All Blackened Blue – can the Tahs’ halves really help the Wallabies improve?

After seven weeks of reasonably steady progression in which they won three of their last four Rugby Championship matches, the Wallabies fell by 27 points against the All Blacks on Saturday.

If both the margins of defeat and the overall try-count in Australia’s last three games against New Zealand (16-2 to the All Blacks) suggest ‘no improvement’, that would not be representative of the real strides Michael Cheika and his coaching and playing group made against Argentina and South Africa.

However, in terms of selection I believe some very hard bullets will have to be bitten if the Wallabies are to further their development on the upcoming European tour.

In particular, the question-marks surrounding the Nick Phipps/Bernard Foley half-back combination have now become too obvious to either disguise or avoid. While Foley is a decent footballer and will rightly survive in the Wallabies’ squad, I think that the two premier scrum-halves going forward should be Will Genia (when available) and Nick Frisby.

Furthermore, with both Frisby and Quade Cooper playing their trade in Queensland next year, the immediate future at numbers 9 and 10 at national level should be coloured maroon rather than sky-blue.

Whether Michael Cheika can bring himself to accept this change is another matter, given his long affiliation with New South Wales and his evident regard for both Phipps and Foley as both players and squad members.

Collapse of the kicking strategy
As in the summer series against England, the upfield kicking strategy was non-existent with Phipps and Foley in harness. Australia only made six kicks in total at Eden Park. Three of their exit clearances led directly to tries by New Zealand, while a fourth resulted in clean break by Ben Smith that could have set up another All Blacks’ score.

With Genia and Cooper together for the last few matches, the exit strategy had begun to look a lot more solid, but the same accuracy and clarity of thinking was lacking at Eden Park.

Accuracy begins with precise preparation and knowing the outcome or ‘picture’ you want to achieve.

The chase contest – getting numbers around the ball
At 4:30, New Zealand outnumber the chasing Wallabies by four to one at the point of receipt, so they will most likely pick up the ‘shrapnel’ if the ball goes loose. Likewise at 43:58, three Wallaby chasers are actually ahead of the kick (but onside) as Phipps’ clearance is touched in flight, but there are still five All Blacks against one Australian around the ball when it comes back down at 44:03 – handing Ben Smith a nice one-on-one against Phipps on the KR.

Manoeuvring for position – kicking on your own terms
At 33:10, Australia attempt to exit from the middle of the field in the shadow of their own posts. As the replay from behind the posts shows, it is a huge ask for Reece Hodge to find a long, safe touch from this position, he is the last man and there is no support behind him. The kicker needs to be brought closer to the sideline to make his job easier – which means a preparatory phase or two to set up the ideal scenario.

Knowing when to find touch and ‘reset’ on defence
At 72:01, Foley fails to find touch even though he is kicking from behind his own goal-line and there are thirteen Wallaby players (including himself) all on the same side of the field as the kick. When the ball reaches Julian Savea at 72:10, Michael Hooper and Dane Haylett-Petty are trying to defend about 35 metres’ width between them. As in the All Blacks first try by Israel Dagg, Foley is not an effective enough scramble defender to plug the leak once the break has been made.

Nick Phipps at the base
According to my stats, Nick Phipps made 83 successful passes during the match, but there were also two penalties against, four turnovers and another two loose balls associated with his inability to clear the ball away from the base of the tackle area effectively.

Let’s start by looking at his part in the Reece Hodge block-down try. There is only one potential kicker to the Wallaby left and that is Hodge – Henry Speight and Israel Folau (both non-kickers), are the only others in the frame. So the All Blacks, and particularly their number 9 T.J. Perenara, know where the pass is going as soon as Phipps sets up to that side at 33:11.

When Phipps goes to pass he is upright and there is a noticeable ‘hitch’ or pause in the delivery as he lifts the ball off the deck. The pass itself is not flat – it contains a certain amount of loop before arriving at the receiver’s chest. These factors give Perenara just enough time to arrive on Hodge’s left side and in the flight path of the kick before he can get the clearance away successfully.

These habits are reinforced in the clips of Phipps operating at the base, especially those at 13:03, 16:07 and 61:01. There is a tendency to bend at the hips rather than the knees which means he has to lift the ball before passing it. That upright posture takes force off the delivery – the passes to Rory Arnold at 13:03, Adam Coleman at 16:07 and Israel Folau at 52:16 are all ‘dying’ as they reach the target and give the receiver no options in the teeth of the defence.

