Watched my replay last night, what a great game of rugby. My observations:
1. Wales: congratulations, a well deserved victory. It warmed my heart to watch a team play positive rugby, using the width of the field and showing superb skills in the tackle and breakdown. The Welsh offloading in traffic was delightful. The whole Welsh team played a fast, up-tempo game which was a joy to watch. It's no co-incidence both teams are coached by Kiwis who encouraged their charges to be positive and go for victory. This Welsh team reminds me of England in 2003 when they came to NZ and Oz and beat us both with their wonderful offloading in the tackle at speed. At about the 25 minute mark I remarked (to myself) "this is a great game of rugby". And then the fool of a ref intervened and carded Moore!
2. Australia: close but no cigar. To have won this match would've resulted in an injustice to Wales. Although we got close there were many flaws in our performance. Starting with our aimless kicking, or as NtA calls it, "kick 'n' hope". If we're going to persist with this kicking for position strategy, especially return kicks, we have to develop tactics to make sure play restarts where the ball lands. The French showed us how as they did this very well last week. Note please, Mr Deans. When the game was there to play for in the last 15 minutes we reverted to type and starting hanging off rucks and mauls and stopped chasing kicks. During this period the attempts to get over the line were disappointing: constant forwards barges are easy to defend against and always run the risk of something going wrong. And something did. It's hard to digest the (supposed) best exponents of back play in the rugby universe didn't try to get the ball over the line via the backs during this period of pressure and position. When Oz did chance their arm through the backs, albeit in the 78th minute, IT WORKED.
I've remarked elsewhere the dismissal of Muggleton looked like a mistake as the Wobblies leaked far too many tries in the early and TriNations tests. Our defence since the Macqueen era has been the constant rock of Oz rugby, and to see it missing was disturbing. But praise where praise is due, and it seems Deans has imposed his pattern of defence on this Australian team and it's starting to show. Our defence against England was magnificent. It was also very good in the first half against Wales when they had 80% of the pill and looked like running amok. I can see them running riot against other 6N teams next year with a plethora of tries. The Welsh defence was also very good: we found it very difficult to get over the advantage line.
There were other parts of our game which need improvement. Mitchell and Ioane let too many high balls bounce early in the game, unforgiveable. Especially as they were aware the ground would be slippery. This is the sort of thing boys playing in the local under 11s learn: never let a rugby ball bounce if you can avoid it. We also need to do work on our counter-rucking and a lot of work on our offloading skills in the tackle.
One of the things I've noticed about Australian rugby the last few years is the deterioration of our backline play. How many times has an Australian team got the ball to the outside backs while getting over the advantage line? Too few. There's far too much bash 'n barge with the pill dying with the ball carrier. The league converts are especially guilty of this; I noticed Tuqiri passed once on Saturday night and I don't recall Cross passing at all. They mostly die with the pill in any game they play. Together with these two, Oz backs seem to have lost the ability to put together an ensemble movement, keeping the ball alive while progressing up the field. Super 14 coaches please note.
3. Australia's halves: Burgess played much better now he's in full health. We could safely presume Deans gave him some special attention during training this week, and it showed. Giteau gave him clear calls where and when he wanted the ball and Burgess delivered with crisp passes in front of the ball receiver. Giteau had plenty of time to do his thing and directed traffic well.
4. Scrum: a pass only. Although we weren't embarrassed, we didn't work out the ref and adjust accordingly. One thing I noticed Oz scrums do too often is withdraw from the prepared position for no apparent reason and then take a long time to reform. Cannon did this a lot and Moore seems to've caught the disease. We always seem to get ready to crouch after our opponents, as if we don't want to do it; this must be bloody annoying for international referees. Having been a back the dark arts of the front row remain a mystery to me; I can only go on what I see.
5. The referee (and his two mates): where do I start? The first scrum was called up although the ball was progressing nicely out the Welsh side, as Lewis was unhappy with the method of touching! He addressed his remarks to both props, BUT LOOKED AT BAXTER ONLY! This didn't look good for the rest of the match, and so it proved. A few incidents:
i. Moore's yellow card. Moore was stuck on the bottom of the ruck and couldn't move; a Welsh player joined the tackle immediately after Moore and jammed him in. Moore didn't attempt to seal the ball off, in fact it was behind his back on the Welsh side available to play. But, more importantly, as Lewis blew his whistle the Welsh half back had his hands on the ball pulling it out. Nothing Moore had done had in any way affected Wales' ability to play the ball.
ii. The penalty awarded to Oz when the Welsh 5 grabbed Burgess at the 45:35 mark was for as cynical an offence as I've seen. If that didn't deserve a yellow card, what does? This is why the SH want free kicks allied with a stricter use of cards. This blatant cheating would be punished by a try plus more with the opposition down a player. And the NH talk about a "cheats' charter"!
iii. LG pointed out a technical penalty awarded in the Poms/Bokke match last week: a player fell on a ball emerging from a ruck. The relevant law is 16.4(e). At the 60:30 mark the ball squirted out of a ruck and the Welsh 7 fell on it a moment before Tuqiri would've picked it up; note Tuqiri was on his feet. An obscure law, but it's in the book, and, more importantly, the Welsh player denied Tuqiri the opportunity to play the ball on his feet, one of the most important tenets of rugby.
iv. Tackle on Ioane late in the game. There were three penalties here: Ioane was tackled in the air, Law 10.4(e), followed by the Welsh winger joining the tackle in front of the tackler, Law 15.6(c), followed by the Oz player falling on the ball, Law 15.6(a). In that order. Whenever a player attempts to take a ball in the air alarm bells should start ringing for the officials. How the TJ on that side missed the tackle on Ioane I don't know.
There were numerous incidents of offside Welsh players and forward passes during the match which went unpunished. The new regime in world rugby supposedly calls the two blokes on the touch lines "assistant referees". What the fuck were those two doing? Avoiding paying for a ticket? It's one thing soccer do well: the ARs rule on offside as they look straight across the front of play and raise their flag if necessary. Soccer ARs also rule on foul play close to them if the referee misses it; no questions asked, they stick their flag out and the kick is awarded immediately. As I'm a Level 2 TJ I can tell you it's bloody easy to stand on the line of offside and rule accordingly. Those two turds would've been wired up to talk to Lewis, were their batteries flat? Incompetence personified all round.
To summarise. After 4 minutes I had a very uneasy feeling about this game: Mitchell didn't catch a kick and immediately knocked on, our captain went off and then Wales scored a wonderful try. Australia have been in a position to win quite a few tests recently, but haven't. The tests against the ABs in Auckland last year and in Brisbane and Hong Kong this year come to mind. As with this test against Wales we got tantalisingly close and think about a bounced ball or a dropped pass or a ref's decision and we could've/would've won. But a different result in any of those tests would've left us in a fool's paradise as, truthfully, we weren't good enough. We need to improve our skills in the tackle, our kicking game needs a major overhaul, our backs should introduce themselves to each other and our scrum must get better. The Oz Super teams need to develop their set pieces and all find a THP, or two. We need one of the power houses of Oz rugby, Queensland, to get its house in order and start contributing more. We need the Brumbies to move on from the Jones and Gregan era and develop their forwards. We need the Force to continue improving. And we need the Tahs to develop a hard Crusaders' type edge to the overflowing talent at their disposal.
End of report.
