In case you missed it the Wallabies went down to New Zealand 29-9 last Saturday. In many articles and news items around Australia this has been praised as a much improved effort from the flogging the week before. But you just have to ask yourself was it? What really changed? Isn’t 29-9 and four tries to none still a flogging?
What Was The Plan?
How were the Wallabies going to win this game? How were they going to Score or even get into a scoring position? I’m not naive enough to believe there wasn’t a plan but I’m finding it hard to find evidence of its implementation. Or, perhaps more importantly, that it was any different from the five times we’d played and lost before Saturday. I know what we’ve been told. We want to play running rugby. Ball in hand and recycle possession but the game stats simple doesn’t match the talk.
Australia survived on just 44% of possession and amazingly spent 70% of the game trapped in their own half. The All Blacks kicked slightly more than us but passed and ran much more than us and ran more than twice as far as us. New Zealand played running rugby and we tried to tackle them.
The New Players
Adam Coleman
Coleman has been praised for having a great game and a player for the future but the stats don’t match the praise. Don’t get me wrong here, I thought the guy had a pretty reasonable match but looked at these numbers and then imagine if Rob Simmons had posted them.
- Yellow carded
- Two penalties
- Two running metres
- Eleven tackles one missed
- 20 rucks
- 54 minutes
- Two lineout wins
- Four team lineout losses
Would we have been happy if Simmons had posted that? But the aggression was great I hear you say? I remember when Simmons was loudly criticized for his aggression and had to reign it in.
Quade Cooper and Bernard Foley.
I like both players but I have a preference for Cooper. Especially when Foley is struggling to produce his best. But I don’t think this combination worked and it made both of them less effective. Am I biased? Possibly. I don’t like the two playmaker model, I’d prefer a real inside centre and think the whole two flyhalf thing is a myth.
But I digress. I fully expect cooper and Foley to fill the ten and twelve jumpers next test and they will get better. But I don’t think it’s a long term solution.
Samu Kerevi
We’ve all been calling for Samu to play. Some want him at inside centre and some at outside I’d prefer inside but that’s irrelevant. Kerevi really didn’t do much wrong but he didn’t grab the jersey and make it his. I guess it really wasn’t the game for his style of play but perhaps that’s just the situation that Tevita Kuridani has found himself in for quite a while
So Has Anything Changed?
I’m no rugby messiah but I can’t see anything new or any chance of things changing. We are, for better or worse, locked into a system and things will have to get a lot worse before a change would be made. It seems we are going with the same plan no matter who we play and no matter which players are involved. I can’t see how this can possible work, even the mighty All Blacks tweak their game plan to suit their opposition. So in short no, nothing has change except maybe our reputation as a smart rugby nation.
Edit: I meant to add some game stats and talk about any good changes to the wallabies but I plain forgot. The Wallabies missed 30 tackles, lost 4 lineouts and ran 74 times for 355 metres that’s just 4.8 metres per run. As Ant Kaplan pointed out on Twitter there was an increase in intensity but it’s hard to judge if that extended beyond the niggle and the off the ball hit.
