Have our blokes forgotten how to tackle?

[Wallaby Jim]

How many tries did we let in during this Tri Nations? I have never seen a season where the Wallabies have allowed the opposition to score so many points.

Our scrum use to cost us 10 points a game and now our tackling is leaking so many more points then our bad scrum ever use too.

 

[Scotty]

Agree Jim. There is a lot of finger pointing at Coordingly going on here, but the fact is we scored 3 tries in the game, no matter how slow people think his service was (which it certainly wasn't as slow as people think).

The fact is our defense lost us that game not our attack. The fairly scrappy play after Horwill's try, leading to the AB's hit back try primarily lost us that game. I think the ABs were starting to get nervous prior to that - note Carter's poorly executed chip kick in mid-field, with the luck re-gain. All we had to do was hold them out and put the pressure back on, even if they scored the next try, but after 10-15 minutes of effort rather than a couple of minutes of scrappy play, then I believe we would have won that game.

 

[Cutter]

There are a few reasons for this:

1. New defensive system being implemented by Deans;
2. New players (Tahu, Cross) in midfield meaning that communication and understanding is different;
3. Separate but related to 2., poor communication generally.

The Crusaders always have the best or near best defence in Super rugby. The Wallabies wont leak tries the same way next year. Defensive systems can be taught. Its much harder to teach commitment, composure and good decision making.

 

[disco]

We did leak a lot of soft tries this year which was alarming I don't know why we've become so poor considering even though we haven't been a great team for at least 6 years we've always had the best defence.

I know Robbie Deans is a good maybe even great coach but what works at super 14 level doesn't always work at test level.

That's not saying his methods won't work eventually but he also needs to adjust some of his ideas if they don't start making an improvement.