It was a lousy year for the Wallabies and their 40 per cent win rate, but fans are being asked to believe that this is because of the challenges associated with blooding 13 new players.
However, anybody who watched the tests with more than a passing interest this year knows it’s not the new players who have been losing Wallabies the big games.
Take the final test of the year against England. The Poms scored four tries, three of which were the direct result of stuff-ups by Australian players with three or more years of international experience doing things that they should have known better than to do.
Think Nick Phipps, a Wallaby for six years, and his sideways stroll in front of an advancing line of big English forwards, which resulted in a wobbly pass Sekope Kepu dropped, allowing Jonathan Joseph to swoop and run away for the try.
Consider also Ben Youngs’ try from a tap and run. Michael Hooper, a Wallaby for four years and a vice-captain, turned his back on Youngs after the penalty was called and Kane Douglas, a four-year player, stood flapping his arms while Youngs darted past, leaving Phipps to – unfairly, in my opinion – cop additional flak for missing a difficult tackle he never should have had to make.
Thank too of three-year-player Bernard Foley’s pass to David Pocock, who is a great ruck monkey but not an attacker, when he had the choice of passing it to some of the best attacking players in the world in Hooper, Tevita Kuridrani, Israel Folau or Quade Coope, which ultimately lead to the Joseph intercept and try.
These are just three examples of poor decision-making by experienced players, not to mention three-year-player Kuridrani’s decision to leave Hooper and Phipps to try and clean out five Poms after Folau’s break leading to a pinched ball and a near miss down the other end.
There are plenty of other examples throughout the season: Dean Mumm – a player for eight years! – dumping an Irish player on his head and copping a yellow, Kuridrani and Folau’s unwillingness to pass and Foley at 12 crowding Cooper when he knows very well where a 12 is supposed to stand.
None of this reflects a lack of skill on the part of the Wallabies and it certainly doesn’t reflect difficulties in integrating the debutants, but what it does reflect is attitudinal problems among the more senior players, who are making poor decisions out of carelessness or selfishness.
The Wallabies appear to be missing a culture of personal responsibility, and I wonder from some press reports about how Cheika operates whether the coaching style is causing the problem.
Cheika recently stated that he lets the assistant coaches come up with the game plans while he spends time with the players, ensuring that their emotional state is optimised. He also seems to take a lot of personal responsibility for poor performances on their part – the Scotland game in the world cup is a prime example of him saying he hadn’t prepared the team properly when in fact individual players were just plain sloppy.
The way this would be dealt with in the Australian army, where I spent five years of my youth, would have been to point out to the group what was going wrong and to throw it back onto them to solve. In the army this was usually accompanied by some sort of group reward or punishment – probably not possible with a bunch of elite athletes, but I would have thought the question, ‘How much do you blokes want to win?’ would provide sufficient motivation.
When it is left to the group to solve the problem, it creates internal accountability, which motivate individuals and creates an environment in which leaders emerge.
The layer of leadership from senior players below the captain and vice-captain is lacking in the Wallabies at the moment, which has implications both for decision-making and for the mentoring of new players. The current senior players are probably capable of stepping up, but they have to be allowed to, and if the coach is always sniffing around playing amateur psychologist, I find it hard to see that happening.
If Cheika were to spend less time bothering the players, he would have more time to spend on thinking through game plans with his assistant coaches. While they clearly have vast experience in rugby, the final decision needs to made with time to understand what is being recommended to allow the coach to say yes or no from there – otherwise you end up with a sub-optimal committee decision, with the lack of variety in Wallabies game plans in particular being a symptom of that.
Terry USA
Guest
A great team can cope with pressure. Their fails against England were exactly about a team that needs to be able to live under constant pressure. That Nick Phipps pass was a complere fail. What was that song by Rush? Grace under Pressure.
