If you are bothered by a rant this morning take heart that everything gets positive if you jump past this bit - <rant ends>
<commence rant>
IMO Rennie made a massive error in not treating Italy with respect last week. But that doesn't change how things are going with the Wallabies. Unfortunately while he is close to getting the best some good out of them on almost every second game, they still don't really know how to close out tight ones. Discipline remains the achilles heel and while our scrum and maul can mostly be relied on, in an era where territory kicking features heavily the line out remains shabby.
Selection at 2, 9 and 10 is a study on its own. Despite some unpublicised, claimed personally compiled stats by a single fan to the contrary, we appear to have two options with reasonable field performance but can't hit a barge with a barge pole (even a big barge), and the usual starter who is a "jack of all trades" - ie good at zack. And some suggest what's the point in good throw if the line can't communicate, call, lift, jump or catch a ball? At 9 we have a preferred selection of a player who is a paradigm. Paradigm of p#ssing off the ref, that is. It sets the tone and narrative for team discipline quite nicely. As a back up we have a coin toss between two players with little commonality in skills and strengths, either of which might have developed had they more game time than a rotational bench policy permits. Oh and this particular coin toss being apparently rewarded for the colour yellow on his last outing. Nice!
10 leads us to the repeated global search for someone who once was almost good. And a selection of a development player who seems to be reconsidered as a poor historical choice (whether or not this is actually correct is open to opinion) with the alternative given a shot carefully, and for once skillfully arranged - for ambush and destruction. It's OK as on the wing we are starting a player who is supported by approx 0.27% of non-Brumby fans. Awesome endorsement. He is backed up by a bench player - who was so invisible in the Australia A v Italy game the commentators didn't even know he was there.
Let's not dig too far into our kicking prowess which suitably matches our line out skillset.
On the bench we have our two best "up the guts and at 'em" players carefully set for a) making life more difficult for the bench hooker who can't throw and b) too late to impact the rucks sufficiently to take out the game.
Wallabies 22 : Ireland 6. [That's the penalty count.]
No wonder there is a building steady thrum from the fan base that world rankings are irrelevant.
<rant ends>
