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Wallabies 2020

RugbyReg

Rocky Elsom (76)
Staff member
I don't know what we are trying to prove but this distracted me on a Friday morning.

Rennie's chosen Wallaby side v NZL in Sydney was the least experienced, in terms of test caps in the starting 15, this year with 402 caps. It also had 4 debutants in the 23.

Cheika's least experienced chosen side was v Fiji in Melbourne in Melbourne, 2017 with 441 (also 4 rookies), when he went on a run testing certain players because he followed up with 444 caps v Scotland in Sydney and 489 v Italy in Brisbane. And remember that game v France in Paris when we ran effectively our 2nd team? That had 467 caps.

In comparison his most experienced startin side was the one v Argentina in the 2015 RWC SF with 876 caps in the starting side.

Link's least experienced team was v the Argies on the Gold Coast with 377 (no rookies)

Deans had by far the least experienced teams. The least was v ITaly in Melbourne in 2009 with 198 caps in the starting side - 97 from George Smith. He had 11 others with less than 400 caps.

Knuckles ran out a team v Wales in Sydney in 2007 with 331 caps.

Eddie's lowest was the 2nd string team he chose to play Namibia in Adelaide at the RWC03 with 280 caps. Other than that it was the 364 caps v New Zealand in Wellington of 2004.
 

rodha

Dave Cowper (27)
I don't see the point in comparing with Deans personally.

Deans did pretty well with a full generation of highly talented players. They were experienced and he wasnt consistently losing his best and most experienced talent to Europe or Japan. He pushed them to 2nd in the world and the only reason he never managed first was that his tenure coincided with the GOAT NZ side.

Don't you think you're underselling that period a tad?

I recall Deans got the Wallabies to 2nd ranked in the world for 3 years? I'd say that's a pretty decent achievement for a country in which union is merely an after-thought & rarely gets acknowledged in the sport's section of your local weekly publication.
 

Derpus

Nathan Sharpe (72)
Don't you think you're underselling that period a tad?

I recall Deans got the Wallabies to 2nd ranked in the world for 3 years? I'd say that's a pretty decent achievement for a country in which union is merely an after-thought & rarely gets acknowledged in the sport's section of your local weekly publication.

Not really. He had good players to work with and weaker opposition (outside NZ). Plus you are underselling Rugby, particularly 10+ years ago.

Sure it'll never be AFL but it's popular enough (or was) to produce world cup winning talent.
 

Up the Guts

Steve Williams (59)
Not really. He had good players to work with and weaker opposition (outside NZ). Plus you are underselling Rugby, particularly 10+ years ago.

Sure it'll never be AFL but it's popular enough (or was) to produce world cup winning talent.
More importantly, the rest of the world has improved dramatically since then.
 

barbarian

Phil Kearns (64)
Staff member
It's a bit hard to judge eras, especially trying to compare Dave Rennie's five minutes in charge to that of other coaches.

My memory of the Deans era is the hard work he did to get the squad beginning to blossom in 2010, before his decision to take a left turn tactically in 2011 which we never really recovered from.

His squad seemed talented in hindsight, but he did really well to bring that talent out. The backline of Genia-Cooper-Ioane-Giteau-AAC (Adam Ashley-Cooper)-JOC (James O'Connor)-Beale is genuinely one of the best we've ever fielded. But then he burned Giteau, gave the youngsters too long a leash and you all know the rest.

If Rennie can replicate the first two years of Deans then I think we will all be very happy indeed. Then if he do what Dingo couldn't and stick the landing well the sky is the limit.
.
 

Derpus

Nathan Sharpe (72)
An obscene amount of talent in that backline. Wish we could fuck with the timeline and marry our current tight five with them.
 

barbarian

Phil Kearns (64)
Staff member
An obscene amount of talent in that backline. Wish we could fuck with the timeline and marry our current tight five with them.


Just AAA and Slipper would be more than enough. Put Moore in between them, Horwill and Sharpe behind them and there is your achilles heel gone.
 

rodha

Dave Cowper (27)
An obscene amount of talent in that backline.

