How are the Wallabies doing after nine tests under Saint Joe?
The State of the Challenge
There are two parts to this analysis. Are there any signs of improvement we can see from the start of the year to the end of the Rugby Championship? And who have they played?
The second question is important because, if the Wallabies had had a July test series like Scotland, playing Canada, USA, and Uruguay they’d’ve had an easy time of it. Playing Wales wasn’t easy, but they got the wins. Playing SA, Argentina and NZ was definitely a step up.
If we look at those four sides very briefly, Wales are in just as much turmoil as Australia, probably more in terms of off-field hijinks and changes of players. Although there’s a difference in Wales – they’ve instituted root and branch off-field reforms that are hurting right now but are aimed at addressing the problems and have pretty wide support among the fans, the clubs and the executive. Time will tell if they all work or not; however, the chatter about the WRU is much more positive in Wales than the chatter about RA is, at least in G&GR.
South Africa
South Africa have come off winning the World Cup, barely changed any players, changed their wider coaches a fair bit, and while they’re evolving their playing style they can revert to big bodies smashing into you at the drop of a hat. They’re still the side to beat.
Argentina
In terms of changes, Argentina are the second least changed side. Their players are basically the same and, although they have new coaches, they haven’t really changed their tactics all that much. Incremental evolution is the best description of where both Los Pumas and the Bokke are. Revolution is more the word for the other two teams.
New Zealand
New Zealand have had more changes. Like Argentina they’ve changed their whole coaching staff, but Razor is clearly trying to institute wholesale changes to their playing style. They’ve had additional disruption with the departure of Leon MacDonald recently for undisclosed reasons. Although KARL disagrees, I’m of the opinion that the changes are mostly working but, under pressure, there are times they’re not all on the same page. It won’t last, as they get used to playing together and playing the systems, but they’re not there right now.
In addition they lost a bunch of players – two of their three core locks, both halfbacks, and while every team has injuries, they lost their first choice replacement halfback too. While I don’t know the Kiwis in the depth I have in years gone by, Razor has also opened up about some of the problem positions, suggesting that they’ve considered other players but those that they have considered are not match fit. Because I don’t know the names, it didn’t really register strongly but it was interesting. While the New Zealand public are often a fractious bunch, they would like, almost unanimously, to see the back end of Ioane, at least at 13. I can see his upsides on defence but he’s very limited as a distributor, and while you can play around that it looks like the All Blacks are playing a variation of the Crusaders game plan. Every Saders 13 I can remember for the last couple of decades has been a good creator and passer as well as a defender so I’m not sure why Razor is sticking to him.
Australia
Then there’s Australia. They lost all their coaches, a bunch of players, and they had a disastrous 2023 in terms of player development, morale and the like. Yes, Schmidt has brought 16 new players in this year, that’s a big number, but there have also been about 30 players who have played before over all the tests. We can debate about the overseas players Schmidt has and hasn’t brought back, but there are some that were a big influence last year, even in that mess, who aren’t here and that may or may not matter. In terms of disruption, they’re clearly in the worst place. It’s debatable if you look at just the disruption how much worse off they are than New Zealand, but in the round, the All Blacks are coming off a World Cup final while Australia exited in the pool stages, so their starting points are pretty different.
On that basis, close results against Wales, with home victories, probably fair. Losing to South Africa, probably inevitable. Tying the series in Argentina probably overachieving. One close loss and one bigger loss to the All Blacks, home and away, probably about right.
But we knew this year was going to be rough, the Wallabies were rebuilding from a low point.
Where to Look?
What I, at least, was hoping to see were signs of a plan from the coaches that they are instilling into the players and that the players are executing on the pitch. No more of this “we trained well” BS, but actually executing.
Unlike most of you I watch the 6N and some of the Top14 in full, rather than the highlights. I’m not sure whether the smack down of England by France at Twickenham a couple of years ago, or the hiding of UBB by Toulouse in the Top14 final was the most one-sided match I’ve seen in recent memory. Unlike Australia against Argentina the beaten sides in those games didn’t have that good half hour, but even they had a few runs of good phases, a few minutes when they held onto the ball, imposed their plan on their opponents. Can we find those times, even in the defeats from the Wallabies? Are there signs that things are improving?
Raking over the Ashes
On-going Issues
In every match the Wallabies made mistakes. Some of them keep repeating and make some of us tear our hair out. I think KARL was already bald, but his ranting and hair-tearing about the quality of passing and kicking has been epic.
