Get that plane in the air, captain – before the wheels fall off.
MAN OVERBOARD
The Wallabies’ departure for France on Thursday was overshadowed in the news by the departure for England (or possibly Queensland) of attack coach Brad Davis. According to the Sydney Morning Herald, Davis needs to return to England to attend to personal matters, with Eddie Jones left “desperately searching” for a replacement. On the other hand, PlanetRugby reports Jones as saying “There’s a potential candidate ready to step up so I think we’ll improve the coaching staff.”
Doesn’t that sound Trumpian? We had this guy, he’s the greatest guy, he’s leaving us, we were actually already looking for his replacement, we’ve got this new guy coming, he’s the greatest guy, he’s going to be a big improvement, believe me.
However urgent Davis’s personal reasons may be, he may have found the time to tee up his next job as the Reds’ defence coach under Les Kiss, according to the Wide World of Sports.
‘GIVE YOURSELVES UPPERCUTS’
Also via PlanetRugby is this entertaining account of Jones like totally freaking out under pressure from journalists at the airport, who pressed him for him for comments on Davis and Quade Cooper. He thinks their negativity is “reflective of Australian rugby”, which is probably a fair call. If only Australian rugby had something to be positive about.
You know who could teach Eddie a thing or two about dealing with the press? Michael Cheika. That guy never lost his cool.
JUST DROPPING THE KIDS OFF AT THE POOL
Rugby World Cup 2023 Pool C, that is. Wales play South Africa at Cardiff this weekend, but the teams had not been announced at the time of typing. Fiji take on France in Nantes, and that’s going to be an interesting clash. One of my colleagues is pretty sure that the Flying Fijians are going to roll the Wallabies and/or Wales in the pool rounds and go through to a quarter-final. I expect he’ll give us an update on that projection on Monday. Georgia have this weekend off (they play Scotland at Murrayfield next week) while Portugal, as far as I know, won’t play again until their first pool match (which is still a month away).
FIVE-EIGHTHS OF S.F.A.
I’ve been threatening for a while to share my theory on the who, what, where and why of the five-eighth role at the Wallabies. It goes like this: the playmaker part of the job isn’t all that matters to the coaches; as well as ‘running the backline’ in attack, the five-eighth is tasked with managing the forwards from behind. He’s responsible for steering the pods around, trying to stretch the defence line and disrupt their alignment. And when he has accomplished that, he’s authorised to take the ball and make the play. (Unless the game plan is to kick on the first or second phase, of course.)
It’s a job that Quade Cooper has been doing since the Reds’ heyday back in 2011. I remember hearing then that he was a brutal boss, refusing to take the ball from Will Genia and sending the forwards up into the impact zone until they started make metres and create some space. I think there’s a recording from a practice match in which he was wired for sound, and it’s not safe for kiddies to listen.
Genia described that era of the Reds in an article for the Shouty Site a few months ago:
“Back in 2010 and 2011, Ewen McKenzie and Jimmy McKay understood that guys like myself, Quade and Digby Ioane were naturally quite instinctive football players. So, they did really well to design a game plan around the way that we saw the game and played the game. We didn’t like to be shackled by too much structure, so it was very simple. We had a call. The call was ‘broncos’ just hitting up in the midfield and ‘cowboys’ was hitting out wide, and essentially the forwards worked the same way and then it was basically myself and Quade, who off the cuff made the decision if we wanted to go the same way or go back the other way. A lot of that was determined by whether we got over the gain line or were behind the gain line. That was amazing for our growth as football players in terms of understanding the game.”
History shows that Robbie Deans wouldn’t let Cooper run the show like that for the Wallabies, and also that Michael Cheika superglued Bernard Foley into the gold no. 10 jersey during his tenure. Cheika’s faith in the, er, Iceman was established when the Waratahs took the Super title in 2014, and he will probably want Foley to organise his funeral when that comes.
Dave Rennie subsequently settled on Cooper as his preferred five-eighth, until that Achilles tendon injury in 2022. So he tried James O’Connor as playmaker against Argentina, and that didn’t go well. He was reported as saying: “James got a crack in the last Test, we thought his experience would be really important and wanted him to drive the ship and allow us to implement our plan, and we were pretty clunky to be honest, lacked cohesion, and so he’s missed out on selection…He’s convinced that he can implement the plan that we want. It’s difficult to do it when you’re not in the squad. Should he get another opportunity with us he needs to highlight that he’s made some shifts.”
Rennie resorted to Bernard Foley after that, with Noah Lolesio also coming into the frame and Reece Hodge there as back-up. Lolesio started at 10 in two matches against South Africa, for one win and one loss.
A little while ago, the Shouty Site ran an article about Lolesio’s contract to play in France. It featured comments from Scott Wisemantel, who was the Wallabies’ attack coach under Dave Rennie. Scott, you may recall, resigned from that job shortly before Rennie was boned, and was willing only to take on a consultant role when Eddie Jones was appointed.
This is what Wisemantel had to say about Noah Lolesio, the test five-eighth: “The one thing that we wanted from Noah was to be a bit more aggressive because he’s such a nice bloke. I want him to be filthy if he’s not selected. I want him to come to me and go ‘why’? And ‘how are we going to do this and what are you going to do for me?’ It’s not being rude. In that role, as a player who touches the ball more than most players in the team, he has to have that authority and that command. You actually have to practise it daily. Talking in wants and needs. ‘I need you here, I want you here, if you don’t show up, there’s going to be consequences’. It’s aggressive language. And off the field, Noah is nothing like that. But that’s part of his development, controlling men.”
I reckon the reason that Noah didn’t get a look-in when Jones arrived is that Wisemantel reported that Noah is just not mentally ready to run the show at test level. So Jones called up Quade Cooper for The Rugby Championship, and I thought everything was going to be fine. But in hindsight, I suspect the Jones-Cooper relationship started going off the rails during half-time in the first TRC match in Pretoria.
Six weeks down the track, Cooper is out, Carter Gordon is a lock as the Wallabies’ starting 10, and Bernard Foley is shadowing the squad. What of Ben Donaldson’s potential as a backseat boss for the forwards? I don’t know. Maybe I don’t care.
Anyone got an opinion?
