Dwyer’s View: Wallabies Grab the Clean Sweep

On to the other side of the ledger.

[badlist]

• Our restarts — all of kick, chase and receipt — are way below par. Take a look at NZ (I’m saying this quite a bit) or SA. They can’t run any faster than us, in general, so how can they get there all of the time and we can’t (notwithstanding one effort by AAC)?
• Our scrum, despite positive progress, is still not secure enough. Indeed, when Alexander comes on it becomes a liability.

• Our lineout suffers, too often, from ‘not straight’ throws — and now from overthrows. These certainly are not the fault, exclusively, of the throwers. The set pieces are the major front-line attacking and defensive weapons of any great team and we are, again, just not good enough.

• Our alignment and realignment, our lines and depth of running, our spacing, the accuracy of our passing, indeed of virtually all of our play — note Robbie Deans’s half-time comment through gritted teeth on ‘the inaccuracy of our play at the tackle’ – are all way below par. And all of these things are dead simple and, generally, are not affected at all by the opposition. They are almost entirely under our own control. Compare all of these qualities in NZ’s display against Ireland and you’ll see that we are way behind.

• Our support play has been deplorable for some years and remains that way. Quality breaks by Ioane (31st minute), Beale (41st) and Barnes (63rd) presented genuine try-scoring opportunities, but were all squandered. Support play has been superceded in priority by the dreaded reload, where primary support players consistently ignore the ball, and the opportunities around the ball, to reset for the next play. This is patently and obviously wrong.

• Our kick-chase (as at the restarts) is way below par. Even our attacking kicks, with try-scoring potential, are ignored by many. Beale’s chip-kick (55th minute) over the last Welsh defender was chased well by Barnes and TPN and reasonably by Palu and Pocock, and Timani got off the ground to get back involved, but where were the others? For goodness sake, Wales’s chase back showed miles more urgency than our hunger for the match-winning try — and we finished with Ioane carrying over for a 5-metre scrum at the other end.

• Our constructive three-quarter play is getting better, albeit from a very low base. We saw a few second touches from Genia, Barnes and Beale (all of which led to try-scoring opportunities) and this shows promise, but the contributions of both McCabe and Horne compare unfavourably with the work of SBW, Conrad Smith, Francois Steyn and de Villiers. Those must be our benchmarks.[/badlist]

For this game, I would give the individual players the following ratings. Regular readers will know that I rate players with a consideration of what they are capable of.

Beale, Higginbotham: below par, perhaps even way below par.

Ioane, Palu, Robinson, Sharpe, McCabe, Horne: OK.

Kepu, Timani: Promising.

AAC, Barnes, TPN: Good.

Genia: Very good.

Pocock: Outstanding.

We were once the world benchmark for quality, imaginative attacking rugby, played with vision and enthusiasm. But not these days. I see little evidence in our play that would warrant description using words like dynamic, urgent, hungry, relentless, frenzy, pace, acceleration, ‘hands’, power, drive (I could go on.) These must be present in any quality display! Some may think that this is an overly harsh assessment of our level of performance, but if we aspire to be the best, I believe it is an accurate one.

I read one blogger today who commented, perhaps only a little tongue-in-cheek:

The difference between the Wallabies and the All Blacks is that the All Blacks know how to play.