What an upset! The Wallabies were Cheik-mated at Murrayfield by a speedy, clever, athletic and well-coached Scotland side that played with the flair and efficiency of some of the great Australian sides of past years.
Scotland, bless them, played as if their players had learnt their rugby in Coogee or Manly. There was the northern hemisphere embellishment of the occasional devastating rolling maul by Scotland to keep the Wallabies honest. But even when this tactic was used, it was intended to set up tries, in the southern hemisphere fashion, rather than penalty kicks at goal.
The 53–24 lost to Scotland represents the worst overseas defeat of an Australian Test side, outside of New Zealand, since the Springboks gave the Wallabies a 53–8 thrashing in 2008.
It is also the worst defeat inflicted on the Wallabies by Scotland since the two sides first played a Test against each other in 1908. And to make the victory even more painful for Australian rugby, the eight tries conceded were most the Wallabies have ever given up to Scotland.
There was an element of end-of-tour fatigue, mental and physical, in the final capitulation, admittedly in the leaden-footed and slow-thinking way the Wallabies played.
While the Wallabies were fresh they were competitive, without being totally convincing. Scotland scored two tries in the first half, then a further six in the second.
Before Sekope Kepu was sent off with a red card in the 35th minute, the scoreline was 12–10 to the Wallabies. But it was not a convincing lead. Both the Wallabies’ tries in the first half came within four minutes, in the 34th and 38th minute of play.
Virtually immediately after the second try by Tevita Kuridrani, the Wallabies conceded a second try to Scotland to go 12–17 behind.
Immediately after half-time, playing with 14 men, the Wallabies set up a brilliant 20-phase attack that resulted in a try scored by Kurtley Beale. Bernard Foley missed the relatively easy conversion.
But with the scoreline standing at 17–17 this was the last moment that the Wallabies were in the Test.
Between the 46th and 61st minutes, the Wallabies conceded three tries and saw the scoreline soar to 39–17. The Test was effectively over.
Right at the end of match, after forcing a try of their own by Lopeti Timani, the Wallabies then conceded two further tries that created a 53–24 scoreline that will become iconic in the annals of Scottish rugby.
(Photo by Tim Anger)
It is difficult to play with only 14 men for 45 minutes in a Test. But it was made more difficult for the Wallabies because of their lack of intensity on attack and defence and a general inability to choose the correct plays at the correct times.
The surrender of two tries in the last minutes of the Test, along with a similar surrender against England the week earlier, is a trend that suggests a lack of mental strength in this current side, a worrying sign going into 2018.
What is hard to accept with this scoreline, too, is that it was achieved by Scotland playing the traditional Australian ball-in-hand game in a manner that has only been played occasionally by Wallaby sides as splendidly as Scotland did since the glory days of Stephen Larkham and George Gregan.
I mention Larkham and Gregan because the Australian game has only flourished when the Wallabies had gifted halves, a line that started in modern times with Ken Catchpole and Phil Hawthorne and then Nick Farr-Jones and Mark Ella.
The difference between a gifted number ten, particularly, and a goodish number ten was exemplified with the play of Finn Russell, who was brilliant for Scotland, and Bernard Foley, who was at best steady for the Wallabies.
Russell invariably set up plays or ran himself to create challenges that the dodgy Wallabies defensive system found increasingly difficult to deal with.
It was noticeable, for instance, how flat Russell played, how he ran at the line with the ball in two hands and how, when the Wallabies were a man down, he exploited the lack of back cover with a couple of deft, tantalising kicks into the open spaces in backfield.
Why hasn’t Australian rugby produced a number ten like Russell for over a decade?
One of the great disappointments, so far, of Stephen Larkham’s stint as an assistant coach of the Wallabies has been the lack of development in Foley’s play. Somehow the master has not been able to impart the skills he had in his glory days to the apprentice in his care.
The blame, presumably, belongs to both men.
(AAP Image/Lukas Coch)
The Scottish backline ran terrific lines. They had several plays, with dummy runners, that totally flummoxed the Wallabies defence. These plays looked as if they had come out of the old Randwick playbook in the days of the Galloping Greens.
