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What a difference a week makes. Only seven days ago, it all looked rosy for the southern hemisphere. A four-nil clean sweep, with the All Blacks putting 40 points on Ireland and 14 Australians getting the best of 15 Englishmen. Order had been restored, after subtle hints of a change in the balance of power last November.
Or so it appeared.
Now the rugby world has been turned on its head again in round two, and given a shake so severe that nobody knows quite what to believe. Where the South looked to have landed a knockout blow in round one, suddenly the North was back on its feet as unexpectedly as Tyson Fury at the Staples Center. Playing rope-a-dope. Suckering the south into a false sense of security.
History was made in Dunedin and Bloemfontein, with Ireland and Wales achieving their first-ever wins on New Zealand and South African soil, respectively. Scotland came back convincingly to restore the balance against the Pumas in Salta, and England levelled the series at the Suncorp.
The reverse whitewash was accompanied by some noticeable shifts in the physical balance of power. For the first time that anyone can remember, the Springboks were held try-less at home, unable to score from their patented close-range driving lineout against the Dragons. The game in Dunedin showed how easily a deal made with the devil in the grey areas of contact can flip on its head. Richie McCaw and his mates knew exactly when to push the boundaries and when to back off, but the current lot do not.
In Brisbane, the Australian forwards again suffered in and around the lineout. There is a skull beneath the skin of the raw stats, which say that both Australia and England lost only two of their own deliveries – 10 out of 12 for the Wallabies and 13 of 15 for the Red Rose. Matt Philip even won three first touches, two of which became legitimate steals, against the throw.
Those steals in the air were far outweighed by what happened when the ball returned to terra firma. Prior to the start of the series, Wallaby forwards coach Dan McKellar had been setting some ambitious targets for his charges at the lineout drive:
“It’s a big part of their [England’s] DNA, isn’t it? The set-piece and that physicality and brutality, and it’s something we’re trying to bring to this group of forwards here.
“They’ll be strong at set-piece; Maro Itoje, Courtney Lawes, Jamie George, they’re world class. It’s an enormous challenge for us.
“We’re trying to develop a mindset here of having the best maul in the world. That takes time, there are five groups of players that come from different franchises and they all do it differently, so the buy-in and thirst for it has been obvious from my end.”
“It’s just about mauling better, isn’t it? The reality is in Test match rugby games are often tight, so when the opportunity comes to take points, you generally take the points – whereas in Super Rugby bonus points over the course of the season, if you’re scoring tries, [are more] important.
“Opportunities in Test rugby are less, but when we do take them, we’ve got to be better. Mauling’s one part of it, there’s a whole lot to being a good forward pack, but it’s an area that we’ve identified that can certainly make some shifts.”
With those comments still reverberating in the mind of every Australian rugby supporter, it is even more of a surprise that Australia have chosen to persevere with a 5-3 bench split in the two Tests so far, especially after Eddie Jones pulled the cover off his intentions so explicitly with a 6-2 division at the Suncorp.
Forget Owen Farrell and Marcus Smith, the threat was never going to come from the England backs in a team which had only scored three tries in its four primary contests (excluding Italy) during the Six Nations. It was going to come from much closer to source, from the forwards. That is where Australia have missed the injured Jed Holloway – as either their starting number 6, or that vital sixth man on the pine.
Logistically, Australia needed their two extra outside backs because of two more victims of the witch’s curse in Brisbane (Izaia Perese and Jordie Petaia). Tactically, they should have been seriously considering the idea of six forwards on the bench throughout the series, well before England ever arrived on Aussie shores.
On the evidence of the last two matches, McKellar’s lofty hopes for the Wallaby forwards are a distant mirage, because the Australian lineout has come second best by a long way, especially after the receipt has been made and the ball has come back to earth.
The meaningful stats from the match at Lang Park are as follows:
5th minute – England drive, try and seven points [0-7].
9th minute – Australian drive stolen, penalty goal [0-10].
21st minute – England drive, Perese yellow card and penalty goal [0-13].
31st minute – England drive, penalty goal [0-16].
46th minute – Australian drive, try on 12th phase [7-16].
62nd minute – England drive, Smith yellow card finished at end of sequence [7-16]
63rd minute – Australian drive, turnover ‘not straight’ [7-16].
73rd minute – England drive, penalty goal missed [7-16].