Doubles
Guest
Gitaeu is rubbish and was always rubbish.. Move on,, His debut started with the decline in aussie rugby..A little research ( Mr google) goes a long way boyz....hahaha..You still didn't answer my question BELOW Baxter played 69 tests and Matt chicken legs Dunning played 45 tests ..Does that make then very very good TEST players ??..hahaha ...No idea Rolls eyes. AAAAARGH. !!!.. THEY JUST WONT LISTEN these un zudders !!!!.... Stick to your own AIG`S bro`s, you have no idea about the Wallabies..
piru
Guest
Doubles the most cursory of searches reveals that Giteau played in 5 winning Bledisloe games. Who were they playing if not the All Blacks? Move on yourself
Doubles
Guest
Sorry bro but Gitaeu has only beaten the ABS once is his career. .Move on.. P.S Al " CROUCH TOUCH EAT GRASS " Baxter played 69 tests and Matt chicken legs Dunning played 45 tests Number of test caps does not equate to being anygood ..HAHAHA .. Get outta here..
piru
Guest
Perhaps that was the plan, Pocock did somewhat of a leadership apprenticeship at the Force under Sharpe. I read an article by a UFC writer once about something Mike Tyson had said about a fight. Now I can't remember exactly what MT's point had been, but the article was about the combined, collective knowledge gained by those involved in a sport as long running as boxing, and how MMA had a long way to go before it could aspire to something similar. MT is not the smartest bloke in the world, but he's trained with some very smart coaches, who've had knowledge passed down from their forebears and so on back in time. Would MT have figured out on his own that he needs to keep his guard up, move his feet a certain way, attack in certain conditions, back off in others? Possibly, but he doesn't need to. Countless men and women have gone before, and learnt the hard way what works and what doesn't to a point where the basics, at least, are universal. I see the Aussie captaincy and leadership in general as a somewhat similar case, but on the other side of the coin. So many different captains who either didn't listen or weren't taught how to lead from the men who came before. The chopping and changing means every new captain has to start again from scratch - this motivates the boys, this doesn't. I can speak to refs like this, but if I speak like that I'll get on their bad side. etc etc. There was a break in the line of captaincy around the time Eales retired, Gregan and Mortlock knew enough and had played with great leaders enough to know how to lead, but what happened then? There didn't seem to be any succession plan, they just sort of started making whoever was the favourite that week captain.
Morsie
Guest
Great post, post of the year.
Neil Back
Roar Rookie
Bozzy, rarely, no never, has anyone so spectacularly or verbosely missed my point or motivation. I simply haven't 'butted' in to big note England or anyone else - merely point out that so much apparent Australian navel gazing and blame gaming is missing the fundamentals. But anyway, at least I allowed you to vent. It looks like you desperately needed to. That's a good thing. Happy Xmas mate.
Boz the Younger
Guest
Neil let's step back for a moment and remember that this article isn't actually about Australian's trying to deny England it's dues for it's recent achievements in rugby. From what I have seen most Aussies are quite prepared to concede that England is the second best team in the World right now and of course the English players deserve a huge amount of credit for that. However, I find your insistence on butting into our discussion that we are having on an Australian rugby website about how our team might improve, in order to big note your own team, to be unsportsmanlike and at odds with the facts. I didn't really want to have to labour this point but the fact is that in the ten years prior to 2016, the Rose's have been pretty bloody ordinary coming from a country with such an enormous rugby playing base. You have lost more games than you have won against Australia, even though we have played a majority of tests at home, and apart from brief stints have generally sat at about 4th in the IRB/WR rankings and have been down to 8th. Furthermore you managed to lose in the pool stage of your own World Cup, a unique achievement. To your point on the decisive factor in your team's improvement being the superior quality of your players, how exactly do you work that out? 13 of your 23 at Twickenham this year played in that World Cup pool game and most of the remainder were available for selection then, or have only replaced injuries this year. There hasn't been such a dramatic improvement in the quality of England's player pool in only one year as to explain these results, the only thing that really has changed is that the RFU hired an Australian to coach your underperforming team! This is a key point, your team is doing better than it has in a decade because it is being coached by a bloke who