Dwyer's View

About twenty minutes in to the game last night I received a text message from a mate who observed that Rocky Elsom “didn’t seem right”. My response was “don’t worry about that, we are rubbish.” It was clear to me after twenty minutes that unless we had a dramatic change of approach to this game, we had no chance of winning.

Soon after Robbie Deans took up the post of Wallaby coach he made an observation to me that “there are many contests in a game of rugby. We need to win most of those contests.” I was very impressed by the truth and simplicity of this statement. There are the obvious contests of scrum and lineout. Restarts are frequently difficult contests, and of, course, there is the multitude of tackle contests – the ruck & the maul.

For a coach who sees this simple truth so clearly, it is astonishing that this Wallaby team seem incapable of engaging on his wavelength. In this final Tri-Nations match for 2009, a match that promised so much, the Wallabies were clearly out-muscled in every area of contest. In the entire match we won a total of nil contests at kick receipt, regardless of whether we were receiving or chasing. We won very few of the 100 or so tackle contests. At one such contest in the second half the Wallabies pitted three backs to compete with the five forwards sent in by New Zealand. Unsurprisingly we were immediately driven backwards off the ball. This was the story of the night.

The much derided New Zealand line-out, nominated by many All Black followers as the worst of the professional era, managed to take two against the throw. The Wallaby scrum, the cornerstone of our hopes of a Wallaby revival, was no match for a committed All Black eight. When Tatafu Polota-Nau and Ben Robinson were forced to leave the field, our scrum simply folded.

We had a poor kicking game, complimented by a poor chase. When New Zealand kicked we had virtually no chase back. James O’Connor, who was constantly under pressure and responded at times like the novice that he is, simply lacked the options that urgent, energetic support players should have given him.

With a score line of 33-6 there is no need to say that New Zealand was clearly superior, but the simplicity of their superiority needs emphasizing. Their game was based on a desire to shift the ball at every opportunity with an eight man forward pack chasing. That forward pack applied maximum pressure at the tackle contest and took advantage of the many cracks that appeared. There were no classic backline plays, such as we have seen recently from the Springboks. Powerful, aggressive running with, at times, some good footwork, were enough to ask difficult questions of the Wallaby defense. Ask enough difficult questions and the defense will eventually come up with the wrong answers, and so it was. The last twenty minutes gave the All Blacks their impressive score line. As Wallaby supporters we were grateful for the full time signal.

Where to now for the Wallabies ? A few weeks back after an equally unimpressive display in Perth against South Africa I wrote that the fundamentals of our game were consistently missing. The presence of these fundamentals is clearly the responsibility of the coaching staff and selectors. I said then, and I say again now, if they are incapable of delivering this not difficult essential, then they must be changed.

Some selections this season have beggared belief. I have watched Pek Cowan, for example, in a couple of club games recently, and he has made no impression whatsoever on the game – at scrum, ball carry or tackle. How then can he possibly be an adequate replacement for Al Baxter, who in the last couple of years has been “good to very good” at all levels.  At one stage Richard Brown was preferred to Wycliff Palu ! What selector came up with this one ? Perhaps we should at least be grateful that they have at last recognized the jewel that is Polota-Nau whom I described recently as a “once in a generation player”. So for a start we need to get the selections right.

I’ve always been drawn to a player when I see him do one thing that is clearly world class. I figured that if he was capable of this standard then it was my responsibility as coach to help him repeat that standard frequently. So let’s get a list of all the players that we’ve seen who satisfy this requirement of “an instance of absolute world standard execution”, and get them together in our squad. Then we need a coaching staff who have the knowledge, the courage and the tenacity to insist on consistent, perfect execution of the fundamentals of the game. The intrinsic ability which we first saw in our players will do the rest. Players who good are in all facets of the game will not do. They are journeymen. All players in our squad must have some part of their game which is world class – a standout.

I remain confident that Robbie Deans is an outstanding coach. The quality of rugby produced consistently by teams under his charge cannot have been fluked. Too many world class players have emerged through the Deans’ system for this not to be true. I can only assume therefore that the rest of the coaching staff are not delivering.

A word for the victors. They were clearly superior. They won most of the contests. They had energy and enthusiasm, and a desire to test the opposition defense. They had hunger for the ball, for the try line and for the victory. They didn’t have to be especially clever, but they got the result that they needed.

Bob Dwyer