So it’s been over 24 emotion-filled hours since full time in the thrilling quarter final between Scotland and Australia. It’s now time to consider whether Scotland really deserved to win and assess whether they showed enough to suggest they were a genuine threat in the penultimate and final rounds of the RWC?
Ex-Wallaby and England attack coach, Brian Smith, shares his thoughts on these and other issues in this week’s catch up with Richard Edwards from GAGR.
Wallabies played more rugby
With Australia sealing victory in the last-minute, you have to feel for the Scottish players, coaches and supporters.
Scotland played with tremendous passion and energy and have every right to be upset with what was yet another poor display by referee Craig Joubert.
But regardless of the controversial last-minute call, Scotland did not engineer enough themselves to deserve to go through to the semi-finals.
Australia dominated just about every facet of the game except for the scoreboard.
By full-time, the stats sheet showed that Australia had scored 5 tries to 3 and bombed two near-certain scoring opportunities.
They dominated possession (55%) and territory (62%), and carried for the most metres (345 vs 250).
Also, despite having three tries scored against them, the Wallaby defence was not troubled. They had to make less tackles (86 vs 117) and they missed less tackles (10 vs 17).
If you take away the emotion and focus on the statistics, Australia weren’t lucky to win that game, they were unlucky they didn’t win by more.
Australia played all the rugby and would have won with a score similar to Argentina vs Ireland if:
- Bernard Foley had kicked well
- we hadn’t messed around getting out of our own territory, and
- Scott Sio hadn’t been harshly pinged at scrum time in his encounters with opposite prop Willem Nel.
Nel was clearly coached to slip his bind and assistant referee, Glen Jackson, didn’t pick that up.
That was lucky for Scotland, as they gained at least 2 to 3 penalties from this tactic.
Wallaby attack was very effective
A pleasing aspect of the Wallaby performance against Scotland was their attack and the tactics they developed and implemented specifically for this match.
When you are planning your attack you look for a couple of weak points in the opposition’s defence to exploit and the Wallabies did this effectively.
They clearly targeted Laidlaw (the Scottish half-back) who is not known for his defence. They also sought to exploit his defensive weaknesses by attacking the blind-side from line-outs mainly.
Before too long, Laidlaw had worked out he was being targeted and you could see him call his blind-side winger up during defending line-outs to protect him.
But when Maitland was in the bin, the Wallabies took advantage of the moment when Laidlaw was defending on his own on the blind side.
A quick ball from Genia inside Scotland’s 22 found Mitchell who had no trouble dealing with Laidlaw in his dash to the corner to bring up Australia’s fourth try and a six point lead.
Another impressive feature of the Wallabies attack was the way they used their forward runners this week.
This time around, they sent up forward pods and played it out the back.
This is how Tevita Kuridrani got free and Adam Ashley Cooper scored his try off the back of that.
This was a very different outcome to the previous week where Kuridrani took a pass in a similar position, where he was picked off by the blitz defence and a turnover ultimately resulted.
Scotland really didn’t do much
About the only play of note that Scotland created was the sneaky pick-and-go that resulted in their first try.
With the other two tries, one came from a charge down and the other from an intercept.
Both were very fortuitous and not the sort of plays you can rely on to win matches regularly, especially big matches with big consequences.
When you think about it, it’s very unlikely that Scotland will score from an intercept and a charge down two weeks running.
And without a clear attacking plan, you’d have to think they would have struggled against Argentina.
The Wallabies, on the other hand, will take the field next weekend with an attacking (and defensive) plan targeted to the opposition and not rely on luck.
This alone would make Australia more worthy opponents and are more likely to threaten the Pumas.
Lessons to be learned
After each game you play, there is also going to be something you can improve and for the Wallabies it is four key things.
- They have to get out of their own half and not mess around, because that’s where two of the turnover tries came from. They also have to be prepared to chase those kicks.
- The Wallaby scrum is a weapon. They must use it and not get conned again, like they did with Nel.
- They will need to keep up the variety in attack and utilise the great ball players they have in the 10, 12 and 15 jumpers.
- Foley needs to turn around his goal kicking form and will need to put in some work this week.
I expect the Wallabies will win next weekend if they can bring it all together. To do this, they will need to combine the scrum dominance and attack (from the England game) with the gritty defence (from the Wales game) and the attacking variety (from the match against Scotland).
