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Bless the French, they are certainly not the most consistent team in the world but they are exciting for the fact that they can play extraordinary rugby and beat anybody on their day.
What makes it more exciting is that when it happens it is usually a result of the players deciding to do whatever they want. It is an attitude that I think that Australian playmakers may need to adopt at the moment.
This is in relation to the lack of an effective tactical kicking game by the Wallabies, highlighted with the series loss against England. But back to French ethics in a while we talk about kicking.
Many have written on the kicking issue recently, not least World Cup Test winning Wallabies, John Connolly.
In his recent article Connelly made the following quote, which I think gets to the crux of the problem.
“…we were obsessed with playing with ball in hand. It’s hard not to fall into the temptation, because the demand from the Australian public is to see attacking rugby. It looks appealing, but it doesn’t always win games. You need to have a really strong tactical kicking game to win Test matches.”
The problem being that Australian rugby is yet again demonstrating its lack of confidence in the face of commercial pressure from league and to a lesser extent AFL. It seems that Michael Cheika is solidly caught up in that mindset, being emphatic recently on Rugby 360 that this is the “sort of footy that Australians want us to play” and that the Wallabies won’t be deviating from that path, rather they will learn to play their existing style better.
There are three problems with Cheika’s reasoning.
The first, as pointed out on Rugby 360, this confected version of ‘Australian running rugby’ involves grinding away for 15 or so phases in attack, which sometimes results in a try but more often leads to an inevitable turnover or dropped ball. They certainly don’t do that in rugby league, after six plays the ball gets booted away out of necessity.
Secondly, the All Blacks have over four million likes on their Facebook page, six times the number that the Wallabies do at just over 670,000, and they kick more than any other team.
Third, there is nothing that an Australian sports fan finds less entertaining than losing, so winning rugby should always take precedence over notions of what is entertaining. The Wallabies are not training to be the Harlem Globetrotters – or in their case in recent times more like the Washington Generals – they are training to be World Champions.
While Cheika coached his teams to play ball in hand at the Waratahs, I suspect that this may be reinforced with a bit of ‘tail wagging the dog’, with the business heads at the ARU putting pressure on him to change the Wallabies game to suit their idea of what Aussie rugby fans want.
So since he may not be able to coach the team exactly the way he wants to, this brings us back to Australian playmakers and the French.
We have five playmakers in serious contention for the Rugby Championship: Bernard Foley, Quade Cooper, Matt Giteau, Matt Toomua and Christian Lealiifano. Two and possibly three of them will be playing each game.
I reckon that if these guys think that they need to kick to win games, they should bloody well let Cheika know it. Cheika has been a great coach but he isn’t an expert in back play. In contrast Matt Giteau has been a professional rugby player for only one year less than Michael Cheika has been a rugby coach and is rated as one of the best in the world.
And none of the other playmakers are newbies either, Cooper has played in two World Cups and the other three are professional players in their mid to late 20s.
All of these guys need to be like Frenchmen on the matter of the kicking game and let Cheika know that they expect to be listened to. There is of course the risk that he plays them off over selections, but if he has any brains which we all know he has he will realise that he needs the playmakers more than they need him and will come around.
It isn’t him putting in the blood, sweat and tears on the line, nor is it them who have to stand in front of 50,000 plus people having just lost to the All Blacks again. It is the players. They have a right to have a say in how the team plays the game to win.
Join The Roar rugby editor Christy Doran, former Wallaby Matt Toomua and a cast of regular and special guests as they look at the biggest issues in the game on The Roar Rugby Podcast. If you’re looking for great odds on the next game check out Aussie bookmaker PlayUp. Chances are you’re about to lose. Set a deposit limit.