Tour review – the southern teams

Of the southern teams the All Blacks won all their games as expected and Argentina did well winning two out of three.  But the two other teams from The Rugby Championship stumbled as the Springboks lost two matches and the Wallabies three.

Australia

The Wallabies had a Titanic year, but I’m thinking of the ship that sunk—and it hit a few more icebergs on tour as well. It was difficult for new coach Michael Cheika to make a difference at short notice, and changing a few deck chairs was never going to help.

The Aussies had their worst tour since 2005 and indeed, the roller-skate Aussie scrum performance at Twickenham that year was duplicated last weekend.

Joe Tomane v Wales – afterwards the  results nose-dived

Apart from set pieces their maul defence was poor and opponents knew, as the Aussies did, that it was a high percentage movement for them. Generally, the Wallabies had problems combating the plans of opponents even though they knew them in advance.

High ball reception and kick returns were inferior also, and there were other chronic technical issues that prevailed from year to year, such as stationary hot-potato passing, and running too high to make them vulnerable to strips and choke tackles.

There were also the dumb-and-dumber infringements that were poorly disguised and/or were not going to have a decent effect anyway if they weren’t spotted.

Israel Folau – good under high ball most of the time

This Wallaby touring team looked poorly coached but I’m not blaming the current coaches so much as the cumulative history of coaching the players have had at all levels before they got on tour, including in Super Rugby.

With those negatives mentioned above the Wallabies should have been thrashed in every game on tour, but they weren’t: in their losses they were competitive for long periods and they engineered some promising comebacks.

They did this by using their strike power in fluid situations with ball in hand and rattled the eventual winners more than once.

Surfie rugby works well with good practitioners at the Super Rugby level and it can cover many sins and win many games, but in the theatre of high level test matches you need a bigger repertoire for your act.

In future the Wallabies have to improve in set movements and in managing what the next movement will be and where it will take place.

Bernard Foley – Wallabies relied too much on strikes and not basics

The players

Discussion of the players is less significant than the rugby upbringing that produced them, but the performances of the fourth- and fifth ranked hookers were good. The starting props played well and not all the scrumming problems were down to them, but they were flogged on tour as Cheika correctly feared the earlier introduction of replacements.

The locks were inadequate as they were in The Rugby Championship [TRC]. The young substitutes at blindside flanker and lock had to learn their test trade on the job and although no. 8 McCalman was a good battler, he was no dominator like Pommie Morgan.

One wondered why Cooper did not start at Twickenham but Cheika probably feared the consequences of hiding him on defence for too long: he knew that he would be targeted.

Ben McCalman – a good battler  but not a dominator

The halves had problems on tour but they had good moments also. The back three lacked top-end pace and has for years.

But the midfield was superb and the absence of Kuridrani against England and for a lot of the Ireland game was a hammer blow.

The main problems with the backs did not come from how they performed with what they could do, but from what they weren’t good at in the first place: passing accurately at top pace was, probably correctly, not tried too often, and game management didn’t get the dividends that opponents like Sexton and Biggar, and even Lopez, got.

The Wallabies haven’t had a good exit kicker since Mark Gerrard and Chris Latham.  Like good locks, there are few in the country except a young bloke in Melbourne. And the best left-foot kicker in the squad is probably assistant coach, Nathan Grey.

 Chris Latham – the Wallabies need more long kickers like him

The Wallabies also lacked a good mouthpiece captain who could earn his place in the starting side. The four teams above them in the world rankings had them, and a few below as well.

Yet the Wallabies were competitive and that argues that despite the negative comments above, if the Wallabies improve in enough key areas, through different selections and spot coaching, they could get a significant boost in results.

Or so we fondly hope.

Best players on tour

1. Tevita Kuridrani, 2. James Slipper, 3. Matt To’omua

Tevita Kuridrani – Wallabies’ best player on tour

Tour rating     D +

Although they were competitive in parts of the three games that they lost, they always looked second-best in them.

Rugby World Cup

Australia sometimes looked favourites for the Headless Chooks Cup on tour and a far cry from RWC favouritism.

England played some poor rugby in November but, based on the Wallabies’ tour performances, I can’t see them improving enough in their set pieces to beat the Poms in the pool matches.

They will be targeting their bunnies, Wales, to progress to the quarter-finals but one of these days the Taffs are going to play well against them and the Aussies could miss out on the finals for the first time ever if they don’t address the tour problems mentioned above.

  Argentina – great victory in Paris

Argentina

Los Pumas didn’t carry the form of their TRC victory against the Wallabies into their end of year tour.

They were disappointing against Scotland and although they won against Italy, when they scored two tries to none, it was touch and go and it was not an impressive victory.

Argentina finished their three-match tour with their best effort, holding out France at the end of the test match to win.

 Argentina coach Daniel Hourcade – had a Plan B

The performance

During the TRC you could see that coach Hourcade was trying to add some ball-playing to the traditional Argentine repertoire of punishing forward play and a dominant scrum. He also implemented using attacking kicks to the edges for the back three to run onto, and to negate the efforts of defensive shooters.

But this wasn’t working on tour so Hourcade came up with a new plan for their last game, in Paris.

Los Pumas were aggressive from the start and kicked soundly to get good field position. They slotted penalties and drop goals whenever they got into the France half of the field, rather than run the ball, and did not let the home team into the game.

When France found their feet in the second half and needed a converted try to win, Argentina held them out for the victory and proved they could win with a Plan B.

As usual their scrum was sound and their forward play generally was robust but they lacked leaders within their pack as was noticeable against Scotland when they looked like Brown’s cows under pressure.

 Joaquin Tuculet – dynamic for Los Pumas

The players

Argentina are developing some fine forwards but the absence on tour of their big three of recent years: Leguizamon, Albacete and Lobbe, due to aging or unavailability, was a limiting factor.

Flyhalf Nicolás Sánchez implemented the coach’s plans with aplomb and kicked Argentina to their upset win against France. Skipper Augustin Creevy was an inspiration to his team at hooker and was missed in the game against Italy.

Typical of the up and coming forwards on tour was 21 year-old lock Tomás Lavanini who was the young dog opponent against old dog Pascal Papé in Paris and gave as good as he he got. One of the stars of the Pampas XV local side which toured Australia earlier in the year, he is a future leader.

Best players on tour

1. Augustin Creevy, 2. Nicolás Sánchez, 3. Tomás Lavanini

 Nicholas Sanchez – got a rewarding win

Tour rating     C +

Argentina had more wins than losses on their end-of-year tour for the first time since 2006, and their victory in Paris playing a limited game was a revelation. However they weren’t consistent and their grading has to be discounted by their scratchy performances against the usual wooden-spooners in Six Nations, Scotland and Italy.

Rugby World Cup

After a slow start in the early years, the benefit of competing in the TRC is becoming noticeable. Whilst they won’t be at the same level as their great 2007 RWC team they showed enough on tour to argue that they should advance to the quarter-finals as second in their pool.

If Leguizamon and Lobbe can be injury-free in 2015 and roll back the years enough to justify their place, they will be of immense value to the RWC squad. Sanchez and Creevy also have to stay healthy.

However the challenge for Argentina will be to be consistent in the RWC and, as a precursor, do the same in the TRC. If they can do that they could even become semi-finalists again.

See next page for a review of the Springbok and All Black tours