A ‘take the three points’ model for the Wallabies is available

My solution is to make the kicker the captain. Made a rep team as a 16 year old; was fullback, captain and kicker (to be clear, I was competing against a very limited field; so the least bad of a not very good bunch, which was borne out by our subsequent underwhelming results). On the flight over to the tournament, coach came and sat next to me to discuss game management. He got to the bit about 'taking the points' and I just smiled and said words to the effect of 'Coach, I'm the kicker... I'll be taking every chance I get to have a shot' . Simple :happy:

Now that "Jake Ball" is a player and not a style of play I'm getting a little confused here. :laughing:

Good point. And if the viewer's not staying until the end due to boring play well then you've lost them. Although personally I'm more likely to watch a sport I'd not usually watch (say, basketball) in the last quarter. If it's a close ending I'll often feel like watching a full game after that.

Sounds good Geoff, glad you went yesterday, your beef ribs would have got very soggy today... :silly:

Needs a captain with rugby smarts and the Wallabies don’t have that

The boys had Chicken and Chorizo Paella for their lunch, so I got to keep the ribs for myself! Two new Argentine players (prop and lock) are both in quarantine. Otherwise the vast majority of the squad are fit and will be ready for round 2, following the bye.

that's the reality for confirmed fans which is good as far as it goes but if the plan is to make the game more appealing to non-rugby fans then a change of approach on the field in needed. Players need to know when to give it a go and when not to (part of that whole "play what's in front of you" philosophy Deans was trying to teach). Even rugby fans applaud when a team forsakes a penalty kick for a go at the tryline (mauling or otherwise) although they also appreciate the three points!

jim, our 15 have ridden into the jaws of death on many occasions! Cheers

I understand your point but in reality there is no better way to end a match than to see 2 teams desperate for points in a closely contested match with 10min to go.

I think there is another factor also and that is time. I don’t know what the stats are on successful tries per 50m entry and the relative time a corner penalty & try takes vs a penalty goal, but maybe it is half the time? I expect that if a team regularly kicks goals when goals are there to be kicked they will see a restart and get the ball back for an attacking play maybe double that of a team that kicks for the corner and gets a try (or fails to). So you can adopt a strategy of being restart specialists in conjunction with a policy of taking the points. There are lots of nuances here – unfortunately WB strategy has been without nuance for some time.

Yes mate. If you have kickers that are 85% certain of getting the three points every time you are in the oppositions half and inside a 45 degree angle then you can get a lot of points very quickly with limited risk. The fact is that a kick at goal is uncontested. Kicking to a contested lineout has nowhere near the certainty unless you are clearly dominating the lineouts. But at the end of the day, as others have said it just requires a simple assessment on the field at the time and for the best option to be selected based on the situation.

IMO it goes down to this "strange" mantra of the belief there is an Aussie way to play, "running rugby" and giving the crowds what they want. To me, this is a clear sign of the weakness of management over the last X years as they try to recreate the brilliance of the earlier Wallaby teams through marketing sleight of hand rather than getting the basics right. Impatience for results led to short cuts in the decision making and now...... the poll to decide which jersey to wear in the future. Who gives a toss? If there are points available; take them. If every point in a win is scored from kicks then who cares? Next match it might be all tries and, the match after a combination. Play the bloody game in front of you. When I was in Pommieland , the local pub bores used to laugh whenever the cry went out to run the ball and not take the kick. They would call it the the Aussie charge as in "the charge of light brigade" ; superficially glorious but ultimately futile

Well said Tony. I also love that the Brumbies consistently win. If the Wallabies win more games by kicking more penalties I’ll be thrilled. I think most Wallabies supporters would feel the same.

Kick the goals. I've seen this very thing nearly tip over much better teams twice and a number of times inferior Crusaders' teams over come better super opposition in the early years. The best example of it was in 2003 when Auckland came down to Christchurch. Mehrts was playing for Canterbury after being not wanted for the WC. Auckland scored a hat full of tries and he kept Canterbury in the game by kicking penalties (and a droppie IIRC) and putting them in the correct parts of the ground and manipulating the opposition in front of him. Eventually Canterbury scored a try and it was one score away from snatching a game they otherwise shouldn't have been close to. People often say that player X won the game for a team but I've never seen (before or since) such a tactical, technical, cerebral example of where an individual was that influential over a collective. Taking the points and applying scoreboard pressure and subsequent possession and field pressure does funny things to the oppo. BTW the second example was a NZ Schools final between CBHS and one of the big Northern high schools. Same deal the team hang tough and the 5/8 kicked goals and put them round the field til they scored a try and really put the wind up their bigger and more fancied rivals.

How did the beef ribs go? :laughing:

Indeed! The best rugby is like the best diet: rich and varied. Mauls, in moderation, make every other part of the game more interesting, and they all, in moderation, make mauls interesting, too.

But the Brumbies have gone from one extreme to the other. They need to find a balance. Look at the Hurricanes vs Brumbies game in Palmerston North in 2019; the only times the Brumbies looked like scoring tries was from about 10m out whereas you knew the Hurricanes could score from anywhere and they became the team to watch. The Hurricanes pack was serviceable enough to give the backs the ball they need; that's the balance, I reckon.

The big decline in crowd numbers was well before that, in the era when we started getting regularly beaten at home because we ran at all costs without the players to make it work. I take your point about league fans being interested in the running, but there's no point trying to become a game solely about running and big hits, because league already exists. Rugby's value proposition is entirely different.

easy as; just look at the Brumbies crowd figures over the last few years. They were winning games but less people were watching them. It even got to the point where officials had to exhort people to come and watch -- a crowd of 6000 was one figure I recall. Australia's most successful Super Rugby ever was going broke. I had I'm also talking about new fans here. I've posted this before but a few years ago, at a pub in Parramatta when the Eels were getting ready to host the Dragons, I was watching the M10 on TV (Waikato versus Otago). Fans from both sides on their way out to get to the stadium stopped for several seconds to watch the game and I could hear them ask who was playing; the Kiwi in their crowd answered for them (it helped that Otago's colours were similar to the Eels). They were attracted by the running, not mauling.

Are you sure? I’ve never seen a survey that shows mauls or successive try line rucks wrestling are in any way a problem with attracting fans. The stoppages that frequently go with them, however… They are also fundamental to the game. Cricket won’t abandon straight arms for bowling just because it’s a bit nonsensical to outsiders.