Haven't read through others' comments yet, but I've had a bit of time to digest the game and have a few thoughts:-
1. I'm pretty gutted with the result but not the effort. I think the boys can hold their heads high after that second half performance. Unfortunately you get the feeling that they had the cattle to win that game, but errors costs them big time.
2. I was honestly surprised Foley wasn’t hooked in the first half. I can’t remember seeing a worse flyhalf performance from a Wallaby (I recall Quade Cooper had one or two shockers but that was some time ago). His selection unfortunately cost us the game.
3. Given that this was the game that Cheika has been building two for more than 2 years now, it’s more than fair that we now pass judgment on him as coach. Before I render my judgment, I think it’s fair to say a few things in his favour. A lot of the wallabies’ play looks well coached. The scrum and lineout were better than their opponents, and their ball retention in the second half was mostly excellent. The team is undoubtedly fit. Their defensive line was barely broken once; the two tries wales did score were from an intercept and a bomb into the in goal. Moreover, as much as I can criticise the selection of Foley, Cheika could have never foreseen what a shit show he would serve up. In that respect, I can’t completely blame Cheika for the loss. Had we managed to score at the death, this would have gone down as one of the greatest World Cup comebacks of all time and we’d all be praising him. But since we didn’t I get to sit here and say, overall Cheika has failed to deliver a World Cup winning team.
– Yes Foley was shithouse, but why are we still playing musical chairs at no.10 at the world cup. It really hurt continuity / combinations and really just showed that Cheika still didn’t know who he wanted in the side, after 4 years at the helm. – I don’t feel like Cheika had the players in the right frame of mind to start the game. The first thing that happened in the game is that two wallaby forwards were easily pushed off their own ruck ball leading to an easy 3 points. The players really should have been sharper in the first 20 minutes, instead they were a mess. – We knew the tactics that Wales would adopt against us, which is the same tactic that every NH team does because they know that our team is too stupid to adapt, namely they’ll pressure the halves and look for charge downs and intercepts. That is now 2 games into the world cup, 2 intercept tries. 2 games in and both games the number 10 is getting caught deep behind the gain line with rush defence and our players are looking around as though they’ve never seen this before in their life. It’s all very indicative of a team, with talent that is getting tactically outsmarted by their opposition. The other tier nations view our team as team with weaknesses that with the right game plan can be exposed. The sad thing is that they are not the weaknesses in skill like in years past (i.e. a poor scrum) but they are weaknesses in game management and test match nous.
4. For some reason we seem to be on the wrong side of the referees at this world cup. I’m sure it doesn’t help that Cheika continues to shit on the referees after every game (whether it’s justified or not). Once again they were giving us nothing at the breakdown. To be honest I thought it was a miracle that Wales didn’t get a man sent to the bin in the second half when they were repeatedly lying over the ball to slow our ruck ball. In fact no team warning was ever given. In the first half there was a cynical attempt by one of the Wales’ forwards to stop us getting quick ball after making our way into the 22, no warning from Roman. Our scrum had them back peddling all night, but it was never really rewarded. Obviously much has been said of the pivotal calls in the first half which gave the Welsh 10 quick points. Davis was offside, although, really, not by much and I have no issue with that call being let ago if The Wallabies had also been given the benefit of the doubt on occasions. That just never seemed to happen. In the second half Beale threw a lovely ball to LSL (Lukhan Salakaia-Loto) down the wing and it was called back as a forward pass. There was nothing wrong with it. Look, in every game one team is going to get the better of the referee’s decisions and it was clearly Wales last night, which is fine and to be honest Wales have had some bad calls go against them in previous world cups so it’s our turn now. I just hope that we don’t see this pattern continuing in the quarter finals.
5. Assuming that we are now off to play England in the quarters, is it too much to ask that the coaches actually learn something from the way teams are playing us and maybe, just maybe, anticipate that you are probably going to get defence rushing up on your halves for the first 30 minutes of the game.