The day an 'old school' training session changed Georgian rugby - and made them a 'real threat' for Wallabies

SAINT ETIENNE – Georgia is not exactly a young rugby nation. But it was only in the months leading up to the last World Cup in Japan that they put a line in the sand and said enough is enough.

Invited by Eddie Jones to train against his English side in Oxford in early 2019 for the second straight year, things got testy very quickly despite the early pleasantries between the two camps.

At the first scrum, pushing and shoving turned into fists flying.

Eventually, the two nations were separated. But not even the cooling-off period could kill off that fire, with the second scrum going the same way as the first.

This was the day that little Georgia stood up to big, powerful England.

The England and Georgia packs go head to head during a scrum session at Latymer Upper School on February 13, 2018. (Photo by David Rogers/Getty Images)

Almost five years on and Georgia have started to find their feet on the international stage.

A strong win over Italy last July put the heat firmly on their European rivals, before a historic win in Cardiff against Wales confirmed their status as a rising threat to the world order.

Now, Jones’ Wallabies almost certainly have a harder task ahead of them to get past the European side in their World Cup opener in Paris next Sunday (Monday, 2am AEST).

Another figure who was at those training sessions was new Wallabies forwards coach Neal Hatley, who was previously Jones’ scrum coach with England.

“That was what you might refer to now as probably an old school training session, with a little bit of biff,” Hatley told reporters in Saint Etienne. 

Georgia celebrate following their win over Wales at Principality Stadium on November 19, 2022 in Cardiff. (Photo by Harry Trump/Getty Images)

Georgians have always been able to scrum. It’s what they’ve always done. Only done, until recently.

But that has slowly changed over the past two World Cup cycles, with Georgia slowly coming to grips that winning the scrum battle is only half the battle.

“The Georgian mindset at that point was very much around the set-piece, the scoreline probably was a distant second over making sure that the one goal that they had each game was to go out there and get complete set-piece dominance,” Australian-born Fijian assistant coach Brad Harris told The Roar.

Harris knows the rugby landscape in Georgia better than most, having moved to the Eastern European nation to become an assistant there alongside former Reds coach Richard Graham following the 2015 World Cup.

He says the development of their Didi 10 competition has meant Georgia’s pathways have improved drastically in recent years to help shift their mindset from simply competing to wanting to win.

“If they functioned well in their set-piece, then they’d be pretty happy,” Harris said. 

“I think one of the things that they’ve done really well over the last couple of years is they’ve got a lot of good young kids coming through.

“When I was there, it was a balance because the forwards I was coaching were all playing in the Top 14 on pretty significant salaries and pretty content in their life.

“So, there was a challenge around growing the game with Georgia when Richard and I were there.

“We were trying to grow the game a little bit outside of set-piece and giving the boys an understanding that if you want to beat a tier-one country, you need to grow your game and you need to be able to compete outside of set-piece and in a wide range of aspects, not just scrum and maul.”

Brad Harris says some rugby smarts from Warren Gatland taught him and Georgia a valuable lesson. (David Davies/PA via AP)

Harris said the penny dropped in late 2017 once they lost to Wales in Cardiff after some savvy Warren Gatland tactics denied them the chance of coming away with a historic draw.

“In the last three minutes of the game, we had a scrum five meters out. We were down by seven and we had them under the pump, and Warren Gatland went to uncontested scrums,” Harris said.

“There was a big furore about that he went to uncontested. The prop went down injured in the last three minutes, so we had to go an uncontested scrum.

“That for me was probably a bit of a learning curve around ‘right, the experience of Gatland to be able to sort of pull that out right at the death’ was an interesting one.”

Hatley, too, knows Georgia isn’t to be taken for granted.

“They’re a better side than what a lot of people give them credit for,” he said.

“They beat Wales in Cardiff, beat Italy last year, so two of the Six Nations sides.

“They’re definitely growing their game; always very strong set piece, big wrestling forwards, but I think they’ve added some kick counter and they’re playing a lot better of unstructured play.

“They’re obviously evolving their game but they’ve still got a very, very strong set piece focus. It’ll be a good set-piece battle.”

Neal Hatley says Georgia can’t be underestimated heading into the World Cup. (Photo by David Rogers/Getty Images)

While Hatley didn’t want to go into what effect that “old school” session had on his English side, the experienced coach said he hoped the intensity and competitiveness on display that day was being played out by the Wallabies on the training pitch too.

“I’d rather talk about Australia and where we are now. It’s five years ago. I’ve done a lot of sessions since then,” he said.

“But look, it was a good, tough session. And we’re trying to replicate that with our boys, with the Australian pack.

“We’ve been making sure we focus on ourselves for this week now and moving into Monday, Tuesday, the focus will shift dramatically over to Georgia and the real threat that they pose.

“But this is not about stopping them. This is about imposing ourselves.

“We’re going to be looking to go in the game and to have our set-piece set a standard, not sort of be receiving and try and match. We don’t want to be an Australian side that achieves parity and then tries to play off that.

“If you want to win a World Cup you have to be dominant at set-piece, South Africa proved that in 2019, so in order to win this competition, your set-piece has to be red hot and next Saturday is the first step of that.”