawes’ steal which drew the penalty for side entry on Will Skelton, with Owen Farrell kicking the three points.

In both examples, the English jumpers seem to know the target zone for the throw and are able to mount a contest. Adam Coleman’s rather deliberate ‘big step’ shuffle down the line both reduces his hang-time in the air and gives Maro Itoje an easy read.

To his credit, Coleman came back from these two mini-disasters to win his next four throws, although the potential targets in the Wallaby lineout had been reduced to just two – either Coleman himself or Scott Fardy.

The background weakness to the Wallaby third Test lineout was the presence of Will Skelton at #4. Skelton won no ball on Australian throw and was a peripheral figure in their defensive lineout package:

Here there are two Wallaby pods jacked up with Skelton isolated as the end defender, a situation an intelligent first phase attack (like the All Blacks’) would be looking to exploit.

The weakness was compounded by the targeting of Will Skelton from England kick-offs. England won all of their first three restarts by the simple expedient of lining up their best high ball chaser (Anthony Watson) over Skelton at every kick-off:

In the first two examples Skelton is the inside receiver near the junction of the 15m and 40m lines, and Watson wins both the first touches against him. In the third example, Rob Simmons (Australia’s best KO receiver for a number of years) swaps over with Skelton to plug the gap – so Watson stays wide to maintain the mismatch against Skelton’s deep/outside pod. This scenario yielded a penalty to England which could easily have been interpreted as yellow card on another day, by another referee. It was also one of three penalties Skelton gave up in the match as a whole.

Defence
One of the statistics which defensive coaches use as a key performance indicator to the success of the systems they put in place, is the number of tackles made by the tight five forwards.

At Sydney, Rob Simmons, Will Skelton and Adam Coleman are credited with a similar number of tackles by the Opta stats (Simmons 5/6, Skelton 6/6 and Coleman 5/5), with Simmons’ miss an important one on Mako Vunipola in the build-up to England first try by Dan Cole.

But on this occasion the stats do not come close to representing the real situation out on the field:

The England lineout win at the tail is the beginning of a long minute and a half sequence leading to a try by England full-back Mike Brown.

Let’s take a look at the movements of the Wallaby tight five forwards on defence during this period.

• Starting positions (28:15). As Chris Robshaw wins the ball at the back, 3 Sekope Kepu is the nearest defender, with 4 Will Skelton ‘next door’ in between the 5m and 15m lines. 1 James Slipper, 5 Rob Simmons and 2 Stephen Moore are all either near or in the 5m corridor and furthest away from the ball.

• First ruck (28:25). At the first point of contact – won by the Wallabies – both Simmons and Slipper have run past Skelton and Kepu to become Guard (Simmons) and first defender (Slipper) at the first ruck on the far side. When the camera shot widens at 28:34 that situation is still the same, with Skelton (at third defender) and Kepu (at fifth defender) having run the shortest ‘distance from home’ from the site of the lineout.

• Skelton’s first dominant tackle (28:35). With Australia having won the first two bits of contact, Skelton is set up to make a big defensive impact on Mako Vunipola. Assisted by Slipper, Skelton wrestles the England loose-head back five metres in the collision.

• Fourth phase (28:47). Despite some average passing among the England backs after the ruck over Vunipola, there is an attractive situation presented to the England 9 Ben Youngs on fourth phase. The Wallaby forwards get their interior spacings wrong, with Kepu well away from the ruck perimeter at Guard and 8 Sean McMahon also loose outside him. Simmons has again run past all the other tight forwards to get into third defender. Youngs is able to break inside Kepu rather easily to get the England offence back on track.

• Skelton’s second dominant tackle (28:59). Having only had to run 10 metres from the spot of his previous hit, Will Skelton is able to make his second dominant tackle of the sequence (again with the assistance of Slipper) when George Ford passes to his hooker Dylan Hartley on the next phase. Skelton crushes the England hooker and he loses the ball.

