The Saffas weren't much better in Super Rugby than the Australian teams (they were 0 - 5 against the Brumbies)...
But the Aussie pack features some of the best performers in Super Rugby this year - granted, a couple of those props weren't there on the weekend, but the players that were looked confused as to what their roles were in general play.
Slim - essentially I agree.
Moreover: IMO if we look very closely at Cheika's manifest (by results) failings as an HC, the most compelling failure in areas of specialist coaching has been in two dimensions: (a) Cheika's continuing refusal to appoint a true specialist forwards coach (by which I do not mean scrum coach) and (b), related, his insistence that only he can and should perform that role. He performs this chosen role self-dedication very badly, he clearly thinks he knows how to do it, but does not.
The result has been that in the entire 2015-2019 period there has been zero improvement is the general calibre and _effectiveness_ (as distinct from stats) of, particularly, our forwards work in open plan and the loose, in consistent gain line penetration across 80 minutes, in multiple productive carries beyond 1 metre, in breakdown productivity and time and space winning opposition ball-slowing, forwards offloading and linking skills in fast play, and so on.
We are simply not of sufficient class in these Test-turning attributes and routinely obsess over back line constitution and selection (or simply rely on our yearning for Pocock - yeah right, at 8 FFS) when our far deeper and more expensive problems lie in the low productivity and core skills of our forwards, especially and critically, in broken play.
Given that it is blindingly obvious that (c) L Fisher is by repute and results considered one of the best forwards coaches in the world, certainly in this hemisphere and (d) the calibre of his contribution can be clearly seen in the skills and success of the 2019 Brumbies forwards _as a group_, it beggars belief that in a RWC year he was not asked to join the Wallabies coaching set-up as forwards coach. Anyone who cannot see the need for this role within the current Wallaby environment is blind to the needs of the modern international game and/or blind to Cheika's coaching delinquencies.
(And don't get me started re how, in a RWC year, RA and Cheika think it's OK to (e) only appoint a Wallaby attack coach in May 2019 and (f) make that appointment as someone who's not succeeded at all in his most recent Super role as attack coach and whom is skin-deep in Test level attack coaching. I mean, this is not serious, this is not management, it's laughable.)
