1. Not taking a second openside. This move was widely castigated at the time of the squad announcement, and sure enough came back to really bite us. Badly. It wasn’t as if our backup 7s were rubbish and McCalman was an outstanding back-rower; we had Hodgo and Beau who are both top notch players and Benny has always struggled to make an impact at test level. But maybe Dingo had a plan, I thought. Maybe he’d seen something we have all missed. But he hadn’t. McCalman was ineffectual against Ireland and we lost the battle of the breakdown. It threw us onto the wrong side of the draw and ultimately hastened our demise from the Cup. David Pocock’s performances in the other games showed the necessity of a true 7 to our game especially considering no one else in the current forward pack is adept at pilfering the ball (that may change when Benn Robinson comes back). So lesson number 1 from the RWC has to be ‘we need to play a true openside at ALL TIMES’. ALL TIMES Robbie, notice the capitals? I am not fucking around here.
2. Re-signing Robbie Deans before the World Cup. John O’Neill seemed to think we were shoo-ins for the Cup and he’d better secure Robbie Deans before the inevitable bidding frenzy after we brought Bill home. Like the openside call, the move was widely castigated at the time, and sure enough has proven to be a blunder. All things considered we were pretty shithouse at this World Cup, and a lot of that had to do with coaching. We scored only one try in our three biggest games (from a lucky turnover, no less), and as the backline coach Robbie needs to take the blame. He has failed his biggest test as Wallabies coach, and deserves either a real kick up the arse or to be sacked totally. But now we are stuck with him for another two years!! Hooray!! So lucky we secured him before everyone else comes after him, can’t you hear the phones buzzing off the hook with lucrative offers?? Wait, no, that’s just my fridge door alarm. Sorry. But I’m sure the offers are coming… soon….
3. Giving Channel 9 the rights. Whether this was the IRB’s decision or the ARU’s (I have never got official confirmation as to who pulled the trigger), it was a real shocker. Nine buried the Rugby World Cup, one of the biggest and most popular sporting events in the world, to protect its interests in Rugby League. There is nothing more to it. They showed only a few pool games, and only one or two of them were live. Throughout this time they had two perfectly good digital channels playing nothing but shitty 1960s movies and reruns of ‘Seinfeld’ and ‘Friends’. And heaven help you if you didn’t live in NSW or Queensland. This was a shocking failure on all levels, especially considering Channel 10 had put in a very lucrative domestic rights offer to show significantly more at the start of the year. But once again the ARU stepped in to protect their interests with News Corp, and the Australian rugby public has been the big loser. We had a World Cup in our timezone, and we fucking wasted it. Well done guys.
4. Playing a defensive centre pairing. Another Dingo plan that just didn’t work when push came to shove. Pat McCabe is brilliant in defense, and shone against the Boks. However, with ball in hand he is incredibly one-dimensional, and was exposed badly against the All Blacks. There was that one moment at the start of the second half where he was given the ball in miles of space with players outside him, yet chose to crash it up directly at Owen Franks with no support. Penalty and three points to the ABs, boom. AAC and Ant Faingaa proved to be similar. Good defenders but they just don’t have the attacking nous to be a great outside centre at test level. Look at Jaque Fourie, BOD, Conrad Smith, Manu Tuilagi — all great players with the ability to not only break the line but also put others into space, two attributes that AAC, McCabe and Faingaa all seem incapable of. Maybe it is a bit harsh comparing these players to those four, but surely they could have done a little bit better with the opportunities they were given. One can only wonder what JOC or Barnes could have done. Our backline scored no tries against Ireland, SA and NZ, and a large reason was the lack of attacking options provided by our midfield.
5. The Lineout. I was about to say the scrum, but I don’t think that was a blunder, just that we plain aren’t good enough. All the coaching and conditioning in the world might not help us. But the lineout is different. We have some great lineout technicians in our side — Vickerman, Horwill, Elsom, Sharpe, Simmons, even Samo and McCalman. Moore is a reliable thrower. Yet we seemed to have persistent issues with the lineout in the later stages of the tournament. Sure, we didn’t lose as many lineouts against the Blacks as we did against the Boks, but we really struggled to get clean ball while the ABs won almost all of their throws unopposed. Once again this is a clear coaching failure, and it really hurt us when it mattered most. We lacked creativity and confidence at this vital set piece, and with the players at our disposal it just shouldn’t have been allowed to happen.
Are there any blunders I have missed? What do you think?