The weight and timing of the Scotland passes, with the ball invariably being in front of the catcher, provided a lesson to the Wallabies about how passing correctly is the key to running rugby, and to winning rugby.
By way of contrast, the Wallabies tended to pass too high, often behind the runner or directly at their body. The result was that even when they tried to mount an attack it degenerated into a stop (waiting for the pass) and then go sort of attack which too often was easily killed off.
What can we make of all this?
Michael Cheika was cagey in his analysis, even though he couldn’t resist having a little dig at the rugby media. He told journalists after the Test: “We just need to take that extra little step to maturity and we did a lot of good things this season despite what some of you guys think in particular. I’m really proud of the team. I know it didn’t go well for us today.”
(AP Photo/Alastair Grant)
To be fair, the Wallabies did record a victory against the All Blacks. But in the 14 Tests they played this season, they have won only seven. This is not the record of a team that is improving very much at all.
It is not a record that a team aspiring to win the Rugby World Cup in 2019 should present.
To my mind, the generally lacklustre season produced by the Wallabies raises a lot of questions about the coaching and selecting of the side. And this, in turn, raises the further question whether Australian rugby is making the best use of the rugby intelligence and creativity that this country produces.
The fact of the matter is that the best rugby brains produced within Australia are not involved in Australian rugby.
One of the interesting aspects of Scotland’s famous victory is the part played in it by Australians, with some help from a couple of New Zealanders.
The main New Zealander is Vern Cotter, the craggy, taskmaster coach who pulled Scotland from virtual extinction as a rugby power before handing over to Gregor Townsend to add the polish to a team that was no longer one of the easybeats of world rugby.
A second New Zealander, Dave Rennie, the successful coach of the Chiefs recently, has been coaching Glasgow. A lot of the attitude of instilled in the rampant Glasgow team by Rennie has flowed into this Scotland side.
Gregor Townsend himself, like Clive Woodward before him, spent some time in grade rugby in Sydney.
A fine running number ten himself, Townsend has embraced the traditional Sydney style of running rugby that was invented by Arthur Cooper ‘Johnnie’ Wallace, a Waratah in the 1920s, who, in the words of Jack Pollard, “was an incomparable tactician who had a marked influence on running rugby in Scotland and Australia.”
Wallace played Tests for Scotland and Australia in the 1920s, a period when both sides played terrific running rugby. With Australia/New South Wales (the Queensland rugby union did not exist at the time) in 1921, Wallace was the running number ten who sparked a wonderful 17–0 victory at Christchurch.
It is ironic that it is a Scottish coach, Gregor Townsend, who has embraced the Wallace/Waratahs style of ensemble rugby.
Townsend was helped in the coaching box on Saturday night by an assistant coach, Matt Taylor, who was the defence coach for the Reds when they won their Super Rugby title.
The director of rugby in Scotland is Scott Johnson, a long-time Sydney player with a penchant for innovative thinking about rugby. Johnson had a period of time coaching with the Wallabies under John Connolly. But more recently he has been the brains behind getting the personnel in the coaching box and on the field to make Scotland a rugby power again, after a couple of decades of stagnation.
Now here is a task for Ben Whitaker, the High Performance manager for Rugby Australia. Why has Scotland progressed more in the last two years than the Wallabies?
If I were asked this question I would look closely at two aspects of Michael Cheika’s coaching and managing style that seemingly prevent him from assembling the best Australian team, on and off the field.
Aspect one: Cheika is far too easy on his players.
The attitude that “we just need to take that little step of maturity” is nonsense in the context of a thrashing from Scotland.
(Photo by Dan Mullan/Getty Images)
Sekope Kepu is one of the most experienced Wallabies in the squad. He is also immune, apparently, from mature play. His senseless shoulder charge on the Scottish flanker Hamish Watson deserved a red card.
You could read what Kepu was trying to do. Watson was making a nuisance of himself at the breakdown and Kepu tried to smash him. When I saw the reckless way Kepu went into his charge I was reminded of how he put on several head-high charges on Dan Carter in the 2015 Rugby World Cup final.
