You guys are worrying too much. Aussie rugby has never been built around a strong front row & you've won 2 world cups, dominated NZ over periods, just won the S15 and in quite a few people's eyes (including mine), fave's for the RWC this year. It's a loss, undoubtedly. But your game is built around the forward pack assisting Pocock turning the ball over, Genia/Cooper sparking something and Ioane/JOC (James O'Connor) breaking the line with some speed/magic. Cheer up! You havent gotten much weaker in my eyes.
Agree Major, agree. You will recall how those Aus fans/posters/media who were convinced the Cru would knock us over last Saturday (and the majority, on a 'head before heart' basis said they would, as did the supposedly all-knowing bookies), all prominently referenced the devastating Cru scrum and its decimation of the Stormers, etc. This was considered by many as the key factor that would overwhelm the Reds' persistently 'weaker' scrum, and contribute hugely to the predicted Cru victory. And, factually, they were 100% right, the Reds' scrum was way inferior to the Cru's, has been all 2011.
But we now know what happened, and the key was that
the Reds' scrum was 'good enough' to cohere adequately with the rest of the Reds' game plan, and where other key Reds' advantages over the Cru were superior to the Cru (that night) to the requisite degree to win. The Reds' scrum was not the equal of the Cru's by any means, but 'good enough' to: (a) consistently hold its own feed (b) in so doing most times exit the ball to Genia quickly enough even though the Reds scrum was moving back or crumbling at the edges (Samo was critical to this) and (c) not giving away a dangerous amount of kickable scrum penalties and (d) be linked to a game plan that minimised the number of scrums incurred by Reds' errors and where this total game plan was executed quite well on the night.
The Reds' scrum had problematic points-conceding issues in, say, 70% of every Reds' S15 games, yet we won the GF. Maybe the RWC etc will all be so much harder, but I for one never thought we would match up perfectly to the ABs and England scrums. The point is (as you astutely inferred): can the Wallabies' 2011 scrum be 'good enough' to ensure a low-enough damage level in that department (a la the Reds' analogy), whilst other crucial aspects and qualities to the Wallabies' play are potentially - and maybe decisively - superior to the other likely finals competitors in October? (One final point of qualification: I do not think the 2011 Wallabies' forwards and scrum assistant coaches are as good as the 2011 Reds' are/were, and this difference could be significant to execution quality in coming months.)
The two penalty tries were as a result of a back pedalling scrum, with (from memory) Daley, Ma'afu and S Finger in the front row. Fortunately for us, England had absolutely no idea how to attack in that game and we defended very stoutly. Barnes, Burgess and Mitchell all had terrific games, we scored a couple of pretty special tries and got home.