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Historically, the set scrum has always been regarded as the Achilles heel of the Australian team in the Northern Hemisphere. For every ‘Topo’ Rodriguez, Andy McIntyre and Richard Harry Australia has produced, there have been two or three Matt Dunnings, Guy Shepherdsons and Al Baxters.
But that perception is already in the process of change, and by 2019 it could become obsolete. Even allowing for the absence of some top front-rowers plying their trade in Europe, like Paul Alo-Emile and Greg Holmes, there is a crop of youngsters coming through to the top level who will give Wallabies coach Michael Cheika an enviable pool of talent from which to select in the build-up to the next World Cup.
There are some logistical problems to solve, but if Cheika and the ARU can get the players they want playing in the right positions during the coming Super Rugby season, the future looks promising.
The following questions will need to be answered in the course of the 2017 season. The purpose of this article is to give a picture of what some of the answers to those questions might be.
• Has Scott Sio improved since his yellow card in the first Test of the summer series against England?
• Can Sekope Kepu maintain peak form with the Waratahs?
• Which side of the front row should Allan Alaalatoa and Tom Robertson be playing on?
• Can James Slipper keep his place in the match-day quartet of Wallaby props?
The key tour game in assessing Scott Sio’s progress was the final end-of-year tour international against England. Sio had been singled out for the Romain Poite ‘treatment’ in the first Test of the summer series and yellow-carded in his personal duel with crafty Leicester veteran Dan Cole. He lost face so much that Michael Cheika de-selected him from the match-day 23 for the following week entirely.
Since then, Sio has quietly returned to the starting line-up, but the repairs to his scrummaging technique were to be fully road-tested by his old nemesis in the final major international of 2016.
Honours were roughly even while the starting front-rows remained on the field. England won the penalty count 2-1 at scrum time, but Australia won a crucial ball against the feed which led directly to their first try at 6:28.
That first scrum of the game distilled both the essence of the scrummaging contest and Scott Sio’s progress since June. England win the initial engagement and Cole is in a lower and more dynamic position than Sio at 6:29, forcing the Wallaby loose-head to ‘give’ with his outside foot a couple of seconds later, after England kick the ball through into the Australian scrum.
However, both Sio and Kepu come back strongly in the final phase of the set-piece, with Sio in the lower and more compact position at 6:33 – so it is the Wallabies who finish the more convincingly of the two scrums.
This was not the only occasion that the Wallabies scrum provided a solid foundation for back-line attacks. Early in the game (at 11:15 and 12:25) Australia twice crossed the England goal-line to score ‘tries’ without a clear grounding of the ball, and at 36:58 another clean scrum win enabled Dane Haylett-Petty to break past Ben Youngs and create a clear attacking opportunity.
Sio and Australia also defended well at a dangerous five-metre scrum situation at 25:30. In my article before the June series, I noted England’s bread and butter on their own feed is a left-to-right movement with Dan Cole walking around the opposing loose-head to create the impression of ‘dominance’:
This is the manoeuvre that cost Sio a warning from Poite, and ultimately a yellow card and the temporary loss of place in the Australian run-on side. But when Cole attempts to shift his right leg outside at 25:32, this time Sio has the solution. He makes sure he stays on the outside and that Cole’s right hip remains inside his right shoulder, so that no ‘walk-around’ is possible. Michael Hooper completes the sequence with a thunderous hit to uproot England’s biggest ball-carrier, 125kg number 8 Nathan Hughes.
Sio can still become over-extended under pressure, which makes him vulnerable to a tight-head with a ‘jackhammer’ right-arm bind (see the examples at 42:48 and 53:35 with Cole dropping down and inside to the floor as soon as he feels Sio over-extend, and Rabah Slimani repeating the same action in the final scrum of the France reel) but the incidences are far less frequent than they were earlier in the season – one penalty conceded against Cole and an escape without punishment in the final critical moments of the game against France.