Meh, not really. At least not refined talent anyway. Young players like Cooper, Beale, O'Conner.. certainly couldn't match
the composure of their NZ counterparts. Badly error-prone. For every skittering run, there was a dropped ball or regulatory tackle missed. That 'talent' that Deans had certainly weren't of the quality that was produced under the NZ system. Sure those players had a certain level of flair, but they all lacked the mental fortitude, rugby brains & composure of players that would come through the NZ system at test-level. A player like Quade Cooper wouldn't have lasted long in the NZ system at all. Lack of competitiveness for positions played it's part in that. NZ players can't take their circumstances for granted, as tons of other players challenging for their spot, and they're only one poor game from getting the flick. See the complete opposite - the three amigos, young, entitled, city-boys, lacking the groundedness of humble rural Cantabs such as Carter, McCaw etc.. the former recipe didn't result in composed test players, something that Deans couldn't help. He had to deal with the individual entitlement & player-power of that rabble.
 

barbarian

Phil Kearns (64)
Staff member
I think you're being overly argumentative there Rod. Nobody was saying they were better than the Kiwis, just that they were talented. I do think Deans could have moulded them better, but at the same time it's hard to know what went on behind closed doors.
 

Tomikin

David Codey (61)
Meh, not really. At least not refined talent anyway. Young players like Cooper, Beale, O'Conner.. certainly couldn't match
the composure of their NZ counterparts. Badly error-prone. For every skittering run, there was a dropped ball or regulatory tackle missed. That 'talent' that Deans had certainly weren't of the quality that was produced under the NZ system. Sure those players had a certain level of flair, but they all lacked the mental fortitude, rugby brains & composure of players that would come through the NZ system at test-level. A player like Quade Cooper wouldn't have lasted long in the NZ system at all. Lack of competitiveness for positions played it's part in that. NZ players can't take their circumstances for granted, as tons of other players challenging for their spot, and they're only one poor game from getting the flick. See the complete opposite - the three amigos, young, entitled, city-boys, lacking the groundedness of humble rural Cantabs such as Carter, McCaw etc.. the former recipe didn't result in composed test players, something that Deans couldn't help. He had to deal with the individual entitlement & player-power of that rabble.

Anything Positive to say mate, or you just here to piss in everyones pocket.
 

Braveheart81

Will Genia (78)
Staff member
Bullshit. We had plenty of talent hanging around and even better players coming through. You really think this lot is comparable to Folau, Genia, Pocock et al? nar. Shit we could afford to drop Giteau. Plus we had more than two professional first grade locks.


He dropped Giteau in the fourth year as coach. This is kind of my point. You're lining up Deans two thirds of the way through his tenure against Rennie after 5 tests.

Genia, Pocock and Folau all debuted under Deans.

Wait huh?

In the game Deans beat the All Blacks in his first year (34-19) the Wallabies lineup was:

1-8: Benn Robinson, Stephen Moore, Al Baxter, James Horwill, Nathan Sharpe, Rocky Elsom, Wycliff Palu
9-15: Burgess, Giteau, Tuqiri, Barnes, Cross, Hynes, AAC (Adam Ashley-Cooper)

16-22: TPN, Dunning, Vickerman, Waugh, Cordingly, Tahu, Mitchell

By no means could that team be considered "one of the youngest Wallaby teams to take the field". Of that team, almost all were in their prime, and in their prime I'd take the following for our squad:

Moore, Horwill, Sharpe, Elsom, Palu, Giteau, Tuqiri, AAC (Adam Ashley-Cooper), TPN, Vickerman, Waugh, Mitchell​


Going into that test some of the younger players that became key players had the following number of caps:

Robinson (10)
Moore (23)
Horwill (5)
Palu (20)
TPN (4)
Barnes (8)
Mitchell (22)
AAC (Adam Ashley-Cooper) (15)

A lot of the players that became mainstays under Deans either started that period with very little experience or debuted during his time.

Of the players that featured a lot for Deans that started as highly experienced, it's really just Sharpe, Smith, Elsom, and Giteau. Most of the other older players were done within a couple of years.

I don't think Rennie's position is massively different to this. It's going to take a few years before we work out whether the young guys he's got with very few caps or have just debuted have the sort of talent that the players that were stars under Deans had (Pocock, Beale, Genia, Cooper).

He's got a bunch of players who look like they'll be mainstays of his squad over the next few years in the 10-30 or so cap space that would line up with the group above (Ala'alatoa, Sio, Tupou, LSL (Lukhan Salakaia-Loto), Koroibete, Fainga'a).
 

