A lot of journalists in the press box tonight stopped concentrating on the game early in the second half and started writing their match reports – those guys just don’t believe!
Not me, I stuck it out making notes of what was happening. I even kept some basic live stats as I watched the game to support my assertions of what the Wallabies needed to do better. The notes and the stats were all pretty negative and the draft I wrote this afternoon was actually quite positive, so I knew I’d have to start again.
As most people had finished writing their story by the end of the game it really didn’t matter what was said at the press conference (sorry RugbyReg, I mean presser). Then I realised that because they’d finished their stories, by the time I got my match report finished and uploaded it’d be old news! Now I know how a junior reporter feels – I’m sorry Mr. Gagger the Editor.
What to do? I decided to go the presser and see if I could find something that the others might miss. They were all there of course but as they’d finished their stories, I might still be okay.
Early on I thought I had found an angle I was sure no-one else would come up with – whilst every other journalist would be posting articles tonight saying how bad things look, it turns out that it’s not all doom and gloom here at Etihad Stadium tonight, well according to Robbie Deans.
Robbie reminded us that the Wallabies “showed a lot of courage to essentially win the second half, apart from the last score, with 14 men”. Never mind that because of that last try the All Blacks actually took that glory away from the Wallabies.
Asked whether conceding 32 points in the first half was bordering on being alarming, Robbie gave us all hope for the future by conceding “that it wasn’t ideal but we showed that with 15 men we can be competitive but with 14 we weren’t. At that point the game at this level becomes a bit of a nonsense.”
One of the New Zealand journalists asked Robbie whether he didn’t think the contest was over at 32-14 before the red card but no, Robbie didn’t think that – he thought the Wallabies showed they were capable of scoring points, so it wasn’t over at that time.
Again our New Zealand friends jumped in to commiserate with Robbie but also to point out that it wasn’t a good night for the Wallabies with that being the second highest points tally by the All Blacks against the Wallabies and it being the eighth loss in a row against the All Blacks. When asked how he coped with that as a coach on a personal level, Robbie said “Your heart rate goes up and then you go back to work and we get an opportunity next week in Christchurch and you keep going and try to find some solutions because a lot of our challenges in the game was the little stuff”.
So there you have it, just fix the little things, keep 15 men on the park and the Wallabies will be competitive. Do you feel better yet?
Those pesky Kiwis were obviously worried that the Wallabies were a real threat so they started playing the man and pointed out to Robbie that he knew what would happen back in New Zealand if the All Blacks lost eight in a row to the Wallabies and asked whether he was now feeling under the same sort of pressure as the Australian coach. “Of course” said Robbie. “You deal with it”.
Okay, things are still looking good – you just deal with it and at that stage I thought I could write something positive from all of those inspirational quotes. I should have left at that point but before I could pack my bag Graham Henry, Steve Hansen, Wayne Smith and Richie McCaw were coming through the door.
No matter – there were some more positives – Richie McCaw thought “the ref was pretty good to be honest” and that “the Wallabies played a bit better with 14 men than 15”.
In other positive news it appears Cowan will struggle to be right for next week and Graham Henry hasn’t seen the photos from the game that show Wallaby fingers in Mils Mullaina’s eyes in a tackle, so probably nothing to worry about there!
Unfortunately Graham Henry then ruined my positive vibe when one of those bloody Kiwi journalists asked him a Dorothy Dixer, “Robbie Deans has now coached the Wallabies to eight straight losses against the All Blacks, how would you feel if you’d coached the All Blacks to eight straight losses against the Wallabies?”. His answer, “Very sad! I would be very unhappy” and suddenly reality came back to bite me – it was a bit sad, wasn’t it!
Here’s some other news from the presser.
When Robbie was asked about the problems with getting possession from the kickoffs, he said “You’re right, the little things are important in test rugby and we gave them a lot of assistance along the way”.
When asked about what he thought about the red card for Drew Mitchell, he answered “Damaging”. He went on to say that he didn’t want to comment on the circumstances and fair enough but when pushed for what he thought of Mitchell’s actions he expanded saying “Costly”.
Having now sat down to wade through my notes, I realise that my ‘Positive Article’ was a pipe dream. What I also realised listening to my recording of the presser was that Robbie Deans sounds like a politician.
I read this morning that people are getting frustrated with Julia Gillard because she just won’t answer the questions she gets asked and instead just keeps reciting things that her spin doctors tell her will make people feel better, particularly that we’re moving forward! I might have missed Robbie saying ‘we’re moving forward’ but it would have fitted nicely, wouldn’t it.
So, in the interests of stopping fans getting frustrated let me tell you what I really think Robbie should have done and said tonight. The first thing that should have happened is that Jim Williams and Richard Graham should have attended the presser to show they are all in this together. Then I would have suggested a statement like this:
‘Our performance tonight was not acceptable. We didn’t compete well enough in the key areas. Our defence lacked the aggression we showed last week and our attack looked disorganised. The match was all over before the red card and that just compounded our troubles. As a group we are all very disappointed in our performance and we all need to go to the room of mirrors and take a good look at ourselves. Only once we acknowledge the host of problems we have, can we start to fix them. This includes the coaches too and I assure you that we know we haven’t got it right yet. We are going to draw a line in the sand tomorrow morning and start fixing things. If we, as coaches or players, can’t make the necessary changes then we don’t deserve to be here and we fully understand that we are accountable for improving the situation.’
What do you think? Or should he have just said, ‘We apologise – we will be throwing out all of our current plans, logging on to GreenandGoldRugby.com tomorrow and downloading all articles from the last twelve months and starting again.’
