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Wallabies coach Eddie Jones wants you to “keep praying” to any deity you think might help his team make a miracle recovery in time for the start of the World Cup.
With the Wallabies kicking off against Georgia in five weeks time, Eddie might consider a pre-tournament side trip from their Paris base to Lourdes to see if that town’s healing shrine can sort out the team’s multitude of issues.
Having pitched in Tate McDermott and Carter Gordon for the first time together in a Test from the start against the All Blacks, Jones admitted that partnership was a work in progress following the 38-7 defeat.
Gordon started promisingly enough but his 50 minutes dissolved into a mess, including one poor kick that led to a late first half try to the Wallabies.
Jones, who was criticised in his time with England for persisting with young star Marcus Smith over veteran Owen Farrell in the No.10 jersey appears to have hitched his hopes on Gordon, although spurned Noah Lolesio stands as an example of a flyhalf promoted before their time.
“I think he’s the best young 10 in Australia,” Jones said of Gordon afterwards. “I’ve seen Richard Mo’unga play Tests like that. And Richard Mo’unga if you look at his first 45 Tests, he had a bit of up and down in it. He wasn’t good enough, then he was good enough.
“And sometimes you’ve got to go through a bit of pain to bring young players through, and I’m prepared to go through that.”
Tate McDermott of the Wallabies passes during the The Rugby Championship & Bledisloe Cup match between the Australia Wallabies and the New Zealand All Blacks. (Photo by Cameron Spencer/Getty Images)
McDermott’s passion and intensity can’t be faulted – but his passing remains a topic of conversation and the contrast with the knife sharp Aaron Smith was clear.
Speaking on The Roar Rugby Podcast Instant Reaction, Jim Tucker said McDermott bounced back early on after being monstered by Scott Barrett in the lead up to the opening try, only to lose his accuracy.
“Towards the end of his time on the field, his pass shortened up a bit,” said Tucker. “You can’t do that in Test footy. You’ve got to be on with that pass as a halfback. That’s probably still the glitch in his game – there are certainly other good parts of his game.”
Tucker added that Gordon was tracking well for someone so fresh in such a key role. “Carter Gordon, that’s the beginnning for him not the end,” he said, but the result left a sour taste.
“It’s just an overall feeling. The Wallabies, 0-3 so far this season, are we even a chance of winning the World Cup? You’d have to say we’re a chance of scrambling through and preventing a team from winning the World Cup but are we going to win the World Cup? You’ve got to have fairly muted considerations about that at this stage.”
Carter Gordon of the Wallabies passes during the The Rugby Championship & Bledisloe Cup match between the Australia Wallabies and the New Zealand All Blacks. (Photo by Cameron Spencer/Getty Images)
Harry Jones, also speaking on the Instant Reaction podcast, focussed on the Wallabies coaching team, suggesting that Eddie Jones’ decision to completely overhaul his assistants left them with too much to do in too short a time.
Eddie Jones accepted responsibility for the defeat – but defended his selections and couldn’t really elaborate on what he’d done wrong.
“You can blame me if you want to. If you want the headline ‘The problem is Jones’ use that,” Eddie said. “Every game has a context around it. If we did a couple of things a little bit better at the start of the game and got some more points on the board then the last 20 minutes wouldn’t have been what it was like. We ran out of gas the last 20 minutes.”
Harry Jones believes the coaches failed to react and the defence – maligned by ex-assistant Laurie Fisher recently – remained a mess under Brett Hodgson.
“Stocks falling would be for me is the coaching setup,” Harry said. “Not just Eddie – we focus too much on Eddie. But look at the All Blacks – they brought in Joe Schmidt, who has excellent starter plays, and he’s got them attacking him really tightly. Everyone knows what they’re doing at the ruck.
“And you have Jason Ryan just forbidding anyone to score maul tries. That’s a year of no maul tries. In comparison, I think the Wallabies, the only way that Eddie could have really worked is to have kept some of the assistants and I think now that the fact that they were run off or they ran off, I’m not sure what happened, it’s really coming to bear now.
“Adjustments, you cannot have a head coach do it all – it has to be some from the assistant coaches. I thought the defensive shifts all went wrong. So I don’t know what happened at oranges. It didn’t seem like it worked at all.”
Brett McKay, also on the podcast, had unused Fraser McReight as a stock falling after the performance of Tom Hooper in the unfamiliar role of openside flanker.
McReight might get a boost with Michael Hooper struggling to return to fitness, but McKay believes Tom Hooper’s impact could bring the versatile Pete Samu back into calculations instead.
