Wallabies' inconsistency might be best addressed by regular squad rotation

Agreed - Rennie just needs to shoot his shot and be brave with selections. Give Vunivalu a run in Koroibete's absence, get Hooper coming off the bench like a mad duracell bunny, hand the best Australian Super Rugby leader (AAA) the captaincy, and let the boys play!

Cheers Jeff, had not thought of that :thumbup:

Thanks ATW, will look into that :thumbup:

Fair enough. Rennie has done a fair bit of experimenting with combinations over the last 2-3 years that haven't entirely resulted from injuries so as you say there were still enough bodies from the match-day 23 who could've been subbed for underperforming players. I think it's a difficult call though as there is still limited depth in players that are close-enough to the benchwarmers let alone like for like replacements for the starters. Like you, I would be bold but this is not our career's on the line and our heads aren't on the chopping block.

Hey Rhys, thanks for the article. I like the concept but I think wholesale changes is going too far. Instead I would keep 9, 10, 15, wings and the front rows the same. This would of course be based on performance. Any player who played outstandingly keeps their spot too in the other positions. I argue for these positions except for the front row, get into the least amount of contact in a game and therefore it is more about their fitness than ability to recoup from being bashed. The the other positions are where fatigue would set in over the season. This comment was to entertain your idea and add my own twist but I do think the best team should be fielded each week.

And yet, Eddie Jones has given up on the notion of combinations given that YCs and HIAs are no so common.....so teams will need to learn to adapt. Look at Ireland, they played 5/6 halves with their best team against the ABs and killed them. But if they had as many injuries as Australia did this year, do we really think they could have beaten the AB last week--sorry, lost by 2 points. With the crap that we have gone through this year, Australia will be better for it next year--and sometimes the Rugby Gods provide a bit of luck (next year with the draw), which we have had none this year--ever more so when three of our best players have been sidelined with injuring in Hooper, Kerevi and Tupou (all of whom would make a World 15 at the height of their powers as they were last year).

Exactly, Rhys. Valentini needs to be rotated in the Europe and Ikitau is another.

You always make to much sense, which is never common here or elsewhere, Rhys. "This begs the question, if our best team cannot back up a performance the next week, would our second best team do better?" And it doesn't need to be the second best team but players filtered into it. I actually think after the emotional roller coaster of the previous week, the ABs were well placed to do well with 6 new players in the team--and at home no less. Whereas we were travelling, drained from the the horrors of the previous week--and a pretty grueling England and RC tests. But what I have been calling for is rotation--much like what European soccer teams apply. But you don't need to substitute the whole team, just 25-30% of it--which AU has had to deal with this year with so many injuries being the default. I think this will help the Wallabies next year.

Switch to a new server. I use Brave which does everything I could get from Google and blocks all ads.

It's nice to hear someone actually discussing a potential strategy rather than simply bellyaching about lack of consistency and unfair calls. I appreciate where you're coming from because I've had rather similar considerations myself but there are insurmountable hazards with adopting your approach. Rather than simply shoot down your suggestion, if we entertain your central thesis that "well, they can't do worse than losing", should Australia essentially field two teams and injuries arise, we have to ask ourselves one very important question: what risks does that pose for either composition of 23 players that you would need to select for each game? If these players who are your depth in reserve get injured or suspended, who is left to replace them? And since they were to be the reserves for your first pick team, when that squad inevitably suffers injuries, who covers for them? Sorry, but you've already used up your reserves and you are then left with only untested players. Probably not what will win you a World Cup. Fatigue, both mental and physical, is a reality of the modern professional game and how players and their teams manage this is as much a part of their strategy as whatever they do on the field. Players who cannot sustain themselves over the course of a campaign are probably not suited to the international level, at least not yet. This comes with a caveat, however. It is well understood that a certain amount of time is required to achieve the conditioning one needs in order to be able to sustain the physicality and intensity required for 80 minutes at the top level, so rushing "fresh" players into essentially the meat grinder from a "standing start" is probably not going to be as fruitful as you might hope. I suspect the real undoing for the Wallabies this season has been the high tempo that Rennie demands of his squad on the training paddock, not just in games. I know that this kind of approach to training, where you "train hard, fight easy", seems intuitive but the toll that a game like rugby puts on your body can't be maintained 24/7. Also, because players in general are so much bigger and faster and stronger than they have ever been, prime athletes, the damage that they inflict on one another even at training means that the amount of rest they need to recover has increased dramatically. And this increases further when you are carrying a minor injury. Unfortunately, the recovery time is being compromised in the desperate search for a win and that's why the injury toll has been so extreme. Rotations wouldn't dramatically change this equation and would present far more complications for an already under-pressure team and interfere with match-day preparations, becoming a hinderance rather than an asset.

To avoid all that, if on Firefox or Chrome. Install any or all of these: Adblock or AdBlock Plus, and/or Ghostery, and/or ublock origin. I have forum text on an otherwise-empty screen except for the autoscrolling video. There is an add-in for that, too, to prevent autostart and change the video to video play-on-demand. uMatrix is also an option but I found it blocked too much, on other (non-Roar) web pages.

Robertson is not available.