The first thing that needs to be said is that Ewen McKenzie has made some brave decisions: he left Genia out of the team, he changed the captaincy from James Horwill, and then he suspended half a dozen players – including top liners – from the playing squad. I think all those things were absolutely necessary. It took some ticker to do but he did.
He took some risk against Scotland, but full marks to him he got the win – even with players in unfamiliar positions.
It was an ordinary sort of game on an ordinary sort of pitch. Scotland aren’t easy beats; they give most teams a hard time – they’re hard nosed and stick at it. They make as difficult as possible for you and kick their goals. We should be the last lot to think they’re a soft touch with our recent history against them.
It wasn’t pretty game or a fantastic performance but is was a win. The end result was what we were after.
I think that the first choice of Sekope Kepu is paying dividends. He’s playing better so the coaches have achieved what they were after there. We all knew he had the potential. I’m still to be convinced Slipper is the final answer but he produces a performance.
Both second rowers continue to add; Horwill made some punishing tackles and reasonable runs, so he’s headed in the right direction. Our lineout did really well – on theirs and our throws – we scored a try off one of them in fact. Simmons was doing a great job getting into the air, sometimes with little lifting assistance. We’ve also got to attribute a fair bit of this to the captain who is a great caller.
The ball stealing is looking good – especially across the back row – but also with others, like Stephen Moore. The hooker’s catch and pass skills have come on better than anyone’s in the team and he hits the inside hole with an unders line beautifully.
We did give away a lot of penalties but the ref was totally inconsistent on his ruck interpretations. He was also savage on not releasing the ball – but ruled that evenly I suppose.
It won’t surprise you to hear that I’m still far from convinced that Genia and Cooper – individually and together – are giving us what we want. Will is still far too slow with the ball. He picked up, had a look around and got caught in possession – he puts himself under a lot of pressure by not passing off the ground.
I wonder if he looks at other games to see that most scrum halves pass of the ground and that the best ones always do – or run (one or the other) and not do a bit of each? It would do him well to have a look at those scrum halve performances and see if they’re adding to the team performances.
Quade is still not at his best, he still dawdles a little and jumps up and down on the one spot which takes away advantage line yards from us and it makes it difficult for people to be running off him.
Over here the British commentators were really talking Folau up. He did do some good things, but all in all I’ve seen him play better and that’s mainly because Cooper’s not doing things for his midfield or outside backs.
Quade did get a second touch that produced a try for Chris Feauai-Sautia, but to be quite honest the try should have been scored easily. Cooper should have just straightened, taken the last tackle and given it to the winger who would have strolled over and got ten metres closer to the posts, or he could have slipped it inside to Hooper who would have scored near the posts.
It was only because the fullback didn’t hold on to the tackle that the try was scored. It’s so simple, just stay straight and let the guy score the try. I thought Chris Feauai-Sautia looked a little out of place actually and despite the talking up I haven’t seen anything to make me think he’ll be a test player – yet. We missed Toomua and Mike Harris just isn’t a test player yet either.
Outside of that I thought everyone did reasonably well. We would have had the game well wrapped up without Leali’ifano’s kicking woes – I think he got about four from eight. Conditions weren’t easy, but he missed a couple on the left hand side of the posts that were easy for his type of kick.
The fact the Wallabies still scored two tries to nil and got over the line, I’d say mission accomplished on this occasion. We will need to play miles better to beat Wales. We said before the start of the tour that England and Wales were going to be difficult and winning five games was going to be very tough indeed.
I talked then about how there’s a reason why few people achieve Grand Slams; it was never going to be easy for this squad at this stage of their development. If they can win four then that’s absolutely full marks, if they can win three we’d say it’s a pass and that’s OK.
So we’re still a chance to get an A pass – it won’t be an honours degree, but if we beat Wales we would have done it. One last push.
