Saturday's Aussie winner was Sydney club rugby, not the Wallabies

Memo to Michael Cheika: Here is the truth about the outcome of the epic Bledisloe Cup Test at Dunedin won sensationally by the All Blacks 35–29.

In rugby, as in all competitive sporting contests, the team that wins deserves to win.

Michael Cheika’s surly reaction after the Test cast a shadow across what was the fantastic performance from his team.

The Wallabies came back from a shellacking at Sydney to being only minutes away from a victory that would have been one of the greatest achievements ever made by the Wallabies.

As the saying goes, it would have been one of the biggest comebacks since Lazarus returned from the dead.

The Wallabies opened up a 17–0 lead after 20 minutes. They were still leading with 20 minutes of play remaining. In those last enthralling quarter of the Test, with play as exciting and chaotic as any rugby we have seen for decades, the lead changed four times between the two grimly competing sides.

There was so much to like about the play of the Wallabies: a defensive line that rocked the All Blacks runners out of their silky patterns of play, some aggressive and direct running from backs and forwards, a strong lineout and the old-fashioned Australian virtue of going hard to capitalise on the way the bounce of the ball and most of the refereeing calls were going their way.

Given all these positives, it was disappointing that coach Cheika showed a lack of maturity and insight by telling the rugby world: “We should have won that game. We know it.”

Let me say this a second time. The team that wins deserves to win.

(Photo by Hannah Peters/Getty Images)

In other words, the fruits of victory, the exaltation, the highs and the consequences, in this case the All Blacks retaining the Bledisloe Cup in a three-Test series where they had to play two Tests in Australia, always goes the winners.

And once again, Cheika has slammed the match officials: “We did enough (to win) and had a few calls against us  at really important times … Retallick has picked up one of our blokes and put him on his head. Categorically, he’s got his arms through his leg, picked him up and then it’s a free pass …”

The problem with this outburst is that it is categorically wrong. The TMO and referee Nigel Owens, the best referee in the world, both looked carefully at the incident and agreed wasn’t a “clear and obvious foul play.”

Moreover, most of the 50-50 decisions, including probably tries scored by Ben Smith (who had contact with the ball while grounding it) and Brodie Retallick (there was a glimpse of the grounded ball in the video replay) went against the All Blacks.

The fact of the matter is that this obsession with Cheika to bag the referees after defeats, “there were some calls last year in Auckland and we’ve been hit again here,” will not endear him to officials. Nor will it, more importantly, help his team to get rid of the tactics that led to his players giving away penalties.

The penalty count, according to the New Zealand Herald statistics, was 13 conceded by the Wallabies and 6 conceded by the All Blacks.

Five of the penalties conceded by the Wallabies were inside their own 22. The All Blacks did not concede any penalties inside their 22. If these statistics had been reversed, Rod Kafer would have been calling for a sin-bin card.

When we look at the other match statistics we get to see that the scoreline undoubtedly flattered the quality of the Wallabies performance.

Carries: New Zealand 537 – Australia 436
Defenders beaten: New Zealand 32 – Australia 14
Clean Breaks: New Zealand 17 – Australia 9
Offloads: New Zealand 9 – Australia 7
Passes: New Zealand 197 – Australia 123
Turnovers conceded: New Zealand 18 – Australia 9.

This statistic is a tribute to the successful Wallabies defensive system used for the Test that kept, in general, players in their set positions, used line speed to harass the All Blacks runners and concentrated on shutting down space and time of the All Blacks in the wider channels.

Turnovers won: New Zealand 7 – Australia 4
Tackles: New Zealand 94 – Australia 140

These are not statistics that suggest the Wallabies were in charge throughout the game or that the loss is only really explainable with the suggestion of bad refereeing.

What the statistics show quite clearly is that this was a Test that the All Blacks could have won very comfortably.

Why didn’t this happen?

Now we get into the zen of rugby and why it is such an extraordinary and wonderful game to play and watch.

The essence of rugby is this – it is a chaotic game. Every play offers a multitude of possibilities. Intensifying this chaos is the fact that the laws are extremely complex and complicated and that the same set of facts can be interpreted differently by different referees.

Try for instance to explain the offside laws to someone who knows nothing the game (or even some Test players!) and point out the exceptions when there is general play and what constitutes general play with kicks or rucks.

Within the complexity of the laws and the chaos of play, teams can develop systems or structures that give them some certainty about how the next sequence of plays is going to eventuate. Perhaps.

Take the first and the second-to-last sequence of plays in the Tests as examples of how sometimes even the best systems/structures can disrupted but how these systems can create a certain order,  in defence and attack.

In the first sequence, the All Blacks, winning their own kick-off, took play just outside the Wallabies 22, and then ran the ball along their backline.

