Australia lose to New England at Twickenham
By Matt Rowley, Green & Gold Rugby
As I sat shivering on the media gantry at Twickenham on Saturday, I couldn’t help feeling I’d seen this game before, in fact multiple times over the past three years; the ‘Men in Gold’ being ruthlessly exposed by a team wearing dark jerseys (and it wasn’t just a Saffa referee crying “hands off black seven!”, although that certainly helped).
Credit to Johnno and the England brains trust; if you were tasked with the job of beating this Wallabies team, whose game-plan would you look to lift word for word and implement? How about a team that’s beaten Australia 10 of the last 11 times – New Zealand?
Wobblies: Australia were taught a cruel lesson at Twickenham PHOTO: GETTY IMAGES
Well done if they did, because this game was a carbon copy of what New Zealand have done to Australia many times over the last few years, especially in those games where the All Blacks really must win, like the opening Bledisloe and Tri-Nations matches of the season.
The hallmarks were all there.
Central to it was attacking the tackle area. The Wallabies religiously stick to the fan or “picket fence” defence, preferring to commit the bare minimum to the breakdown and to re-allocate those defenders across the park.
This relies on their fetchers David Pocock and Rocky Elsom to compete at the breakdown and bolsters the defence of a backline that is not only small by modern standards, but holds in it some true turnstiles.
New Zealand, and England on Saturday, make a mockery of this tactic by bulldozing through the pretence of a ruck like a wrecking ball through bowling pins.
Where the Wallabies tried to get
to the ball, the All Whites got
above and then
beyond it. At best it forces the turnover, at worst it interminably slows the ball without “hands on” penalties and puts bodies “legally” on the wrong side of the ball.
Another tell-tale sign was what I call the “sucker-punch”. Time and again the Wallabies put together fancy attacking phase play, working their way up field, for a forced turnover and break-out to have the play at the other end of the field in seconds through devastating counter-attack. At the minimum there’ll be a penalty, but it could be far worse, and what feels like a tight game is ballooning away on the scoreboard.
Which is what the key numbers say from Saturday. It was two tries apiece, 12 penalties to England vs 11 for Australia, and seven shots at goal vs five. Theoretically a six-point game, but far from that in reality, because it wouldn’t be a Wallaby performance without a goal kicking disaster. In this case it was Toby Flood rather than Dan Carter nailing all his shots. Was it a coincidence that New England conceded so many of their penalties out wide and just inside their half?
In the end though, it’s one thing to know the right game-plan, another to implement it, which the England in black team did particularly well. For Australia though, the “secret’s” out and it’s not just the Kiwis who know how to use it. How much longer can it go un-fixed?
Follow Matt on Twitter @Matt_Gagger