So the answer to the first two questions is ‘yes’ on both counts. Sio has improved to the level where he can at least match wits with a wily old operator like Cole, and Kepu is still functioning near the peak of his powers at the age of 30 years old – see his dominant eruption through Dylan Hartley’s bind on Mako Vunipola at 12:30.
The scenario with the two youngest and most inexperienced members of Australia’s match-day squad in the front row, Tom Robertson and Allan Alaalatoa, is rather more complicated.
Alaalatoa spent all of the 2016 Super Rugby season alternating with Scott Sio on the Brumbies’ loose-head, while Robertson was part of a revival in front row fortunes for the Waratahs in the second half of their season, but playing at tight-head.
With the Wallabies, and presumably on Mario Ledesma’s advice, both have been required to swap sides, with Alaalatoa moving to number 3 and Robertson shifting over to number 1.
Alaalatoa made his first start at tight-head for the Wallabies against France on tour, after several promising cameos off the bench which formed part of this article.
There were no problems on Alaalatoa’s side of the scrum throughout the match, and his performance at scrum time ranged from satisfactory to excellent. Perhaps his finest scrum of the game occurred at 50:15, with France defending a feed only five metres out from their own goal-line.
The tight-head’s job in this situation is to make the life of his opposite number (Toulouse debutant Cyrille Baille) as uncomfortable as possible. At 50:15, Baille is steady in his initial set, sitting on the shoulders of his second rower (number 4) and the openside flanker (number 7). One jolt of power from Alaalatoa two seconds later and the situation is not the same at all. Suddenly Baille’s inside leg has slipped back behind the shoulder of his lock, and the number 7 has lost his support shape on the other side. Alaalatoa drills through and France are struggling to get the ball away cleanly.
Unfortunately, matters did not go so well on the other side of the scrum for Australia, or when Alaalatoa was pulled off and replaced by Tom Robertson. The starting Wallabies loose-head, James Slipper, had trouble containing the huge bulk and power of Uini Atonio (all 154 kilograms of him) even though Atonio has no great reputation in France as a scrummager.
Slipper was continually forced inwards and downwards (sometimes to the point of complete disappearance, as at 59:30) and conceded two penalties as a result. When Tom Robertson replaced Alaalatoa, the aerial shots at 78:25, 79:34 and 81:03 confirmed the huge disparity in size between him and his opposite number, Toulon’s Xavier Chiocci. Robertson is listed at 111 kgs while Chiocci is closer to 125 kgs, and it requires superb technique for a tight-head to offset such a basic disadvantage in weight.
Both Slipper’s difficulty in holding up against opponents on a strong angle inside, and Robertson’s issues with technique and size on the tight-head were observed in the article about play off the bench (in the two Rugby Championship matches against the Springboks), so this was a case of deja vu.
I believe switching Robertson to loose-head, and gaining Alaalatoa further experience at tight-head, are two ‘must-haves’ for the Wallabies coaching staff in the upcoming Super Rugby season. But it will be a test of what Ben Darwin calls the cohesion of Australian rugby whether both are given that opportunity.
The Waratahs already have Paddy Ryan successfully reinventing himself at number 1, and the Brumbies can already field Ben Alexander and Les Makin on the other side. In New Zealand, the national requirements would be prioritised and both Robertson and Alaalatoa would get the exposure they need, and in the position they need it in 2017. In Australia, ‘the pyramid of priority’ is less clear-cut.
Overall, this does not detract from a very promising situation in terms of Australian propping stocks. Despite the loss of seasoned front-rowers to Europe, a solid corps is emerging within the country in the build-up to Japan 2019.
Sekope Kepu is playing near the peak of his powers and will still be in the frame at 33 years of age then, while the upward curve of Scott Sio’s progress has resumed after the mid-year setbacks of 2016.
James Slipper has the experience but will come under pressure for his bench spot from the ‘twin Tah’ pincer attack of Tom Robertson and Paddy Ryan, while Alaalatoa and Taniela Tupou both have breathing space in which to develop their games in the comforting shadow on Kepu’s excellence.
It is a positive scenario the Wallabies have not experienced for some time.