Yesterday I looked at what the Wallabies did well in their win over France in Paris on the weekend. In today’s analysis we’ll examine some of the fix ups the boys will be working on ahead of this weekend’s test versus Ireland.
Fix Up 1 – Edge Defence
The Wallabies certainly had their hands full defending the French fullback (Scott Spedding) and the Fijian born wingers (Virimi Vakatawa and Noa Nakaitaci). To begin with, we’ll have a look at the times we defended the edge really well.
In both these clips we “jockeyed” well when we were numbers down to contain the French attack. Sefanaia Naivalu came up with a screamer of a scramble tackle against Vakatawa in the first half. However we got ourselves into a bit of trouble defending the edge on a number of occasions as you can see from these clips.
In these clips, Bernard Foley was defending at 15, he had trouble shutting the gate to effectively shut down the edge attack. He usually defends the 5m channel at lineout time and then stays on the blind side edge. It was big ask for him to defend as a traditional fullback with the responsibility of containing Scott Spedding and the Fijian flyers on the open side. Nathan Grey may have been trialling this tactic or throwing more smoke for the Ireland Test. Either way, don’t expect Bernard Foley to keep defending as an open side fullback.
Foley was not the only guy struggling on Edge Defence. This clip shows Luke Morohan and Henry Speight also had trouble. It’s not easy when big quick players are shifting and you need to make split second decisions based on what the attack and your other defenders are doing. However, if we are to keep improving we need to get on top of this as Ireland will be looking to exploit us in this area.
Fix Up 2 – Scrums
Under Michael Cheika and Mario Ladesma the Wallaby pack has become a solid scrum outfit. However, in my humble opinion, we were never in the hunt at scrum time against the French. We gave away this easy 3pts by conceding a scrum penalty on the stroke of half time.
At the back end of the match, poor scrums nearly cost us the Test. We had a scrum feed with 2 minutes remaining that should have enabled us to shut out the game. Instead, we got smashed off our ball and the French could have easily won a penalty from the next ruck as Australia’s back row scrambled to defend.
The French then had a scrum in extra time and in many peoples eyes they did enough to win a penalty shot at goal that would have won them the match. Referee Jackson, being a former fly half, was not likely to give a scrum penalty at that point but there are other international refs that would have. The back up front row will be better for this experience but they barely scraped through this battle. Don’t expect to see changes to the starting front row for Ireland.
They say fortune favours the brave and the Wallabies were certainly that. Coach Cheika chanced his arm by rotating the squad and he’s come up trumps. It could have all blown up in his face but instead, he has a very happy tour group that will all be chomping at the bit to get a piece of the action in the remaining Test matches.
Well done boys…marchons, marchons.
