The quick fix: What the Wallabies can change in a week

The Sydney Bledisloe is done, and though the extent of the result still stings, it now has to be consigned to history like every other painful trans-Tasman loss in as far back as you’d care to remember.

The most important Bledisloe Cup match is the next one: this Saturday at Eden Park.

The New Zealand and Australian teams will roll in through today; they may already be out by the time you’re reading this. Both teams will be forced into some changes, while others may be made voluntarily. Some changes might make sense, others won’t.

But the teams named are really secondary to all this week’s groundwork. The 23 that take the field for each side on Saturday night are simply delivering the gameplan prepared by the broader playing groups this week.

And yes, for the Wallabies, this week’s preparations are crucial to keeping the Bledisloe Cup alive in 2018.

A week is a long time in rugby, as we all know, but it can go remarkably quick when you’ve suddenly got a couple of things you really need to work on.

That’s the task Autralia will complete today on Waiheke Island off Auckland in the picturesque Hauraki Gulf, with their ‘work ons’ rather obvious.

The scrum
Selection is likely to be the major source of improvement here, and undoubtedly sits on the fitness of Scott Sio and Taniela Tupou, who were both ruled out of Bledisloe 1.

Sio has trained and is tipped a good chance of being passed fit, but while Tupou has also trained, he’s either sat sessions out or hasn’t finished them, so he’s unlikely to be named.

Jermaine Ainsley certainly battled when he came on for Sekope Kepu last week, but plenty of Wallabies tightheads have in their first couple of Tests. The question then becomes one of whether a kind-of fit ‘Tongan Thor’ is a better bet than a fully fit rookie tighthead.

Kepu’s issues with his bind, and Ainsley being worked over by All Blacks loosehead Tim Perry in the closing stages in Sydney will already have been identified in their reviews this week, but they also wouldn’t have to go back too far to find success against a quality pack.

Australia didn’t lose a scrum on their own feed across the three Tests in June, even managing to force a couple of tightheads on the Ireland feed. They know they’re capable of competing with the best packs in the game, because they did just that not that long ago.

Taniela Tupou (Photo by Jono Searle/Getty Images)

The lineout
Again, the Ireland series can provide the blueprint for what worked well against an outfit that included Devin Toner and Peter O’Mahoney.

Australia’s record across the three Tests was 13-16 in Brisbane, 11-12 in Melbourne, and 10-10 in Sydney; Ireland’s went the opposite way, starting perfect in Brisbane and losing two on their own throw in Sydney.

Better still, the Wallabies had lineout success in the first half of Bledisloe 1, with Izack Rodda winning one and disrupting another All Blacks throw in the Australian half. Of course, while New Zealand won 9-12 on their own throw, the Wallabies lost eight from theirs.

Part of the successful formula in June – Reds hooker Brandon Paenga-Amosa – can’t be recalled, having strangely been left out of the Bledisloe squad, with Tatafu Polota-Nau returning from England.

But the Wallabies can help themselves with some smarter tactics and better choices of when and where on the field to go with the full seven-man or the shorter four-man lineout.

They can certainly make the thrower’s job easier by not continually calling to the back and allowing an easy Kiwi contest in front of them.

They were smarter in June against Ireland. And the lineout was solid.

Photo by Cameron Spencer/Getty Images

The offloads
Tipping panel colleague Harry Jones raised some interesting figures in his analysis piece on Wednesday, including that “the Wallabies only offloaded five times per Test on average” against Ireland in June.

In Sydney last weekend, Australia got nine offloads away but, as we know, shelled more than a few others as well, with many of them leading directly to New Zealand tries.

If holding the ball against Ireland was a coach-driven directive, as Harry opined it typically is, then the opposite must also be true – that there was a directive from Michael Cheika to offload more in Sydney and try to get the ball in behind the All Blacks defenders.

And it worked well in the first half. Again, we’ve all noted this.

But where the Wallabies conceded a turnover from roughly seven or eight per cent of all carries in June, last weekend it was 18 turnovers from 124 carries.

The easy thing to do in Auckland would be to tuck the ball under the arm, but the Wallabies already know that a multi-phase possession game against New Zealand doesn’t often work in the face of the best-performing defence in the game.

They need to keep looking for the offload, but pick their moments better. We all know and the first half in Sydney showed that an effective way of preventing the All Blacks scoring is to minimise their opportunities.