'Silly' and 'desperate': White tries to explain discipline dramas, as Wallabies fear they might be reffed on reputation

DUBLIN – Nic White believes the Wallabies have the right intentions but says an over-eagerness is contributing to their troubles in 2022.

Ahead of their crunch Test against Ireland on Sunday (7am AEDT), the veteran halfback went as far to say that a perception does exist that the Wallabies are regular infringers and says it’s “not helping us”.

Not for the first time this year the Wallabies were penalised off the park against Italy in Florence last weekend.

While Italy did not quite take advantage, missing numerous shots at goal, the Wallabies gave away 16 penalties to continually leave themselves on the backfoot.

Nor were the Wallabies helped by the yellow card shown to Jake Gordon, with Italy scoring two converted tries with the halfback off the field after making illegal contact off the ball.

Nic White (Photo by Getty Images)

The yellow card continued the Wallabies’ woeful record of losing players to the bin, where they have now been shown 12 yellows and one red card – the most of any tier-one international side this year.

By contrast, world No.1 nation Ireland have the second least cards shown this year (two) while the nation Dave Rennie believes is the best team in the world, France, were shown their first card during their narrow victory over South Africa over the weekend.

The numbers don’t necessarily correlate to wins, with Japan and Italy each only being shown three cards each, but it certainly tell a story.

White believes the perception of the Wallabies as perennial infringers is real, and says his side need to be hypervigilant to stand a chance against Ireland on Sunday (7am AEDT).

“Probably looking back at the last few games, there is a perception,” he admitted. “Hopefully there’s no perception going into each game because it should be played on its merits.

“Look, we’re obviously desperate to get results so we’re going to be desperate in those moments.

“We can only control what we can control and we’re talking about it and trusting the systems. We can’t control perceptions.

“Guys are going out there trying to affect change with good intentions but it’s not helping us.”

The question is why are the Wallabies getting on the wrong side of the whistle?

White indicated the Wallabies were looking to problem solve individually rather than sticking to their plans.

“I think sometimes it’s easy to be disciplined when there’s not a whole lot of pressure on the side,” he said. “You don’t feel desperate to make a difference or look for a quick fix.

“You’re seeing a lot of these penalties come from good intentions and guys trying to get off the line really quickly … but maybe going a bit too far.

“Silly is probably the best word to look at a few of them. Guys want to make a difference but are going the wrong way about it.

“We were heading in the right direction and probably took a step back on the weekend.

“It’s just about this week and having a good performance like we did in France. We had a really good game plan. We had discipline within that to stay in that. We’re going to need to be exactly that this week.

“They’re going to have plenty of big moments in the game. In those big moments, the big pressure, you need to lean on your discipline. We weren’t where we needed to be on the weekend but we’ve shown in the past we were pretty close to it. We can get back to it.”

The loss in Italy has also seen pressure back on Dave Rennie, who had his selections questioned.

“We need to step it up as a group and this week’s a chance for us to show how much we care for Dave and the coaching staff,” White said.

“We’re speaking about putting out a performance for him.

“We do absolutely love being coached by Dave, he’s a phenomenal coach … the coaching staff here is world class and we as a playing group aren’t there yet.

“A lot of the pressure that’s come on him and the coaching staff is to do with what we’ve put out on the field and a whole lot of moments that we could have controlled as players.”