Compare Phipps’ passing action with that of Tawera Kerr-Barlow (62:00-62:35). Kerr-Barlow is low into the tackle area and bending at the knees as he punches the ball away with wrist and forearm. There is no loop on his deliveries and the receivers at 62:01, 62:05, 62:25 and all have a little bit of extra time to survey their options – even Sam Whitelock at 62:22 off slow ruck ball. When Kerr-Barlow does ‘lift’ for the left-handed delivery to Aaron Cruden at 62:35 it still reaches the All Black first five-eighth with zip rather than loop.

Phipps’ tendency to enter the tackle area upright also means extra time and space for defenders to disrupt the ball before he is even able to pick it up. The All Blacks always have defenders ready to exploit this opportunity – their number 9 behind the back of the ruck at 27:23, the Guard at the side at 14:10, 31:17 and 59:44.

Phipps on the run and in support
If you want to be an outstanding Test scrum-half, you have to be able to pass, kick and run adequately, and be able to perform at least two of those actions with superior efficiency. As the number 9 is also often the chief support player after a break, it also helps if you can read attacking situations before they unfold, run the right support lines to get to the ball-carrier and make accurate decisions to sustain the impetus of the attack thereafter (see my article on Nick Frisby).

Nick Phipps is not a great passer or kicker of the ball, but he can be effective running the arc and engaging the first defender out from a breakdown. The problem is that he does not do it often enough or consistently enough.

In Australia’s best attacking sequence of the match (which should have resulted in a try for Henry Speight), Phipps’ contribution at 45:11 is essential to the score. After Michael Hooper sets up the first ruck, Phipps runs the arc on to T.J. Perenara and fixes all three of the remaining defenders to that side – Perenara, Kieran Read and Julian Savea. All three are flat-footed and this in turn preserves enough space for Bernard Foley to make the break on the following phase and Speight to convert the three-on-two which Phipps created.

At 48:30 after a long break by replacement lock Rob Simmons, Phipps has the opportunity to repeat the dose when Simmons is finally tackled. Reece Hodge has a hold of Ben Smith at the side of the ruck and there is an inviting gap between Smith and the next defender, prop Joe Moody. The space is straight through the middle, not out wide, as the following phase proves.

During the same sequence, it is also clear that Phipps tends not to run ‘optimistic’ support lines. At 48:22 he runs straight towards the receiver (Simmons) expecting the tackle, rather than angling upfield and in behind the All Black defensive line expecting the break or gain-line win, as doubtless a T.J.Perenara or a Nick Frisby would have done. This in turns means that he has to change his running line at a right angle when the break is made, leaving Simmons isolated at 48:26 with Phipps blocked out in support by his opposite number.

The final sequence in the reel begins with a Wallaby turnover in a promising situation. Phipps receives the ball with three backs (Foley, Speight and Folau) outside him to the right and the New Zealand defence spread across the field. If Phipps passes at 53:23, there will be a promising scenario opening up with the three Wallabies faced by Liam Squire and Savea out on the right.

Instead, Phipps keeps the ball, takes contact and then delivers an unlikely offload in Speight’s direction as he goes to ground. The rest as they say is history – just another part of Julian Savea’s illustrious history in an All Black jersey.

Summary
Some important aspects of the game which Australia had thought fixed after the first two matches of the Rugby Championship, began to creak and groan if not fall part completely under the All Black blowtorch.

The lineout creaked, the exit strategy fell apart. The combination of Nick Phipps and Bernard Foley is not an efficient one in terms of the kicking game, and it gifted New Zealand three scores and other promising countering opportunities for which they did not have to work especially hard.

Foley will probably still have a future in the green-and-gold, even though I felt strongly before the game that Quade Cooper had done nothing to deserve his demotion.

It is however hard to see a long-term international future for his half-back partner Nick Phipps, however gutsy he is, however much leadership he offers on the field and however much value he adds to the group off it. I do not believe that he would start for any of the New Zealand Super Rugby franchises.

This throws the spotlight back on to the awkward situation of player release at Will Genia’s French club – and possibly Nic White’s too. Looking forward domestically to the next Super Rugby season, the focus from a Wallaby point-of-view should be firmly on the Frisby/Cooper partnership at the Reds rather than Phipps/Foley at the Blues!

The question is, can Michael Cheika make that adjustment in selection and let go of powerful existing loyalties?