Wallabies – It’s Time For A Fightback! Part 4

Decision Making

In addition to the issues I have with the level of kicking by the Wallabies I’m also concerned with their decision making as to when to kick and the type of kick to use.

After reviewing the kicking performance in the two TRC matches against the All Blacks I rated 40 per cent of the kicking decisions by the Wallabies in general play as poor. In the first match I rated 33 per cent of kicking decisions as poor and in the second, 44 per cent.

No doubt the pressure being exerted by the All Blacks defenders has an impact on the time available for Wallaby kickers to make their decisions, but the performance so far in 2012 has not been good enough in this area.

I don’t think the interchange of Cooper and Barnes at first receiver in TRC 3 would have helped. I’d prefer to see one player at first receiver taking most of the kicking responsibility, with the option of the second playmaker outside him to relieve pressure. As far as I’m concerned the first receiver should be Cooper because he provides more threats to the defence – the defenders have to decide if he’s going to pass, run or kick, whereas Barnes would be seen as less of a passing and running threat. If the threats Cooper provides can get the defence hesitating for even a moment, the pressure on kicks will be eased a little, and more opportunities to run the ball rather than kick will present themselves.

One of biggest issues I have with the Wallabies is the number of times they choose to use a chip or grubber kick. It doesn’t seem to matter what the field position or circumstances of a match is, many players decide that they can put in a short kick, thread the needle between several defenders and regather the ball. Very rarely do they actually get the ball back and all they do is give the ball to the opposition in good field position. Kurtley Beale is the number-one culprit as far as I’m concerned, but Adam Ashley-Cooper has done his best over the last couple of games to get in on the act. It’s a high-risk option that needs to be used sparingly.

If I had any say in how the Wallabies played I’d be making it very clear to players that the first option when attacking is to get the ball to a support player; the second is to take the ball into contact and trust your team mates to get to the ruck so the ball can be recycled; and the final option, only if neither of the first two options are available, is to kick. Robbie Deans has been head coach of the Wallabies for five years and I’ve seen no change in the Wallabies’ decision making with regard to kicking, so he must be comfortable with the performance in this area.

Execution

Regardless of whether the right decision to kick is made, the execution from the Wallabies has been poor for a long time.

I looked back at some analyses I’ve done on the Wallabies kicking game in the past and I must sound like a broken record because the issues I raised in previous years are the same problems that are evident now. See for yourself by clicking on the following links.

Wallabies v. Ireland in 2009

Wallabies v. Springboks at 2011 RWC

It’s one thing to practice kicking at training; it’s another thing to execute kicks well under pressure from the opposition in a game. But with such poor quality execution by many of the Wallabies, I wonder how much kicking practice they actually do at training under game-like pressure.

The video below includes examples of the Wallabies kicking in the matches against the All Blacks in 2012 showing some of the issues with decision making and execution.

Part 5 of my series will cover attacking patterns that would allow the Wallabies to get over the gain line to set a platform for more attacking rugby.

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