Remarkably, Cheika defended Kepu. “He’s got no intent to take the player in the head,” Cheika told disbelieving journalists after the match. “The player when you watch him, his back legs slips underneath him, so he gets lower … lower than where Kepu is aiming …”
Tom Decent, the Sydney Morning Herald’s journalist at the Test, reported on this nonsense: “Although Cheika tried to claim Watson fell before contact was made, replays suggested otherwise.”
Kepu, 31, is never going to get out of his habit of smashing in the head of opponents if Cheika continues to defend this indefensible way of playing.
This inability to be tough on his players when tough love is required is matched by Cheika’s tendency to rely too heavily on mates to help him in the coaching of the Wallabies.
A case in point was the appointment of “one of his best mates,” Patrick Molihan as the Wallabies manager.
Molihan is the chap who sits beside Cheika in the coaches box. In the past, but not against Scotland, Molihan is the person who has exhibited the same contorted body language as Cheika when refereeing decisions have gone against the Wallabies.
But why is Molihan in the coaches box in the first place? Why are Stephen Larkham and the other coaches sitting in front of the box and not beside Cheika?
Why doesn’t Cheika sit with his coaches rather than Molihan, as Steve Hansen does with his coaches?
Cheika needs an independent voice in the Wallabies coaching set up to balance his tendency to rely too heavily on mates. This independent voice should be the appointment of a selector rather like Grant Fox for the All Blacks.
The selector I would nominate is Mark Ella.
Right now, without someone like Ella to provide fearless advice, Cheika is not being challenged enough on his selections and the way the Wallabies are playing.
And these two factors, as the thrashing that Scotland handed out to the Wallabies indicates, are creating a scenario where the Wallabies will move down the ranking ladder next year while Scotland and Ireland (with David Nucifora as their High Performance manager) more into the top tier rankings.
ironawe
Guest
Great read. Thank you
ironawe
Guest
Yes! This was so cringeworthy I could hardly watch. Sycophant team manager who'd rather spend time fluffing the coaches ego than down with the team. I bet he ran a bath for Chieks after the game.
Dublin Dave
Guest
Translate George Orwell into Greek, say it in an Australian accent and what do you get? Spiro Zavos. Can there be a more plausible explanation for this rewriting of history to score spurious propaganda points than to say that it is straight out of the activities of the Ministry of Truth as chronicled in Orwell's classic 1984? Double plus ungood! The notion that European teams in general, and "British" teams in particular have traditionally been clueless about back play, which has in contrast always been the preserve of the more successful teams of the Southern Hemisphere is balderdash and should be known as such by someone of Mr Zavos' vintage years. If I am old enough to remember when New Zealand and South African onfield tactics started with the number one and ended with the number 9 or 10 (and I am) then Mr Zavos should be too. To paraphrase Philip Larkin, the modern era of rugby began in 1993 (which was rather late for me) before the end of the South African ban and the 1995 World Cup jamboree. In 1993 there was a change in the laws that was to have the most far-reaching effect on the way the game was played. And then in 1995 Rugby Union went professional (as it had effectively been in all but name south of the equator for a long time). These two events created modern rugby The law change in 1993 was the introduction of the "use it or lose it" approach to the maul which meant that a team whose player was held in the tackle had to recycle the ball away from the point of contest within a reasonable time or else concede a scrum. Hitherto, if the ball did not emerge from such a situation, the scrum was awarded either to the team moving the maul forward or the team that had previously been in possession. The new laws reversed this thinking entirely. The effect was immediate. With the need to move the maul forward no longer the vital issue, coaches urged players not to commit to the breakdown in numbers as they hitherto did. Within a few seasons, rugby Union became to look more and more like rugby league. Instead of the forwards in both teams being concentrated on a small area of the field, packed so tightly that, in the words of one famous All Black coach "you could throw a single blanket over all eight" they were now strung out across the field in two thin lines just like in a rugby league match. Naturally, the tactics required to cope with such a cramped playing area borrowed heavily from rugby league. instead of creating space to outflank a defence, long the hallmark of Union backline tactics, the emphasis shifted to trying to burst through the long thin line of defence. Phrases like "line break" and "attacking pod" emerged in the lexicon of union coaches and commentators for the first time. Inevitably, this move benefited players who grew up playing League or at