Despite not playing anywhere near a standard of rugby to win, or even be competitive in this year’s Tri-Nations, Robbie Deans seems content with the progress to date of his team.
Clearly looking through a half-full glass, Deans praised his troops for their efforts and suggested after four Tests in as many weeks his team was “in terms of the ledger, well and truly on the positive side”.
I guess when you consider the opposition the Wallabies were up against he is right, but in terms of what challenges lay ahead, the ledger looks more like a sea of red.
For a season that started fairly brightly, the lustre has certainly faded over the last two weeks with the Wallabies unable to fix the basic flaws in their game or show the requisite composure to deal with adversity.
These facts didn’t seem to deter Deans who bravely accentuated the positives.
“I’m pretty proud of the effort of the group in this month to be honest. We’ve played six games in 21 days plus covered an awful lot of ground.
“Sure we didn’t win every Test, we probably should have won the fourth (Test) but within that we’ve seen the emergence of some players who are going to be here for a while.
“They’ve emerged through some pretty trying circumstance and you saw last night their growth.
“It hasn’t been a wasted month and it seems like an awfully long time ago since we started. But we’ve got a lot out of it without getting all the results obviously”
Without question the last four weeks have seen players like Ben Daley, Quade Cooper and Salesi Ma’afu take steps forward but it is concerning that players such as Dean Mumm, Drew Mitchell and Richard Brown have not kicked on or in some cases, regressed.
With six or seven top line Wallabies to return for the first or second games of the Tri-Nations, plus the news Deans and his staff are seriously considering players outside the current squad, there will be casualties.
What is clear however is the reliance Deans is putting on his halves combination, in particular Luke Burgess.
“We are seeing the emergence of the blokes who are going to fill the shoes of the blokes who left, essentially. Luke is looking composed – he led last night.
“He saw space, he found space and he is part of the puzzle so we got that out of the month as well.”
Burgess is an interesting study. He just doesn’t look happy. Speaking to Rod Kafer after last night’s match, Kafer told me how pissed off Burgess was before his post match interview and Burgo’s mood certainly hadn’t improved this morning.
Add to this the sizeable blow-up between Rocky and Gits just before half time, plus reports the team lacked focus during the lead up to the second England Test, and you have to wonder whether all is well?
As Robbie Deans somewhat fatalistically finished of his answer to a question about the Wallabies preparedness for the Tri-Nations “You can only work with what you’ve got”…make of that what you will.
