- Video
-
Club Roar
Captured a great grassroots sporting moment? We want to see it!Content Collections
The Roar Community
- Join
- Login
The Wallabies need to get sharpen up their cohesion and discipline or face a significant defeat against England next week.
That’s the verdict of All Blacks legend Andrew Mehrtens – disputed by Wallabies coach Dave Rennie – after Scotland ended Australia’s five-game winning streak with a 15-13 win at Murrayfield on Monday (AEDT).
Australia were far from their best in beating Japan in their opening game of their Spring Tour and were all at sea at times against Scotland.
The Wallabies missed Quade Cooper and Samu Kerevi in the backline, but also struggled in the scrum, which Wallabies coach Dave Rennie described as “a mess”.
A yellow card to Allan Alaalatoa led to replacement by Taniela Tupou who left the field for a HIA and is in doubt for the England match next weekend.
(Photo by Paul Devlin/SNS Group via Getty Images)
England will be coming into the game off a 69-3 win over Tonga on Sunday.
“England are a side that can pull out an amazing performance,” Mehrtens said on Stan Sport.
“They’re always full of confidence. You know you’re going to get that against England.
“I worry a little bit for the Wallabies because if they keep muddling through like they have in these last two games, if they play like that again they’ll get a heap put on them.
“Hopefully they won’t play like that again.”
Rennie bristled at Mehrtens’ criticism, when asked about it by The Roar.
“He’s a smart man, Mehrts but I don’t agree with that assessment,” said Rennie.
“The Scottish are a strong team and it sounds like he’s disrespecting the ability of them. They were very competitive in the Six Nations. They lost by a late penalty to Ireland, they lost by one point to Wales – they win both those games they win the Six Nations.
“They are a really good side. We didn’t play anywhere near as well as we’d like to. We’ve got to be able to build pressure for longer.
“We got pinged a bit in possession from cleaning out and various other things and we have to make some shifts there. I thought we defended really well and created multiple turnovers and Scotland had a lot of possession.
“We’ve got more in us. We certainly need to be a lot better, and a lot better against England.”
French referee Romain Poite was prominent, and Rennie was struggling to understand some of his calls.
“I thought it was a bit of a mess. We’ll feedback directly to the referee. I guess it’s a tough area to adjudicate. As happens every week around the scrum, I certainly didn’t agree with a number of the decisions.”
But Wallabies fullback Andrew Kellaway said the Australians “can’t come out of those games and expect to win them on the back of the discipline we showed.
“Full credit to Scotland they were good but we let them into the game at pretty crucial times, breakdown penalties and things like that.
“You can’t play games like that and expect to win.
“It was a bit clunky and I’m not so sure why. The discipline didn’t help us. We didn’t really have an opportunity to string together phases, we were giving away penalties at break downs which wasn’t good enough and we need to be better.
“The positive is that it was narrow and close. Disicpline is what really kills us because it’s nobody’s fault but our own. If we tidy up the break down, tidy up that stuff we’ll put ourselves in a position to win the [England] game hopefully.”
Scotland coach Gregor Townsend was pleased his team overcame a tough period as Australia put on 10 unanswered points with Alalaatoa off the park.
“Staying in the fight and then taking the fight to the opposition in those last 10 and 15 minutes,” said Townsend when asked what pleased him most.
“It showed our conditioning, showed our depth of squad. Our bench came on and helped improve the team’s performance.
“And it was pleasing around our scrum. At times we were dominant there. Not every scrum but the majority of them.
“I loved the confidence of our players, not always accurate but they showed confidence to play. There was lots to get excited about but lots to work on as well.”