least playing League and Union interchangeably. Such as Australians. It was that which provided the impetus to Australian rugby Union's greatest era and to two World Cups in the 1990s True: the great rugby nations of the Southern Hemisphere had always dominated the game internationally. But they comprised only South Africa and New Zealand up to this point. And their games were both dominated by their massive, well trained and above all well organised forwards. The great New Zealand players whose names resonate down the years from the 50s 60s and 70s were all forwards: Whineray, Skinner, White (all props--and in the case of Skinner a sporadic boxer) Meads (lock and flanker) Nathan, Tremain, Lochore,Wyllie, Kirkpatrick all back row men. Kirkpatrick was for years New Zealand's record try scorer. As a Number Six!! If New Zealand backs made the headlines it was as half backs or kickers. Sid Going, Chris Laidlaw, Don Clarke, Scintillating runners they were not. It simply was not in their DNA. As for the Springboks. They always knew their great strength was in their size and conditioning. Boer farmers who performed strenuous physical work from dawn to dusk and had a high-protein diet based on the wonderful nutritious fauna of their native land were always physically superior to their European counterparts. Again, the great Springboks of the pre-1993 era were all forwards: Frik Du Preez, Okie Geffen, Johan Claasen, Hennie Muller, Jan Ellis. They steamrollered European teams and won several Grand Slams on European tours before New Zealand managed it for the first time in 1978/79. By contrast, the European teams, including the Lions, tried to compensate for their lack of forward organisation by outsmarting the southern teams in the backs. Who were the great Lions players of the post war era: Jack Kyle, Tony O'Reilly, Butterfield and Davies, Peter Jackson, Mike Gibson and of course the Welsh Wizards who set New Zealand alight in 1971 and inspired the Lions only test series victory in that country. Gareth Edwards, Barry John, JPR Williams, Gerald Davies. But fancy backs are no substitute for well organised forwards. As the late Colin Meads scornfully told the 1966 Lions, whitewashed 4-0 in a test series: "You guys believe in fairy tales. With your lack of organisation, you will never beat us" It wasn't until the 1970s that "British" teams began to take forward play as seriously as SA and NZ. In 1971 in New Zealand they came close to establishing parity with the All Blacks up front. In 1974 in South Africa they trounced the Boks up front. Three years later in New Zealand, they again marmalised the All Black pack but their backs were just not good enough to make that dominance count and they lost the series. Something similar happened in South African in 1980. The sight of the wimpy poms destroying their macho farmers' scrums galvanised the All Blacks into paying attention to back play for perhaps the first time. To be fair, Australia had always paid much more attention to running rugby in the backs but this was explained as a strategy to attract home audiences away from rugby league by making the game more accessible to the casual viewer, rather than an esoteric practice for the well informed able to talk knowledgeably (and tediously) about angles of binding and the arcane arts of the front row. Australian rugby wanted to stand out from the sporting crowd in its own country. So it became flashy. But like the dowdy girl compensating for her shortcomings by wearing short skirts and plunging necklines they got a lot of attention, not so much respect! Look at the record of Australia against Lions teams prior to the 1990s. Pitiful. And against the individual European nations it lagged far behind the achievements of New Zealand and South Africa. Again, a belief in fairy tales. Every now and again a beautiful dream would come true and they would win a spectacular victory but more often than not, they were beaten out of sight. Even Ireland had a winning record against Australia until the world cup of 1987. Professionalism benefited the southern hemisphere first because it had the structures in place to embrace the new changes. Europe took a little longer and is still going through growing pains. But the financial centre of gravity has now moved north. The richest teams are located in England and France and consequently the best players now ply their trade in those countries. Ireland is close behind but with a largely indigenous talent pool. Scotland and Wales have had difficulty restructuring professional rugby to best appeal to their traditional domestic strengths. The standard of play in Europe is what is doing more than anything else to closing the gap with the southern hemisphere countries. Granted, South Africa is in a mess and recently suffered a record defeat to Ireland, a year after losing to them at home for the first time. New Zealand, as always, is ahead of everyone else and Australia has gradually lost the "first mover advantage" that came with rugby evolving into a version of the game with which it had more familiarity than anything else. But good running backs: that's something we always had up here.