knows how to do the job, including instilling the right ATTITUDE in the players. He is the same bloke who coached Japan to beat South Africa ... I hope that you aren't going to try to tell me that that was because Japan all of a sudden acquired playing talent better than that of a double RWC superpower. Now that we are again talking about attitude, I would like to address yours. You seem pretty chuffed that your team is finally doing well and so you should be, but before you get too big headed remember that it has only been the case for a year and only because of an Aussie coach. You are carrying on like some All Blacks supporters do about their team right now, but I don't think that your team has nearly the level of achievement under their belt to claim those bragging rights just yet. Lets see how the next couple of years go before you come hear and mouth off like that huh, England still has to face the All Blacks and from what I have seen I don't think they have the backline skills to do it unless the All Blacks are having a bad day. And as I have alluded to, I think the Wallabies have some quite fixable issues at the moment and when they fix them, which they will sooner or later, I think they have a lot more firepower in constructing tries than England is demonstrating. Right now all your team seems to be able to do is to apply pressure and score off mistakes, it works against a team that is vulnerable but I don't think it is going to be a sustainable approach against teams that can play genuine running rugby, and apart from the All Blacks only the Wallabies, Pumas and the Le Bleu's look like they are on the track in that respect right now. And finally I would suggest that if Cheika doesn't succeed in bringing the Wallabies back up to standard by the end of next year, and I genuinely hope he does, he won't be Wallabies coach any more and Eddie Jones will be the very first alternative coach that Bill Pulver will ring to take his place. Furthermore I think Eddie would wipe England like a dirty backside to come and coach his own country again, which would give you the chance to see if your theory that it is the players and not the coaching that wins games, hey. Good luck with that. PS, before you carry on about us blaming others for our misfortunes, why don't you remember back to 2015 and how your entire rugby establishment tried to blame your World Cup woes on a league player that they foolishly installed in a position that he didn't know how to play. Do that and you might get a bit dizzy up there on that high moral ground which you are trying to occupy.
Bakkies
Guest
Pocock was named captain under Deans but he rarely got to lead the team on the field due to injuries.
mikeylives
Guest
"Thank too of three-year-player Bernard Foley’s pass to David Pocock" What the? Hilarious (for so many reasons).
Crackle
Guest
Attitude determines Altitude ?
The Saint
Roar Guru
Hear, hear Piru
The Saint
Roar Guru
Chicken legs (as you put it) played 100+ tests matches for your country. Not many have done that. Does that mean anyone who couldnt play 100 tests for Australia had extra skinnier chicken legs than Giteau? You taken his last 2 outings against the ABs as examples Terry. What about his other games?
piru
Guest
Aussies are funny in that they don't appreciate the players they have. I always rated Giteau and saw him as a danger man against the ABs, Adam Ashley Cooper too, who never got the respect he deserved at home. Is it any wonder these guys go overseas to play where they are appreciated?
The Saint
Roar Guru
Did anybody else hurt the ABs mate?
Neil Back
Roar Rookie
Oh, righto, stop press: ' Australia do better than they should because they try to win.' And everyone else does what exactly? C'mon Boz that's nonsense. The same nonsense that consistently blamed officials, lose of form, the coaches, the local press, injuries, poor selection blah blah blah for every beating. How about man for man the other team has better players and are the better team for a change? End of. I mean, even the supposed superstars like Folau and Pocock are suspect. The latter is one dimesional and the modern game is leaving him behind, the former, wonderful runner and catcher of a ball but suspect in defence, passes appropriately 1 time in 3 and dear god don't ask him to kick a ball. Hooper? No one even has any idea what he is.
Terry
Guest
Jeff, Someone has to call it ..Checka can`t see it..
Terry
Guest
Gitaeu is made of glass ,He is not hard enough for test rugby and has no rugby smarts..His last two outings against the AIG`S he`s been smashed and taken off on a stretcher...Arguably costing us any chance of winning both those games as his brittleness forced a reshuffle and made us have one less reserve ... No more skinny chicken legs Gits thanks..Move on
Red Kev
Guest
Set up no tries and didn't break the line at all during the whole world cup! How was he gonna do the hurting then buddy?!
Fairgame
Guest
Well said Boz!