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Should we be confident or pessimistic about the Wallabies?

26th October, 2016
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Michael Cheika might be doing more to improve the Wallabies than we think. (AAP Image/SNPA, Ross Setford)
Roar Guru
26th October, 2016
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3179 Reads

The Wallabies’ 2016 season is on the final stretch. There are five games against Wales, Scotland, France, Ireland and England.

These are all that remains in a year that has left much to be desired by the fans and the team alike.

All the statistics have been beaten to death coming off the back of the third Test between the Wallabies and All Blacks. Not to steer away from the script, New Zealand piled on 22 unanswered points part of the way through the second half to comprehensively crumple the Wallabies.

It was hard to watch.

I’m a die-hard fan and no amount of losses will ever have me supporting another team, nor stopping to support the Wallabies at all, but some of the aftermath of the game has irked me.

The whole clown saga is an embarrassment and I won’t touch on that any further; the rest of the rugby world seems to have done that for me. What has annoyed me is attitude about that game.

Now, generally, I would be regarded as the optimistic fan among some of my friends.

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Keep on playing Moore? Sure, I can get behind that. Dean Mumm to wear the 6 jersey again? Not my first pick, but it could be worse, and so on.

However journalists and commentators have been a fair bit too foolhardy in their praise for the Wallabies’ supposed improvement.

Did the Wallabies play better than their last two games against the All Blacks? Hard to quantify depending on what part of the game you’re looking at, but I’d say it was. Our best performance of the year? I wouldn’t go that far.

Immediately after the game, Tim Horan referenced the Wallabies as being “not that far away (from the All Blacks)”. That’s a load of rubbish. We’ve had three opportunities this year to avenge the Rugby World Cup final of last year.

In our closest game, we lost by 20 points including being outscored four tries to nil. In our ‘best’ performance, we lost by 27 points and were outscored six tries to one. That doesn’t sound like a close performance no matter what way you skin it.

If you’re one of the positive few who were happy with the first 55 minutes of the match, I won’t take that away from you. I was, for the most part, fairly impressed too.

That doesn’t mean a thing in a 80-minute performance, because whatever confidence was gained in the tight contest of the start of the match would’ve been extinguished as the All Blacks ran rampant, making this Test match look like a walk in the park.

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It’s hard to say whether all of the controversy regarding being offended and left-field selections is just to act as a smokescreen to the lack of impressive results this season, but let it be known that I am ignoring all off-field issues and having eyes only for the style of our play.

I don’t think there is anything inherently wrong with our squad. We have a fair few players that will be used out of position, some who are absent with injuries, others who are absent through contracts with other clubs, but in reality, it is a squad that could beat any of the five upcoming teams on their given day.

However, I find it odd that natural reaction to a 37-10 loss is “well now that we have improved, we can head to Europe and complete a Grand Slam.”

Did I miss something?

I was pleased with some of the changes we made and a fair bit of how we played, but you’ll forgive me for being a little doubtful about our chances.

So far this year we have had a 3-0 series loss to England, a 3-3 performance in the Rugby Championship where we managed to breakeven and that included part of a 3-0 series loss to New Zealand.

Given those fixtures, mathematically speaking, winning more than we lose while overseas would be an improvement.

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This isn’t to say I’m not confident of snagging a few wins, but the last time we headed to Europe for an end-of-year tour I was startled by how easily we were overcome.

In that tour the following results were obtained:

Beat Barbarians 40-36
Beat Wales 33-28
Lost to France 29-26
Lost to Ireland 26-23
Lost to England 26-17

Recalling back to this time and the confidence I had leading into it, I now face the emotional struggle of where to set my expectations. My hopes are as high as ever, I’d love to think we could go through unbeaten and restore some faith and lustre into the Wallabies.

The initial Test against Wales is a very opportune time to start the revival. We have good history against the Welsh. Despite losing Will Genia, Samu Kerevi and Mumm to France, injury and suspension respectively, if we can show the Northern Hemisphere what we’ve got with a dominant performance first up, we’ll be well on our way to boosting the self-esteem and morale that seems to be lost in the team (including coaching staff!).

The team I’d like to see being used for this first match would be something like this:

Scott Sio, Stephen Moore, Sekope Kepu, Rory Arnold, Adam Coleman, Lopeti Timani, Michael Hooper, David Pocock, Nick Phipps, Quade Cooper, Sefanaia Naivalu, Reece Hodge, Tevita Kuridrani, Israel Folau, Dane Haylett-Petty. Res: James Hanson, James Slipper, Allan Alaalatoa, Rob Simmons, Sean McMahon, Nick Frisby, Bernard Foley, Mariko Koroibete

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What do you think our chances are? Are you feeling confident or doubtful; optimistic or pessimistic?

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