Marlin
Guest
plus the bench didn't add much...
DC NZ
Guest
Imho Chieka is a mug and he's run out of flukey tricks. So he jagged a win vs the All Blacks in a dead rubber. Without that effort 2017 is a shocker for him. He got skinned and out-thought vs sco and England ...
Jokerman
Roar Guru
Yes but just don’t get too fixed into this fantasy, Conner. It would be very unfortunate if you end up like Folau.
Machpants
Roar Guru
WOW
Machpants
Roar Guru
Including watching Cheika, then covering his face just like him, during the England match. It was bizarre
double agent
Guest
Thought Knox was at the Brumbies. It's a long time ago now. He could be a genius on his day.
double agent
Guest
They were 1.60 in the UK.
ClarkeG
Guest
On the back of one match where the referee apparently caused Aust no problems he is suddenly elevated to being "by far the best in the world".
Killaku
Guest
But you will suck even more if you get rid of the Fijians
Cuw
Guest
perhaps u shud say , he understands how to create a working culture. all coaches / managers of anything know the relationship between team and culture. the success or failure depends on how they go about it or implement it . for eg. there was an auzzy cricket coach ( forgot his name) who treated the team like schoolboys - giving them homework. then there is the case of Cotter - Scotland - and rabbitgate. i think a while back there was a saffa coach who took the team thru special forces training. the current England cricket team is having a sort of cultural issue - perhaps not. there will be millions of such example , not just in sport but in everything under the sun.
Cuw
Guest
LOL ur infatuation with Barnes is hillarios :) he is good for all NH teams , when they play SH teams. it is not bias , just the way he refs.
piru
Roar Rookie
Deans was so bad , that there were suspicions that he was a mole for the NZRU Not from anyone reasonable there weren't
Harry
Guest
"Deans was so bad , that there were suspicions that he was a mole for the NZRU." Wow. Pass around the tin foil hats mate. And let me get this straight, Cheika has inherited Dean's mess? Wasn't Link in there somewhere too? Or was the mess that Deans made so big that, four years after he was forced out, the combined forces of the ARU and 2 subsequent Wallaby coaches can't sort it out? Ironically, you are mimicking the exact same attitude the article implies is holding Australian rugby back, i.e. a refusal to face facts and take responsibility.
Bakkies
Guest
They're Queenslanders and not relevant to Sheek's point about NSW's inability to develop flyhalfs over the past 30 odd years.
Bakkies
Guest
Nucifora wanted to get rid of the senior players in 2004 to bring in young players. Some like Joe Roff were due to retire others were looking at playing on. Players were going to come in regardless. It would have been madness to bring in young players and have halfbacks with one or two years of Super Rugby experience steering them around the park.
JP
Guest
Foley is not the best 10,.Rubbish.He is a protected species.-No one else is ever give a go to see if they are better. Quade was better at 10 when given a cameo last year,but then chopped as he showed up Chekkos little pet. Foley is the worst 10 i have ever seen play for a tier one team.
ClarkeG
Guest
Yep fair points Cuw. It could be argued that Koroibete was simply completing a tackle that he had committed to but is that an excuse. Certainly wasn't in Charlie Faumuina's case in the 2nd Lions Test. Common sense would suggest that Seymour was not in possession of the ball when he was tackled as at this point it was not at all possible that he might have regained it before it became a knock on i.e. touched the ground. But anyways I'm surprised there was no reaction from Scotland because if Seymour is not taken out of play then he is still there to cover the channel that Foley run through and the try is not scored.