Damien McKenzie noticed that Israel Folau was hanging back out of the defensive line. McKenzie lobbed the ball to an unmarked player on the outside. Folau sprung forward, caught the ball and raced away for a try.

(AAP Image/Joe Castro)

The Test had been going for 26 seconds.

The shrewd, calculated defensive system employed by the Wallabies offered the All Blacks the possibility of an overlap, a certain try – and a trap.

Folau’s athleticism, his tremendous jumping ability and then his loping speed after the catch, were the elements of the trap that encouraged McKenzie to forgo a simple pass-and-draw play.

The sequence at the end of the Test when the All Blacks had less than three minutes of play to score a winning try was an example of a structured, rehearsed attack creating chaos in the defence, the opposite to the Folau try.

First, the All Blacks won the kickoff by kicking away from left side of the field where Israel Folau, the leaper, was stationed.

Kieran Read put enough pressure on the catcher, as he told his players he would, to force a knock-on which the All Blacks regathered.

The ball was passed along the left side of the field. Then it was brought was back where Read made a break, linked up with TJ Perenara who shot a pass to Beauden Barrett to scoot away for a try under the posts.

This was a remarkable example of several planned systems and structures from the kick-off, to the positioning of players in the attacking lines for the All Blacks that made a try inevitable, if they held on to the ball and made their passes accurately.

It must be remembered, too, that the previous All Blacks try involved 22 phases of passing and running.

What the statistics show is that the All Blacks imposed their structures, in defence and attack, more efficiently than the Wallabies, except for one statistic, “turnovers conceded.” Turnovers are crucial for destroying structured attacks,

And here we have the answer to why the Wallabies almost came out with the most number of points in the Test, despite a statistical blackwash.

The All Blacks made mistakes of handling, particularly, when trying to complete their sequences on attack.

But, and this is the important point, the fact that the Wallabies almost won did not make the case for them deserving to win or “should have won.”

I was never comfortable with the notion that the Wallabies had no show of winning at Dunedin after their shellacking at Sydney.

Each Bledisloe Cup Test is a separate entity or occasion. A previous win or a loss does not guarantee a succeeding win or loss.Each Test has to be played as it happens.

At Sydney, the Wallabies were overwhelmed on the scoreboard in the first half of play but came back to score their second most points ever against the All Blacks in the eventual loss.

At Dunedin the Wallabies had the Test almost won in the first 20 minutes and then conceded a try virtually on the death of play to lose it.

The fact of the matter is that even when the Wallabies lose a sequence of Tests to the All Blacks, they remain capable of defeating them. This is what the Dunedin Test revealed. And in hindsight, with the second half comeback, what the Test at Sydney hinted at, too.

Michael Cheika, therefore, deserves praise for keeping the morale of the Wallabies high after the downer at Sydney. The players at Dunedin played as if they believed in their systems and themselves, unlike Sydney.

One of the main ingredients of good coaching is maintaining the morale and enthusiasm of the side. Michael Cheika has done this and deserves credit for this achievement.

The Wallabies systems on attack and defence, too, were more effective than they were in Sydney in forcing the All Blacks into errors and in allowing some dazzling ensemble play from the Wallabies.

Their surging attacks in the second half, sparked by Will Genia running with the lethal effectiveness of his glory days, showed glimpses of a Wallabies side that is capable of defeating any team in the world.

As a team that has won two out of the eight Rugby World Cup tournaments, this sort of play is what we expect from the Wallabies.

Despite this, the real story over the weekend of the hoped-for renaissance of Australian rugby was not written at Dunedin. It was written in bold type  at North Sydney Oval when Warringah (30) defeated last season’s champions North Sydney (25) in a terrific final of the Shute Shield.

Near enough to 16,000 spectators crowded into the ground to watch an enthralling encounter. As James Lemon pointed out in The Sun-Herald, this crowd was “more than watched the Wallabies play Fiji a few months ago.”

My firm belief has always been that club rugby must remain the heart and soul of rugby in Australia. Everything else, at the higher levels of the game, flows from the life-blood of the club game.

In New Zealand, this still remains the case. Over the weekend, for instance, Wellington and Taranaki played their annual ‘Old-Timers Day’ with the players wearing their club socks to honour their own origins as emerging players and those of the old-timers.

Randwick President Bob Dwyer, a former Rugby World Cup-winning coach of the Wallabies, noted that “with the administration of the ARU and to a lesser extent the Super Rugby teams – they don’t want to pay any attention to us.”

Well, the administrators should.

If they want the Wallabies to start defeating the All Blacks on a regular basis, as they did between 1998 and 2003, the administrators need to start listening to the Bob Dwyers of the Australian rugby world.

To paraphrase the Duke of Wellington, the battle for the Bledisloe Cup will be won on the club fields of Australia.