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Opinion
Once again, Australian rugby fans find themselves in a disappointingly familiar position: promising early showings in The Rugby Championship smashed back down to Earth with another Bledisloe Cup fade out.
It’d be depressing if we weren’t so good at – or at least so used to – trying to deal with it.
After the 40-14 thumping in Auckland served up so many more questions than answers, it’s a matter of ‘what now?’ for the Wallabies.
And I was taking the proverbial just a touch when I suggested in the Instant Reaction pod on Saturday night that the Wallabies not playing for a month was one of few positives to come out of that performance, but there is also an element of truth in it.
Quite simply, I don’t know what the first string to pull is right now. If they were playing again this weekend, what would be the quick-win, little adjustment that could be made to deliver an impact?
I don’t know. And that worries me, for obvious reasons.
There are plenty of things that need attention, there’s no question about that. But where do you start?
“Is this a… ball?” Good start. (Photo by Hannah Peters/Getty Images)
So with that in mind, the point that there’s now five weeks before the Wallabies face Scotland at Murrayfield is something of a silver lining.
Discipline has been a huge issue all year, and progressively got worse as The Rugby Championship went on. Heading into the Auckland Test, the Wallabies’ 13.8 penalties conceded per game across the first five rounds already had them ranked as the worst team, but another 16 penalties against them on Saturday pushed that average out to 14.2 per game.
A quick scan back through my match notes tells me the opposition kicked 11 penalty goals from 14 attempts against Australia, which is nearly six points per game, and could easily have been worse had Handre Pollard not sprayed a few early in Adelaide, in one clear example.
“Selection, maybe hey?” Dave Rennie pondered post-match, to the obvious question of how this worsening situation can be fixed.
“If we’ve got individuals giving away lots of penalties maybe it’s a selection issue,” he said, turned in his chair to be almost facing his skipper James Slipper directly, comfortably the most penalised player in the tournament.
It’s a bit beyond this tournament though, with Dave Porecki’s 27th minute yellow card Australia’s 11th for the year, and 12th card in nine Tests. Remarkably, the Aussies have only had to defend with 13 players in one match this year, and somehow managed to not concede a yellow card in consecutive Tests – the last England match, and the first in Argentina. They’ve been down a man at some point in every other game.
But while playing the selection card makes for a great printed quote and news bulletin grab, the reality is it’s a card that Rennie just doesn’t have available.
If he wants to drop Slipper, to continue that example, then he’s looking at Angus Bell and Scott Sio as his loosehead options. But Sio is currently in his second injury-forced absence from the selection table this year, meaning the next best options will be someone like Tom Robertson or Matt Gibbon.
Rennie might want to send a message, but he’s not going to drop 123 Tests worth of experience and replace him with a guy with one Test to his name.
Sio’s current injury highlights another crisis to completely engulf the Wallabies this year, and will give cause for some form of check-up – if not a full-blown review – during this break.
A list I put up on Twitter on Sunday saw more omissions identified, and now runs to 29 different injuries suffered in-game or in camp this year, to 26 different players. And I’m still not 100 per cent sure I’ve got them all.
This doesn’t include James O’Connor’s nasty ankle injury in Brisbane club rugby finals a fortnight ago, Izaak Rodda’s foot injury during Super Rugby, or Lachie Swinton’s shoulder injury suffered in the first Waratahs game this season and still keeping him out of action now.
Lachlan Swinton (Photo by Mark Kolbe/Getty Images)
Of those injuries, 14 would be unavailable or still under a serious cloud if there were a game on this weekend.
That’s not to offer up injuries as an excuse, only to illustrate the length of the list. 30-plus injuries in a year is significant, and almost a full XV out of action is a concern within an Australian playing pool context.
And so while, yes, some depth is being created by the opportunities forced by all these injuries, the argument is that the depth is having to be created in the wrong place.
It’s been wonderful to have the Australia A program resurrected in 2022, but this is where depth should be being built, not filling empty spots in the top squad. 13 players went unused in the squad for the South Africa Tests, and it was ten for the New Zealand matches. That – and the injury list – are a pretty strong sign that players 24 and beyond aren’t nearly as strong as appears the case in opposition squads.
And also yes, it would be correct to conclude that this all falls at Rennie’s feet. The discipline, the injuries, the squad selections, and certainly the game plans and the performances.
The question as to his hold on his job is being asked slightly louder with each loss, and frankly, the only surprise in the Daily Telegraph calling for his head on Monday is that they held back this long.
But what does sacking him now solve? And never mind who are you planning to replace him with.
Making a change now would only be for the sake of making change, and may not actually change anything anyway. The last couple of coach changes didn’t really, so why would now be different?
Plenty of things need attention in these next five weeks, and maybe as many things off the field as on it. And if things needing attention don’t get it or can’t have it provided, then that certainly falls on Rugby Australia’s decision makers.
But where do you start? What takes priority?
If a week is a long time in rugby, then five weeks is an eternity.
But worryingly, it’s hard to say confidently that it will be anywhere near enough time fix everything that currently needs fixing.