- Video
-
Club Roar
Captured a great grassroots sporting moment? We want to see it!Content Collections
The Roar Community
- Join
- Login
The Australian Super Rugby conference is sorted for 2017, with the Brumbies wrapping up an unassailable lead fairly convincingly on Saturday night. It gives the ACT-based side breathing room and immense satisfaction heading into the June Internationals.
And the June Tests represent the first chance we get to see if Waratahs and Wallabies backrower Michael Hooper’s great premonition from a few weeks ago is correct.
“The ability to separate [Super Rugby form and Test Match intensity] is something that the Wallabies have always been good at and something that the coaching staff will definitely look into,” he said at the Wallabies 2017 jersey launch last month.
“It’s actually a lot easier than you think.
“You’re coming in, a fresh environment, fresh faces, so there’s a lot of enthusiasm to, not leave that stuff behind, but take what you’ve learned and take it in and pool it in together to go forward.
“That’s the good thing about having all fresh faces; new people to bounce ideas off and a new challenge ahead.”
Oh, thank goodness for that, Michael!
It matters not that the Australian sides – and by definition, the players – have flittered between various guises of decent, average, and bloody ordinary over the last 15 weeks; just bring thirty-odd players into a fresh environment, give them some new training kit, and everything will be rosy. I mean, it worked so well this time last year, didn’t it?
And this is going to be Michael Cheika’s biggest challenge as Wallabies coach. Even bigger than what he managed to achieve with the 2015 playing group.
(AP Photo/Alastair Grant)
The form of the Australian professional rugby pool in 2017 isn’t as good as it was in 2015. And it wasn’t great in 2015 anyway. But this year, there’s no returning cavalry from Europe with big game experience in tough finals matches. No-one has a winner’s medal around their neck.
How Cheika turns the form of the 2017 group around – or doesn’t – could be his Wallabies coaching legacy.
More worrying for Cheika will be the Super Rugby output from the pillars of the Wallabies’ game plan this year, and in particular, from his assistant coaches implementing parts of those pillars at Super Rugby level.
Wallabies defence coach, Nathan Grey, carries that same clipboard at the Waratahs. And he’s even out on the field with them running the water and giving them the messages they need during games.
After 15 rounds, the Waratahs have conceded 442 points, and at an average of 34 points per game. Only the 15th-placed Cheetahs, the 17th-placed Rebels, and 18th-placed Sunwolves have worse defensive records.
Wallabies attack coach, Stephen Larkham, will have been employing parts of the Wallabies patterns with the Brumbies this year.
After 15 rounds, the Brumbies have scored just 290 points this season, an average of 22.3 points per game. Only five teams have scored fewer, and they’re all in the bottom six. (And three of them are Australian, but that’s for another day.)
Using New Zealand as a rugby benchmark rarely ends well these days, and nor will it right now. Against New Zealand sides this year, the Waratahs blow out to conceding 41.8 points per game; an extra converted try and a bit.
Similarly, the Brumbies’ already meagre scoring average plummets further to 14.8 points per game against the Kiwis. That’s an extra converted try – plus they don’t score.
This is what confronts Michael Cheika in Melbourne this week, as the Wallabies gear up for their first international on the year. A huge Fijian and Pacific Island rugby-loving contingent in Melbourne will greet both Australian and Fiji onto AAMI Park, and they’ll be expecting a high-quality game.
Somehow, Cheika needs to improve the players’ attitude toward defence. Grey, last year, infamously declared that fixing defensive lapses was ‘easy’, and he was talking almost solely about attitude. Too many Waratahs players this season have been lax in getting to where a tackle needs to be made, or leaving it for the guy next to them. That has to stop in a Waratahs jersey, but it cannot happen in a Wallabies jersey at all.
Cheika needs to ensure that. Grey will implement a defensive system that may or may not be the same as what the ‘Tahs have been using, but it will be up the Cheika to ensure the players buy in overwhelmingly.
What will be a bit harder is to fix all the very evident attacking skill error plaguing Australian players this season.
The Brumbies have looked to hold more possession and play with more attacking intent since their Round 11 bye, but they’ve been let down repeatedly by poor skills, terrible decision-making, or worse, sometimes both.
Larkham will be similarly be looking to implement a gameplan with this attacking intent, but unlike defence, you can’t lift skill levels with an attitude shift.
It’s going to require high standards at training over this next month, and something – anything – that will assist the players in not panicking under pressure and making poor decisions.
How Cheika makes all this will be quite interesting to watch over the next three weeks.
He’s absolutely done the right thing bringing in the new faces and exciting talent for these Tests, but he cannot allow, nor accept them bringing their inconsistent Super Rugby form with them.