By Jereme Lane, 28 Aug 2013 Jereme Lane is a Roar Pro
Now that we’ve had three days of Wallaby bashing, it’s time to start focusing on some positives as we prepare to do battle for second place in the Rugby Championship once again.
There was a lot of optimism in Australian rugby in the last few weeks with the appointment of a new coach, but the two Tests against the Kiwis showed that there was never going to be a honeymoon period for Ewen Mckenzie.
The overwhelming positive from the second Bledisloe match on the weekend was that finally the Wallabies adapted to a referee.
Sick of seeing the All Blacks doing all the cheating, finally the Wallabies got in there and did some good cheating of their own.
The first Bledisloe was the second time this year that the Wallabies had failed to adapt to Craig Joubert and it cost them dearly.
This week however after the 20 minute mark with no yellow cards for cynical fouls by the All Blacks the Wallabies did the smart thing and got involved with some grubby tactics themselves.
The only other thing I would have liked to see was the use of some boots from the Wallabies in the ruck.
Richie McCaw (17:00) and Aaron Smith (33:25) both used their boots on Wallaby players in the ruck in the first half yet Keiran Reid’s and McCaw’s sneaky hands were still constantly probing through to where the ball was at the back of the ruck and a good hard stomp on their hands might deter this in the future.
Reid in particular on the weekend was very good at getting in the spoon position after a tackle and, like any good lover, had his hands reaching around for a bit of a fiddle when Will Genia was trying to clear the ball.
The next positive is the form of James O’Connor.
Apart from two defensive errors in the first three minutes of the first Test, he has been the Wallabies best back and I really hope the murmurs are true that we will see him at 12 at some stage this year.
His ability to break tackles and constantly get over the advantage line is phenomenal for a player of his size and he will be a handful for any defence at 12.
His speed, footwork and ability to suck in defenders is unquestionably good and if he can combine that with the playmaking skills that we’ve seen glimpses off at the rebels then that could be the position where O’Connor finally ends up.
This could mean bad news for Christian Lealiifano but the good news is that he just needs to sort out his defence, add a bit of variety to his attack, cut out the odd dodgy pass and then with his goalkicking he will always be a chance to start.
On the topic of Brumbies rookies, again to just focus on the positives, we now have eight new players that know what is required to beat the All Blacks.
Mowen, Fardy, Sio, Toomua, Lealiifano, Kuridrani, White and Mogg all now know that super rugby and Test rugby are like chalk and cheese.
All of them have had mixed results but again, if we just focus on the positives then we can look ahead with some optimism.
Whether or not you thought that the young Brumbies’ backs were ready for Test footy, the reality is they are there now and they won’t play too many harder games in their careers than the last two.
Even though the All Blacks were not running at full throttle and played to a very conservative gameplan, the lesson is there that every mistake will be punished and all of those players will be better for the experience.
Each have weapons that are very handy at Test level but like all young players have to iron out the flaws in their game if they want to be Test regulars.
In the forwards, Ben Mowen finally ran the ball like a backrower should, hitting the half-gaps when there was one, and getting down low and driving when there wasn’t one.
My criticism of Mowen has been his inability to get over the gainline but he did this well in Wellington.
Unfortunately the other aspects of his game that had been good weren’t so good, but if he can combine them all he will be a handy player.
In fact all the Wallabies forwards’ body height was much better this week, not that I know why in Test rugby this would need to be reiterated every week but again, this article is just focusing on the positives.
Fardy was excellent and both he and Mowen led the runs and breakdowns count for the Wallabies, which was a marked improvement on the backrow’s work rate from the first Test and how every
Test should be from a six and an eight.
On the subject of the backrow, there is going to be some great depth there for the Wallabies by the end of this year.
With Pocock, Palu and Higginbotham all due back from injury at some stage and hopefully with the continued improvement of Mowen, Fardy, Hooper and Gill, the backrow stocks look good in an area where you simply must have good depth.
The Bledisloe was always going to be tough without the first choice backrow and in my opinion this was the biggest difference between the two sides.
The lineout was also very good in both games until the Wallabies got lazy and ran out of variety with the calls at the end of both games.
They had the All Blacks on the ropes in the lineout but let them off too easily.
The missed throws were basic errors and they should be easily rectified in training with an additional couple of weeks to add more variety to the calls, which they will definitely need when they come up against the Springboks.
The final positive is the fact that we play the All Blacks four times in New Zealand between now and the World Cup in 2015.
I see this as a positive because we have four games to get a win on their turf before we play the next World Cup.
I firmly believe that the Wallabies won’t win the next World Cup unless they get this monkey (more like a 500-pound gorilla) off their back before then, otherwise we will be hoping for another superhuman effort from the French, and I think they might have used up all of their World Cup luck for a while.
We seem to be able to play well against everyone else but there is no point saying that when New Zealand is the team that is constantly blocking our path to the major trophies.
