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Opinion
“It’s the hope that kills you in the end.”
I must confess to not knowing the origin of the quote, but it certainly gets a lot of airtime from the mouths of Wallabies fans.
And here we are again. After scraping through to win a game against Scotland they probably should’ve lost and being unlucky to lose a game against France they probably should’ve won, Australia turned it up completely against Italy and lost a game by just one point that they really should have lost comfortably.
The worst thing of that performance in Florence is that the sheer amount of good work it undid. And I don’t just mean on this tour, I mean over the last few seasons.
We’ve all seen disappointing performances from this Wallabies playing group, but that maiden loss to Italy was comfortably the worst I’ve seen under coach Dave Rennie.
It was listless, it was ill-disciplined, it was poorly conceived and selected and then executed, it lacked direction and even the slightest hint of clear thought, and in the end it represented a complete failure across the touring squad.
The situation is so dire now, that I just don’t know what they do to start the long and winding climb back up the international rugby mountain.
Two days after the fact, there’s even a debate to be had as to where they’re starting again from. Are they still at base camp, or are they actually all the way back in the car park?
I don’t know. I don’t know that they know. And I hate this feeling, but that is where they are.
(Photo by Rodrigo Valle/Getty Images)
Normally after a close loss or a lucky win there will be something to cling onto, something to put the stake into and conclude that sure, things were a long way from perfect, but there was enough to build on for next week.
There was nothing from this performance to take to Dublin this week coming.
And worse, where there’s usually a rein to pull after a loss, a quick fix or a simple tweak that should restore some semblance of normality for the next game, nothing stands out this time all. And God knows what ‘normality’ is when it comes to the Wallabies right now.
There are two games left on this now-tortuous European tour, and there will be not many more than five Tests in 2023 before the Rugby World Cup gets underway in France.
I don’t know how you solve a problem like a team who have been consistently criticised – and even publicly challenged by their own coaches – for their horrendous discipline, giving away 16 penalties against Italy a week after giving away 11 against France, and a week after giving away 15 against Scotland.
I don’t know what you say to that team when nine of those 16 penalties conceded came on their own side of halfway. Seven of them were we’ll within kicking range; only small mercies saw four missed penalty attempts.
I don’t know what you say to a team who just on this tour have conceded a ruck turnover roughly every ten minutes. And that might be OK until you remember that they’re not in possession 100 per cent of the time. On average, it’s going to be closer to half that time.
What do you say to a team that just will not commit to an attacking breakdown, or offer some kind of cleanout support? What do you say to a team who still think it’s smart to play away from possible cleanout support, and leave themselves open to being isolated and turned over?
How many times to do you need to remind players who under intense pressure still make the baffling decision to offload or pass to a teammate in a worse position?
But then when do the coaching staff conclude they’re trying to implement a game plan that the players have repeatedly shown themselves incapable of following?
The Wallabies are hardly playing with any great complexity, yet there must be a point where the coaches recognise that the structures and the plans are too much?
Dave Rennie (Photo by Timothy Rogers/Getty Images)
Mind you, if a player can’t perform a crucial core component of their specialist role, how many more chances do the coaches give them?
If a hooker can’t hit a lone lifted target in front of them, or if a scrumhalf can’t put a pass in front of a teammate only a few metres away, where does the coaching responsibility end and the player’s responsibility start?
How many times can a line kicker miss touch and still hold onto that role?
How do you build combinations and connections between players, who despite spending months together in national squads and training camps, somehow manage to look as though they’ve never met?
How does this spiral end?
Curiously, there will quite likely be a reaction from the Aussies against Ireland this weekend, because it does seem to be the one thing that can be relied on. It is, as my esteemed podcast co-host put it on Sunday morning, the simultaneous “flaccid and rock hard” existence this playing group live by.
I don’t know any of these answers. I haven’t always been sure of the answers in the past, and I’m even less sure now. I don’t know how you get a message through to this playing group, and I’m not confident it would be received and implemented anyway.
But there is a World Cup on the horizon and we have to hope the answers are found at some point between now and then.
And we do have to hope the answers will be found, because I can’t even begin to comprehend what happens if they aren’t.