“Tom Hooper was really, really promising and again, not as an onballer. He’s a very different player to Fraser McReight but that defensive display from Tom Hooper – Eddie Jones has talked about wanting size and he ran out his biggest back row in I can’t remember,” said McKay.
“Tom Hooper had made 23 tackles by halftime and I thought for a young guy playing his first full game, and he did actually get through the game at open side, he was pretty good tonight. He’s not your classic on-baller. He’s not going to be that sort of player. But he was very, very good. And I’ve got to give big ups to him for that.”
Tucker wasn’t ready to jump on the Tom Hooper at 7 bandwagon, though.
“I would always lean towards the fetcher seven. That’s in Australia’s DNA if we’re playing well and linking,” said Tucker.
“There’s a situation there where we made a clean break, looking around for a link player, no link player in sight. You just need to expect a break is always going to be made even if it doesn’t happen nine out of 10 times. Fraser McReight is that sort of person to back it up.”
Eddie Jones talked up Tom Hooper’s performance.
“Competitive. I think he’s got a good future there,” Eddie said. “That’s a hard game for him to play against and we wanted to find out where he’s at. So we got a pretty good picture. I like his attitude. I like his competitiveness.”
He said the All Blacks like a high ball in play game. “So for a seven it’s a hard job. I think in terms of the turnovers in the breakdown we probably shaded in that area. I haven’t seen the stats, but certainly my eye would tell me that. So I thought he did a pretty good job.”
McKay was also impressed by “absolutely incredible” Angus Bell and Rob Valetini, who played “his best game for the Wallabies this year, which admittedly is coming from a low base.
“We’ve got a glimpse of what he can do and what he’s very, very good at. He hits the gain line really well and he looked like was wanting to carry and there were a few like that, Bell was also great in that department.”
Harry Jones’ eye was caught by big Will Skelton.
“I’m just looking for things that make this team different from the Dave Rennie team that also had similar runaway losses and I’m having trouble finding it,” Harry said. “I would say Will Skelton is my only difference maker. I thought he stopped a few mauls on his own. I thought he was devastating in some of the tight loose.”
Tucker thought Mark Nawaqanitawase is making the winger jersey his own.
“People don’t burst through three All Blacks and add another one for good measure very often,”Tucker said of an early Marky Mark surge.
“He found a way to do that. His stocks are way through the roof, considering a year ago he wasn’t really a Test player.
“Now he’s the frontline pick alongside Marika Koroibete. He just looks made for Test footy and that’s really important. He sustained his intensity.”
Koroibete, it must be said, was well off his best, missing a tackle to allow a try to Rieko Ioane and being less effective than usual – despite one highlights reel hit on Mark Telea.
Tucker’s other shining light was Jordie Petaia – thrust into No.13 on limited action to replace injured Len Ikitau.
“I’ve got a big wrap for Jordie Petaia,” said Tucker. “For a guy who hadn’t played for three months, he came in did brilliantly, made a really strong tackle on Jordie Barrett at one point, a nice little offload, took out those little 50-50 passes out of his game and had a really strong first hour.”
Overall, Tucker seemed struck by a strong sense of ennui ahead of the journey to France.
“As good as the Wallabies were in that first 25 minutes there’s a real worry that other teams world wide think if you break the Wallabies, they’re gone and you can rack up a big score,” Tucker said. “That’s a horrible slight on a team. The Kiwis have done this plenty of times before. There was some fairly inept defence.
“Sure enough, only 14 players on the field at times so it’s tough, but you’ve got to look at the very good from the Wallabies, but you could also examine some of the tail end stuff that wasn’t good.”
Eddie Jones is still talking it up, as you would expect.
” I saw enough today to make me believe that we can (succeed), but there’s a lot of hard work to do,”he said.
“Transforming a team from where they are now to a team that’s capable of beating New Zealand takes a lot of hard work and the clock’s ticking, but we’ve still got enough time.
Eddie Jones, Head Coach of the Wallabies before the The Rugby Championship & Bledisloe Cup match between the Australia Wallabies and the New Zealand All Blacks. (Photo by Cameron Spencer/Getty Images)
“Every day counts. We might have to train on the plane on the way. We’ll see if we can get a Hercules or something, so we can do a bit of training on the way over. Everything counts.
“What I liked about the team tonight was the way tactically they took on New Zealand in the first 20 minutes and if you arrived from Mars and watched the first 20 minutes you’d probably think the gold team was the stronger team.
“That’s the reality. But you got to be able to do it for 80 minutes. When you put teams under pressure you’ve got to be able to convert that into points. We’re not good enough to do that at the moment. But that’s a step we we need to take.”