I’ve given up talking about maul defence. How can you have a mostly decent scrum and a good lineout and such a terrible maul defence? Ok, I haven’t quite given up talking about it. I’m inclined to argue that they don’t defend mauls at all, sometimes the other team doesn’t execute their maul attack properly, but that might be too harsh. It’s still a major issue, especially with tests in the Northern Hemisphere in November to come, when September is already cold and wet.
Kickoff reception. I think, despite Bledisloe II where it was good, this belongs here. It’s possible this has been solved but it was so inconsistent that I’m not willing to say that on the basis of just one decent showing.
Quite a lot has been said about poor tackling by the Wallabies and I think that is harder to call. Some of that is based on morale, some on systems, some on will. For example, in the second test against Argentina the tackling just stopped as morale dropped through the floor. But there’s some good attacking play, and when you’re rebuilding and playing the likes of SA and NZ there are going to be missed tackles as they have players who can put each other into space or who can wrong foot their opponents seemingly without trying.
The Wallaby tackling is, statistically, not that bad now. Their tackle percentage is similar to the other teams. The issue is more where they miss their tackles and where they just don’t attempt them. While defensive systems can have you do all kinds of fancy things, essentially you have some players in the backfield to cover kicks, some players on the ground in the breakdown, and the rest from a connected line so they can support each other. This might leave a gap on the outside, but your line can circle around and reform, plus it usually goes forward and makes passing to the outside hard. All too often we’re seeing big holes in the middle of the defensive line and sides exploiting that. Some of that is clever attacking play, the Jordan try in Bledisloe II is him running back and in as the defenders streamed out wide and he just ran into the space they left behind. Some, like the Jordan try in Bledisloe I, the gap was a system error and the All Blacks got the ball to a player who could exploit it. We’ve seen that sort of a hole far too often. It remains an issue.
Small Improvements?
I have harped on about the absence of a kick chase to the point that I’m sick of it, I don’t know about you. It has started to appear since the second test against Argentina and has largely remained. We can quibble about how effective it is (not very) but given it’s hardly been there for years at any level of Australian rugby it’s a new skill for all these players, we have to count it as an improvement. Kicking is a big part of the modern game (sorry Cheika) and South Africa won a couple of World Cups on the basis of their kicks and aggressive kick chase. Not having any is not an option in the modern game.
Despite KARL’s ranting, we are seeing improvements in the quality of passing and tackling. There’s still a long way to go, absolutely, but it’s no longer a surprise when the Wallabies win a scrum on one touch line, run the ball and pass along the back line to the opposite wing. The main issue is that last pass out wide. Far, far too often it’s behind, over or too far in front of the winger to be caught whether that’s at all or without breaking stride. Of course sometimes that’s down to pressure but often not. I roughly kept track during the first half of Bledisloe II, the All Blacks passed to touch once that I noticed. The Wallabies passed to touch or made the winger stop/turn about 8-10 times. A couple of those I thought were excusable – a pass out of a tackle or similar – the rest were just bad skills. It seems ironic that the Wallabies’ forwards have better passing skills than their backs.
Clear Improvement
The Wallabies are displaying fight. Not in every minute, every match. But even in that second half everyone wants to forget against Argentina, they scored a try. We’ve all seen the AB get up 28-7 and roar out to win by 50+. But in Bledisloe I the score line after that was 21-3 to Australia. Ok, the Wallabies were helped by the TMO ruling out three AB tries, one incorrectly, and all on little things – a knock on in the transfer, a forward pass in an offload from the ground, held up over the line. We can argue how much the All Blacks imploded. But irrespective of all that, the Wallabies rode their luck and kept fighting. Under Jones the players, because they weren’t a team, would have packed it in already and New Zealand would have scored again, eventually. The tries DMac butchered (the behind the back pass not to ALB and the forwards pass out of the tackle) wouldn’t have been necessary without defensive effort.
Likewise, in Bledisloe II, although outmatched for all of the second half, the Wallabies forced the All Blacks to defend for chunks of it. They kept playing, they were just playing a better side. Compare that to the first 25 minutes of Bledisloe I or the last 50 in the second Argentina test, where the Wallabies barely managed to see the ball. While it’s not a performance that’s going to win matches, it’s a performance that you can build from and start to build a winning performance.
I started the section “Where to Look” saying that I wanted to see the coaches’ plan being implemented by the players. It’s not there for 80 minutes yet; I would argue that’s incredibly rare in rugby, I think last year’s Top14 final is the closest I’ve ever seen to 80 minutes of one side imposing their plan, the other side failing to impose it at all. Against Wales I don’t think we really saw a plan from the Wallabies. That was ok, everyone was new to everything. Over the course of the Rugby Championship we’re starting to see both a defensive and offensive plan and the players starting to execute it. It’s wobbly, imperfect, and fails under stress. A side playing well for 25 minutes can win against it, a side playing well for 50 minutes can run up an all-time record score against it. That’s not good, but, it’s better than we’ve really seen since 2016. There’s the beginning of a team that executes the plans here. There is every chance they can expand from this, make the plans better, execute them better and more consistently, and become, if not a great side again at least a side that gets out of their pool.