Viking

Mark Ella (57)
He dropped Giteau in the fourth year as coach. This is kind of my point. You're lining up Deans two thirds of the way through his tenure against Rennie after 5 tests.

Genia, Pocock and Folau all debuted under Deans.




Going into that test some of the younger players that became key players had the following number of caps:

Robinson (10)
Moore (23)
Horwill (5)
Palu (20)
TPN (4)
Barnes (8)
Mitchell (22)
AAC (Adam Ashley-Cooper) (15)

A lot of the players that became mainstays under Deans either started that period with very little experience or debuted during his time.

Of the players that featured a lot for Deans that started as highly experienced, it's really just Sharpe, Smith, Elsom, and Giteau. Most of the other older players were done within a couple of years.

I don't think Rennie's position is massively different to this. It's going to take a few years before we work out whether the young guys he's got with very few caps or have just debuted have the sort of talent that the players that were stars under Deans had (Pocock, Beale, Genia, Cooper).

He's got a bunch of players who look like they'll be mainstays of his squad over the next few years in the 10-30 or so cap space that would line up with the group above (Ala'alatoa, Sio, Tupou, LSL (Lukhan Salakaia-Loto), Koroibete, Fainga'a).


All those players have multiple super xv seasons under there belts on top of those caps. Rennie has inherited players who don't even have 1 proper super xv season under there belt.
 

Braveheart81

Will Genia (78)
Staff member
All those players have multiple super xv seasons under there belts on top of those caps. Rennie has inherited players who don't even have 1 proper super xv season under there belt.


In my analogy, these would be the guys that debuted within a year or two of Deans starting coaching who had just started playing Super Rugby (David Pocock, James O'Connor, Kurtley Beale, Quade Cooper, Will Genia, Sekope Kepu).

I don't think the situation is massively different. Most of the players who would be identified as being our stars under Deans were barely on the Super Rugby scene when he started his tenure as coach.

By the time we get to the 2023 RWC I would expect we'll be looking at a similar situation to Deans in 2011 where we have a number of superstars with a solid chunk of test experience maybe halfway through their international careers and some very experienced players near the end of their test careers.

The biggest difference between the starting squads Deans and Rennie have is Rennie doesn't have many guys who clearly have a year or two left of test rugby at most, are solid but not amazing but can help ease in the next generation. Those guys have gone overseas.
 

upthereds#!

Peter Johnson (47)
Any predictions for the final game team wise? Assuming JOC (James O'Connor) is the only one reutrning from injury. Wasn't LSL (Lukhan Salakaia-Loto) close to returning or did i imagine that?

1. Sio 2. Fainga'a 3. Ala'alatoa
4. Phillips 5. Simmons
6. Hanigan 8. Wilson 7. Hoops
9. White 10. JOC (James O'Connor) 11. Koroibete 12. Paisami 13. Petaia 14. Wright 15. Hodge
16. Amosa 17. Bell 18. Tupou 19. LSL (Lukhan Salakaia-Loto) 20. Wright 21. Lolesio 23. Banks

With most likely normal squad of 33 in 2021 (after Super Rugby, so Phillips should be here) WHO has taken their chance in this larger squad and will be heavily involved next year, and who won't be.

I feel Powell, Simone and Samu will never be seen in gold again and Ikitau will never be a wallaby
 

Zero_Cool

Arch Winning (36)
Perhaps more a question for Wallabies 2021, but the captaincy going forwards obviously there was quite a bit of debate about Hooper retaining the captaincy for 2020, a lot of people have been critical of his decision making in the Argentina game, the same sort of issue that has dogged him much of his career.
What do we do going forwards?
Who could potentially take the reins in 2020?
 

Jimmy_Crouch

Peter Johnson (47)
Perhaps more a question for Wallabies 2021, but the captaincy going forwards obviously there was quite a bit of debate about Hooper retaining the captaincy for 2020, a lot of people have been critical of his decision making in the Argentina game, the same sort of issue that has dogged him much of his career.
What do we do going forwards?
Who could potentially take the reins in 2020?

So you are saying Hooper should go for goal more but the kicker is a 65% (granted there are reasons) and not back the lineout? You do realise he did both during this match.

I've got a better idea why don't the players just execute their skill areas. BPA throwing straight, Phillip calling the right jumper, jumper catching it and the rest of the forwards correctly setting the maul.
 
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