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We’ve all seen them. Those moments in the old Western movies where the gunfighter enters the saloon, to a sudden silence. There are cheroots nervously rolling in mouths, and shifty eyes at the cards table; a glint of a six-shooter beneath the poncho, just in case of trouble.
If you’re lucky, the honky-tonk piano will start up again, conversations will resume and the tension will ease. If they don’t, more than likely it will be the last-chance saloon for someone in the bar. It is now Dave Rennie who is looking down the barrel of a loaded gun with another tough Spring tour of Europe silhouetted in those batwing doors.
His charges have lost their last three Rugby Championship matches on the bounce, and his overall win record as coach of Australia now languishes at a lowly 37.9%. All of the three matches in last year’s European campaign were lost and the menu – with both of the top two ranked nations in the world as the meat course – is stronger this time around.
Rennie finished the tournament with many a question still unanswered. In the backs, the right combination in the back three, and the best replacement for Quade Cooper at number 10, were no closer to solution. Up front, nobody has yet nailed down the hooker spot, and the composition of the back five forwards over two losses to New Zealand was unbalanced.
With Taniela Tupou out of sorts, and out of the squad halfway through the tournament, Allan Alaalatoa found himself under the pump at tight-head prop. Further experimentation in the Bledisloe Cup double-header, with Jed Holloway shifting from the blind-side flank into the second row, only ramped up the pressure further.
Alaalatoa averaged 67 minutes of playing time in the tournament, and that increased to 72 minutes over the last three rounds with Tupou pulling up lame in the warm-up against the Springboks at the Sydney Football Stadium. That represents a huge workload for a modern international tight-head, and it is a tribute to the man who bore the burden without a murmur of complaint.
Australia needs to find a way to support ‘triple A’ as a matter of urgency. It will have to come from a solid backup on the pine, a strong-scrummaging hooker alongside him, and most importantly, from a powerhouse lock behind him.
Allan can draw encouragement from the recent performances of his brother Michael across the water in Ireland. Michael Alaalatoa has looked like a man from one of those ‘before-and-after’ advertisements with the scrummaging support he receives from Leinster’s new 130 kilo South African second row Jason Jenkins.
As the province’s scrum coach, and ex-Wales hooker Rob McBryde recently commented:
“[Jason Jenkins] has been great… He has put shots in around the field. Put himself about. Struck up a great relationship with Michael Ala’alatoa from a scrummaging point of view. Working well with [lineout caller] Ross Molony as a second-row partnership as well.
“You get feedback. The front-row will tell you if they’re not getting a lot of weight coming through. Everybody is happy when Jason is behind them. Then from a maul point of view as well, he’s all over his detail.”
This is what a tighthead needs if he is expected to play the lion’s share of the minutes. It is also what Australia requires if it is to survive the physical challenge presented up front by nations like France.
If the Wallabies stick with their big back-row theory, they need to go ‘all in’ and pick a tighthead lock who can scrum, maul, and destroy mauls, clean out and dismantle cleanouts. It also means they will need to get most of their lineout ball from the back-row, while the behemoth gets on with the dirty work outside it.
This is what the French do. When 6’7 skipper Charles Ollivon returns, he will also be their primary source of lineout ball, just as he was at the 2021 Six Nations – top of the charts with 23 wins. He will be ably supported by the likes of François Cros, Greg Alldritt and Dylan Crétin from the back-row.
Relatively little lineout return is expected from naturalised South African Paul Willemse in the second row. It is the same at Leinster: the vast majority of lineout ball is delivered by the numbers 5 and 6 (Molony and Ryan Baird) with 37 takes combined this season, compared to Jenkins’ 8.
130 kilos of Willemse are there to purely to power scrums, mauls and any other contact situation in which he chooses to engage. Just ahead of him is 145 kilos of Uini Atonio, driving up the right-side size and force of the Tricolours’ scrum to stratospheric proportions.
At his club Stade Rochelais, Atonio plays with Will Skelton behind him, and he is even larger than Willemse. Now that he has turned 30 , it probably represents Australia’s last chance to get something out of Skelton, a player with a unique set of physical and athletic talents.
Will Skelton. (Photo by Harry Trump/Getty Images)
Saracens have done it in the Premiership, La Rochelle have done it in the Top 14. If he was available to France, Skelton would be probably be starting matches for Les Bleus. But to date, the Wallabies have not been able to extract maximum performance from the biggest human on the Australian rugby planet.
Playing off the bench on the end-of-year tour, Skelton began to show his true potential in green and gold in the final game against Wales. In the 27 minutes he was on the field, he had four carries and four tackles with no misses, one dominant defensive hit and one breakdown pilfer, plus no less than 16 ruck involvements on both sides of the ball.