Looking ahead to the Autumn Nations Series, Australia faces a Grand Slam challenge. Of course the size of the challenge depends on who’s available and who’s selected but I think it’s fair to say they’re not going to win all four matches. All the Home Nations have an official tier two nation match (Japan, Portugal or Fiji) but they might still run out a younger side against Australia. However, can the Wallabies beat England at home, even with a shiny new defence coach? Probably not. Wales, maybe; Australia have improved, but Wales at home and hopefully with some injured players returning should be a tougher prospect too. Scotland and Ireland, probably are too much of a challenge this year. We’re looking for continued incremental improvements, not victories.
The Players
I’m not going to name names here, good or bad. I might name some bad ones later. Sorry if that’s what you want to see. What I’m going to do instead is ask you to think, unfair I know. Sorry, not sorry.
Ask yourself how many players against Wales looked like they knew what they were doing. I’d suggest the number is quite low. Then ask that same question over the Rugby Championship. It’s certainly not all of them, it’s definitely not all of the time, but it’s a lot more.
Now, for everyone on your list of players who looked good, ask yourself: how much they played like they did in Super Rugby Pacific? I’d suggest it’s probably all of them. When was the last time you can say that?
It’s hard to work this out at a distance but I’d suggest that Schmidt has gone back to the roots of what made New Zealand rugby the dominant force it was for so long. Every position on a rugby team has a core role; Schmidt is picking players who can, in theory, deliver on that core role because it’s what they do in SRP. He’s asking them to do that within a bigger framework that forms his attacking and defensive plans.
With Cheika we had the pooper, to pick one long-term example of picking a player out of position to fit his plans. We can argue endlessly about all kinds of other decisions plus the complete absence of a kicking game but it’s no longer productive. With Rennie you can argue he picked players but expected them to deliver to his plan rather than their normal play style, although he tended to pick them in position so you could argue he wasn’t really expecting that much extra from them. But, if we look at the All Blacks main half-backs over the Rennie era, no one can really deny that they can do the basics just fine, but Smith and Perenara brought something different to the table. Although it’s a different position, Cooper and Lolesio also brought something different to the Wallabies 10 position.
Going forward, while I’m going to largely stick to not naming names, my list of inked in names for next year (injuries permitting) is short, it’s only five names long in fact. There are more names, probably another five starters and 2-4 between reserves and injury cover squad players who are unlikely to be replaced. But there are some serious areas of concern, starting with the replacement props as Slipper and Alaalatoa age. Both Tupou and Bell are ongoing injury concerns as well, Tupou particularly as he seems not to come back well after injury, unlike Bell. I’m not entirely convinced by any of the backs but a chunk of that starts from White who has been poor this year and has affected everyone else. The back three don’t seem to work well as a unit, something needs to change there but I don’t have the skills to say exactly what the right fix is. I’m sure Schmidt and all will be pondering it though.
Conclusion
This is not a complete side. If there was a World Cup in a few weeks instead of November tests, hand on heart I couldn’t see them getting out of their pool. But that’s three years away. Schmidt has time to build and get there. As do the players. The results aren’t there yet, but the building blocks are starting to assemble into something that looks like a rugby team. Not yet a great rugby team but a team that’s starting to move in the right direction.
Under Eddie there were 15 blokes wearing the same colour jersey. Under Rennie, there was cohesion but less sense of movement in the right direction. I’m inclined to be forgiving and make allowances for what he inherited and the impact of Covid on his plans, but I have my reservations about how he handled Lolesio for example. With Schmidt, while I don’t agree with every decision, inevitably, I’m inclined to show some forgiveness. He’s giving some senior players a few too many chances for me, but I’d prefer that as he gets to know the players and gives them a chance to go and deliver on what’s clearly a new set of ideas rather than chop and change and potentially undermine the confidence of a young player (as I feel Rennie did with Lolesio). I think White and Koroibete might count themselves as lucky to have had as many chances as they have, and they’re not in the youngsters category any more, but I’d rather he gave them extra chances rather than dropping everyone for a bad game.
It’s too soon to say “they played well” as a regular thing. But they are playing well for parts of matches, fairly consistently. It’s been a while since that’s been true.
