Whilst the Wallaby forwards were good in the first test against the Lions, they’ll need to be better again tonight in the second test.
Nathan Sharpe said on Thursday night that he thought Wycliff Palu was the Wallabies’ most damaging forward last weekend. I didn’t see that – in fact I thought Palu’s impact was minimal. He averaged only 2 metres per carry. I only rated 2 of his 9 completed tackles as dominant and he only completed 69% of the tackles he attempted.
The one area where he did have some impact was the breakdown – of the 7 times he was recorded as being first into an attacking ruck, I rated 6 of them positive.
His work rate was reasonable in the first 15 minutes of both halves but then fell away in the balance of both halves as you can see from the chart below. Clearly he wasn’t match fit last week and the Wallabies need a lot more from him tonight.
