All in all the series against France was a success. We’re not all the way to where we want to be by a long shot, but there were some real positives to take out of the series.
Twelve tries has got to be considered successful, as has a 3-0 win. The real positives for me were that the selectors introduced a number of new players – both to the squad and starting lineup. Some who had been there before played better than they had for some time.
Carter and Skelton were real positives as were White and Foley in the starting lineup. Kepu, McCalman and Simmons played better than he’s ever played before. Polota-Nau, and Palu played better than they have for some time. So I think we’ve really strengthened the depth of our squad and showed some real signs. Slipper has really finally showed what a lot of very good judges have anticipated from him. A few years ago Patricio Noriega he thought Slipper had the potential to be the best of all the props on show and in this series he did that.
About 18 months ago Michael Cheika said to me
“Mate wait until you see will Skelton in action, he’s really going to be something else”.
While he’s not at the top level yet, we’ve some some real glimpses. His ability to draw two defenders and put Izzy though that hole was excellent. Some people say great angle by Izzy but really it’s very easy when you’re on the line like that. It was Skelton who froze the inside man before drawing the outside man with a step. That’s pretty good for a very big man not noted for his agility in his first test.
When you can knock world class players out of the way, that’s some quality as well. He’ll find out what’s what in The Rugby Championship – he’ll be marked for sure.
If we’re going to be successful in the Rugby Championship we definitely have to play better in some areas.
There’s massive room for improvement in Nic White. He’s got genuine pace and plenty of courage – he’s not frightened of tackling anything and is a very good kicker (although he does kick too much). Where he let himself down (as did Foley) was that he threw far too many passes way below standard; they missed or nearly missed the target.
Quality of service is a real problem in Australian rugby right now. If you want the benefit of good service versus bad highlighted, look at the All Blacks vs England where Smith was excellent and Youngs woeful. Unless you get your distribution spot on there’s no use having six dangerous backs outside your scrum half if he can’t get this right more than 95% of the time. The worst feature of this is that it’s not difficult – it just comes with perfect practise.
Added to that was White’s penchant for running slightly backwards and across field in the fashion of Genia – like a backwards dawdle across the field.
The next failing in our game – the single biggest one – was our cross-field running. Our attack invariably (until the last 20 minutes) was across field and the worst offender by a long way was Matt Toomua. I had been really impressed by Toomua at 10, but at 12 he seemed to want to explore the spaces out wide and it made it really difficult for all outside of him.
We didn’t see much of Kuridrani or Folau, nor the wingers. All we got was the crowding of people outside of Toomua. I’d never thought of Beale as one of the all time straight runners, but as soon as he came on we made two clean breaks straight through the fly half and inside centre.
Having said that Beale fell off a tackle and is not nearly the tackler Toomua is. I was trying to work out if Basteraud had actually played until Beale came on.
I’ve talked for a while about my desire to have a bigger inside centre. Toomua’s not the biggest, but he’s solid enough, as long as he runs straight. By the way being big and running straight doesn’t mean crash ball. I’m talking about the direction of your run and the ability to absorb punishment in attack and defence. People point to the fact that having two ball distributors is more useful – but can someone tell me when Toomua distributed the ball effectively? It wouldn’t take me long to get someone running straight.
So some real plusses, to also introduce those players and give us cause to think that we’re stronger in depth than before. We’ve probably got four or five guys who can play fly-half – Foley, Toomua, Beale, Cooper to name a few.
A real positive in our team is our enthusiasm and our urgency. They are huge plusses. We have much better urgency with our numbers around the tackle (although I’d still like to see another man there – if the opportunity presents itself it gives the chance to pick and go or continue the play). The other place we had urgency was in defence – it just looked like we had more players than them.
We didn’t quite pick up where we left off against Wales last year (which I thought was the best we’d played for some time) but with this under our belt we can go into The Rugby Championship with the confidence of knowing that if we play to the best of our ability, we can surely beat anyone.