Coincidentally, he was on the pitch at the same time as other members of a ‘big back five’ – or rather back four, with Bobby Valetini having been red-carded as early as the 15th minute. Izack Rodda was captaining the lineout with Pete Samu and Rob Leota behind, and Skelton alongside him. Directly ahead of Skelton in the scrums was none other than Triple A. Despite the permanent one-man deficit, Australia won this portion of the game by 15 points to 6. It was the best they looked all tour long.
The power of the Australian scrum with Skelton in it was obvious even with seven men:
Triple A is going forward on the tight-head with big Will behind him, and this would probably have been a penalty to the Wallabies if Matthieu Raynal had been officiating, rather than Mike Adamson.
One of the knocks on Skelton is that he brings no lineout, but while he was on the field in Cardiff, Australia won all of their own throws and pinched two of the Welsh deliveries:
Rob Leota is only 6’4 tall, but he can get up above Seb Davies (who is two inches taller) because of the huge extension of Skelton’s lift behind him. Len Ikitau dutifully converted the turnover into a line-break on the following play.
You can still be an effective lineout player, even if you do not get off the ground yourself:
The threat from Leota and Rodda in the air, with Skelton making the lifts and reads in between them, persuades Wales to deliver a squint throw – scrum to Australia. It also cements the big man in the middle of the line and directly opposite the source of any lineout drive.
Whatever the debits of Rory Arnold’s performance for Australia in the Rugby Championship, the fact remains that with him, the Wallabies conceded no tries to the Springbok driving lineout over two games, but four without him against the Kiwi maul in the Bledisloe double-header:
The Wallabies’ main maul-stopper, Caderyn Neville, finds himself marginalised on the edge of the All Blacks’ drive, and unable to change his bind as it surges forward to the goal-line. In Arnold’s absence, Skelton is the next best choice to destroy opposition lineout drives at source.
It is the work that Skelton does in contact which makes the difference. On the carry, he can convert slow ball into quick ball within one phase:
A slow four-second delivery off Alaalatoa is converted into lightning-quick ball on the second carry by Skelton.
Skelton also had a big hand in Australia’s comeback try in the 70th minute, authoring the angled cleanout over Tate McDermott after a long initial break by Hunter Paisami:
Skelton doesn’t so much clean out, as swallow people whole. The ex-Waratahs monster made even bigger impacts on the other side of the ruck. He started with a bit of protective ‘enforcing’ over his fallen buddy Alaalatoa, after Welsh replacement prop Gareth Thomas whipped his arm into Triple A’s head at cleanout time:
The fuss earned Thomas a yellow card on review and equalised numbers for the next ten minutes. It is the sort of law-enforcement the Wallabies have been missing since the days of Scott Fardy, Dan Vickerman and Owen Finegan.
Skelton demanded more and more personal attention from Wales at the breakdown as the game reached its climax:
In the first instance, Skelton first collapses the entire right side of the Welsh ruck, then ragdolls another Welsh forward, and finishes by winning a one-on-one battle for the ball with scrum-half Tomos Williams. He was unfortunate to concede the penalty. Wales were not so lucky the second time around, with two cleanout players plus Williams unable to remove the big man on the pilfer. That turnover should have won the game for the Wallabies.
Wales began to commit a third, and sometimes even a fourth man to the ruck whenever Skelton was in and around the ball:
If you can get to three, or four-to-one odds at the breakdown, it has to represent a huge advantage in numbers to the defence. With none of the Welsh cleanout players attempting to stay on their feet in the final example, the game should have ended with penalty, and a victory for Australia.
Summary
It is one of rugby’s great losses that Australia has never been able to harness Skelton’s talents in an international framework. That development has been largely left to his two main clubs in Europe, Saracens, and La Rochelle. It is the last chance saloon. They have one last opportunity to make the most of the big man.
Alaalatoa for one, would probably appreciate all the extra weight and power sitting behind him in the scrum. He is the last Test-class tight-head prop left standing in Australia right now, and he needs all the support he can get.
If the Wallaby coaches want to stick with the big back row theory and Pete Samu at number 7 – and it is a big ‘If’ – Skelton is one forward who can help make it work. They have to go all in for power, and not hedge their bets in the row.
A back five of Skelton, Rodda or Matt Philip, Valetini and Samu, with an extra lineout exponent like Ned Hanigan or Seru Uru on the blind-side flank could be interesting, even if it risks the same glaring defensive deficiencies evident in the second Bledisloe Cup game.
That is how France play the game, but then they have Shaun Edwards as their defence coach. Get lineout from numbers 5, 6 and 7, let the power lock get on with his chores away from it. All is not yet lost in 2022. Although there is an ominous shadow darkening the saloon doors, Dave Rennie still has some cards left to play.