16 out of the first 19 points scored by England derived from the driving lineout. Ultimately the men in white earned their one try of the game, four realistic penalty goal shots, drew one yellow card on the Wallabies and two vital goal-line turnovers all from the same source.
On their own ball, the Wallabies have had trouble getting the ball away from takes by Caderyn Neville in both the Tests so far:
In the first example from the match in Perth, the ball stays in the second layer of the maul, and is too close to number 19 Olly Chessum for too long to avoid a turnover scrum. In the second instance, Neville is sacked and robbed immediately, and that led to England’s fist penalty goal of the game.
Australia had scored a good lineout drive try in Perth:
When they went to the well for a second time from the same formation, they quickly found that the defensive landscape had changed:
In both cases, Matt Philip is on the outside corner of a catch by Neville and looking to peel three or four England forwards away from the head of the drive. Where he manages to shed three English forwards like husks, and free up Folau Fainga’a for a burst to the line at the Optus, at the Suncorp they stick to him like glue and progress grinds to a halt. Although Australia eventually scored through Samu Kerevi on the 12th phase of this sequence, the try did not come because of maul dominance, but in despite of it.
On the England throw, there were signs that the Wallabies had still not learned some important lessons. Their try from lineout was a bare-faced carbon-copy of one conceded in November against Scotland:
In both scenarios, the Wallabies commit to the first point-of-receipt much too hard and open the way for a shift drive down to the much more thinly-defended area at the front of the line. They did much the same against Wales too:
On other occasions, the England forwards rolled around the main Australian maul defender (Caderyn Neville) far too easily for comfort:
The receiver (Jonny Hill) has turned a full 180 and is leading the drive through only a couple of seconds after making the catch, leaving no less than five Wallaby forwards on the wrong side of the play. The maul rolled all the way up to a couple of metres from the goal-line before it was stopped, and it ended with Izaia Perese dismissed for a deliberate knock forward when England moved the ball back to the left edge.
The climactic moment England’s domination of the maul arrived in the 62nd minute, with the men in white trucking the ball upfield for 30 metres at a brisk trot, in a sequence reminiscent of an England lineout drive back in the halcyon days – at Melbourne on the eve of the 2003 World Cup:
Progress is not quite as spectacular as it was in Victoria 19 years ago, and it does not end with either a try or penalty to England. But the time and energy expended burned off the last minute and a half of Marcus Smith’s yellow card deep in Australian territory.
When the Wallabies finally regained attacking position one minute later, England were back to a full complement of players, and the green-and-gold could not match either the accuracy or the brutality of their opponents in the physical core of the game:
Matt Philip is through on the outside corner of a take by Nick Frost, but the throw is not straight. The event neatly represented the growing difference between the two sets of forwards at lineout.
Summary
Dan McKellar has set the bar high, very high for the forwards he coaches. He wants them dominating the maul, even though historically that aspect of the game has been the preserve of rugby nations like South Africa and England.
Australia needs an efficient driving lineout, if for no other reason than to provide a convincing platform for the decoy moves such as the one which resulted in Taniela Tupou’s 36th minute try. But deeper questions about the Australian rugby identity arise with McKellar’s vision. Is Australia really a nation of maulers? Is that truly Dave Rennie’s version of ‘the Australian Way’?
Although the Wallabies have coped tolerably well with the ball in the air at lineout time, they have agonised when the ball comes back to ground. They scored a good lineout drive try in Perth, but England’s domination of the maul was just about as complete as it gets one week later at Lang Park, on both sides of the throw.
Six forwards on the bench cannot come soon enough for Rennie’s Wallabies, and probably they should have been there from the start. When all the smoke clears and the talking stops, Eddie’s England are a one try-per-game team against top-tier opponents, and the vast majority of threat derives from their forwards.
If it is not Jed Holloway, then Rennie should be brave and go with Lukhan Salakaia-Loto. LSL could fit in at either 4 or 6 (as a one-off) in the vital third Test. The more maul defenders Rennie can muster, the better it will be for him and his team. Others like Nick Frost, Hugh Sinclair and Tom Hooper (if fit) should be candidates to start at number 6, or supply a sixth forward on the pine.
In the big picture, there is an opportunity for more history to be made: for Ireland to win a series in New Zealand and Wales to beat South Africa on its home patch, and few would have foreseen those possibilities before the July series got underway. Australia needs to pull the last remnants of its talent together for one last, big push. A 2-1 series win against Eddie’s England would be as much of a landmark win as an Ireland or Wales victory right now, given the circumstances.