At this stage of the sequence it is a conclusive Wallaby ‘win’, but what happens next illustrates the subtle negatives ready and waiting to emerge from behind the cloak of the obvious!

After yet another in a series of unconvincing exits at 29:08 (Australia’s kicking game did not improve from Melbourne), England are back in the driving seat on Jack Nowell’s kick return at 29:24.

• Poor right-side kick-chase (29:11). The Wallaby tight five are all in a roughly even line on the Australian 22 as Bernard Foley makes the kick at 29:11. At 29:16, Simmons and Moore in midfield are 10 metres ahead of Skelton on the right side.

• Poor decision-making at the first ruck (29:21). Tevita Kuridrani mistakenly anticipates an England open-side attack at 29:21, and to compound the error Michael Hooper starts pushing first Skelton, then Kepu around the corner at 29:24. England regularly come back to the short side in these situations, but are handed a gift 4-2 overlap with Mike Brown returning to that side at 29:28.

• Poor recovery after the kick ahead (29:31). The wide pass gets Anthony Watson into space, and his kick ahead for Mike Brown demands that Australia scramble back furiously. Among the tight forwards in the danger zone, only Kepu and Simmons oblige at 29:32. Will Skelton can only manage a slow trot.

The sequence as a whole is a perfect illustration of Jekyll and Hyde nature of Will Skelton’s selection. He can be a dominant physical force in contact when the play is funnelled towards him in the middle of the field.

On the flip side of the coin, he runs the fewest metres of any of the Australian tight five to get into position on defence, which in turn means that the forwards with greater aerobic capacity (Rob Simmons, James Slipper and Stephen Moore) have to do that running for him, often without achieving the satisfaction of a meaningful involvement at the end of it.

The lack of physical conditioning also is also reflected in his mental fitness. He is pushed around the corner by Hooper without appearing to have the energy to make his own decision about where he should defend.

Ball-carrying
Once again the Opta stats don’t reveal the essence of the situation by themselves: 5 carries for 18 metres for Adam Coleman with one clean break and three turnovers, 6-for-8 for Rob Simmons with one turnover, 7 for zero metres for Will Skelton with no turnovers.

Most of Coleman’s metres were achieved on one startling clean break after half-time, but his carries were spoiled by some rash offloads and presentations:

On the other hand, Will Skelton’s stats don’t do him justice. I counted at least three carries where his ability to fall forward in the tackle and present the ball quickly produced attacking opportunities for the Wallabies:

It may not look like Skelton is doing anything spectacular in any of these three examples, but in all he is winning the collision, enabling his support players to drive forward into contact and produce a 1-2′ delivery for Nick Phipps without using up more than two ‘cleaners’.

In Stephen Larkham’s attacking structure, there are typically two pods of forwards split between the two 15 metre lines – one with the two second rows plus either 6 or 8, the other with the three front-rowers all grouped together. It is usually the second row pod which has to carry from the hardest place on the field – the phase where the ball comes back in from touch, with the D only having to worry about defending one side of the field. That is where Will Skelton comes into his own…

Australia scored two tries and one clean break from the situations above, and Skelton’s carries were the acorns that grew into mighty scoring ‘oaks’!

Summary
Rob Simmons has proven – as much by his absence as his presence during the England series – that he is still the best lineout captain and restart receiver in Australia. It appears Adam Coleman should be groomed to fulfil that role in future, although he is not yet ready for the role on a full-time basis.

Will Skelton is the Jekyll and Hyde of Australian professional rugby. He is probably the most powerful ball-carrier and forward defender in a straight line in the country. But his ability to play in the air or run in space is significantly lacking. Right now, the Wallabies cannot afford to carry a passenger in either the lineout, restarts or in defence.

Kane Douglas will return to contest a starting berth, but in the meantime, most hope should be invested in the two rookies who have had their first taste of international rugby against England: Rory Arnold and Adam Coleman.