I don't think this is really anything new. The better teams get the 50/50 calls and it happens in every sport. It means that the challenging teams just have to that much better and we haven't been doing that at all. Notwithstanding a real or perceived disadvantage through the refs, the wallabies have themselves to blame at the moment. This halfback waiting at the ruck business is bullshit, the last two weeks show us that the fly half can't get his men in order quick enough. WHat's most infuriating is that even after theyve waited 10 seconds, they still go with a one-out runner who gets it standing still! If you're going to wait half an hour before clearing it, you better have some real tricky shit ready to go.
There's also the fact that they continue to dick around with it inside their own 40. If you're making line break after line break I understand that, but last week it was a wall of defence all night, and the only one who seemed to notice this was Beale, who though that putting the ball behind their wingers mightnt be a bad idea, and rightly so. We've long known that the islander wingers aint the best with the bouncing ball behind them, what happened to exploiting that? If we're going to be innefective it may aswell be in their half rather than ours. We gave them 10 points ( a penalty and Sharpe's knock that led promptly to a try) that we needn't have last week because we were trying to score tries from our own half.
I know, I know, my view is archaic and the game has changed. Well when we can hold onto the ball and reliably retain it at the breakdown, I'll agree that we can run the ball in own own 40 more. Until then, I'd rather make mistakes in their 40.
