Paris 2007: Dreading the suicide bomber
Posted by Christopher Sheil on Saturday, June 16, 2007
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If you have ever been curious about just how passionate international rugby can be, check out the opening stanza of the big test tonight between the Wallabies and the Springboks in Cape Town. There are few arenas as intimidating as the steepled stadium at Newlands, packed with South Africans baying like mad dogs for Australian blood. The scene is set for a mighty match.
Update: In a fine game, the Wallabies were heroic in a heartbreaking defeat, tackling like demons only to narrowly lose 19/22 due to Springbok field goals. The best news is that Bernie Larkham came through unscathed, despite two shots. Matt Giteau, who had a big game in attack and defence, also wore a couple of shots, but remained unhurt. Special credit must go to Matt Dunning, who finally had a great game in Wallaby colours, including his scrummaging, where all the forwards did well. The biggest weakness was the line-out, which robbed us of critical possession. Jeremy Paul must be recalled or every Australian rugby fan must demand to know why not. We’re also still short a world-class custodian, although Julian Huxley is a gutsy player and may improve with more test experience (tough call this one). As well, Knuckles must be pressed to rethink his replacement policy. Pulling Rocky Elsom for Mark Chisolm was madness.* Yet, all up, the Wallabies showed enough to keep the fans happy. Australia’s defence is the rock for our 2007 tilt at Bill. Next, the All Blacks in Melbourne. Bring it on!
[*In retrospect, it's possible that Rocky was pulled because he was vulnerable to the sin-bin, having been warned twice for slowing the ball. Still, the "fresh legs" interchange thesis begs for review]
Do the Wallabies have a hope? Our strengths are in the quality of the second line of our scrum and the experience of our halves and three-quarters. Rocky Elsom, Dan Vickerman and George Smith/Phil Waugh are world class, and Nathan Sharpe can be, if he shows up for the match. George Gregan, Bernie Larkham, Matt Giteau and Stirling Mortlock also have the potential to command the game. If Gregan can get some phases going early, any of the three outside him can break the opposition defence.
Yet everything, it seems to me, will depend on our ability in the set-pieces, where we are weakest. If the scrum goes backwards and the line-out throws awry, expect mayhem and humilation. If I was them, I would place the physical pressure on Matt Dunning in the front-row, in conjunction with psychological provocation to make him blow-up. From the rucks, I would pepper kicks over our wingers’ heads, constantly taking play into the Australian quarter so Victor Matfield can place pressure on the Wallaby line-out, where Stephen Moore’s recent throwing has been appalling. With possession, I would take every field goal opportunity or run at Matt Giteau, making him tackle until he weakens. Most dastardly of all, it would not be beyond the pale of South African rugby tradition to send a suicide bomber after Bernie Larkham.
For mine, the national coaching and selecting staffers have got their World Cup strategy upside down. I would have tried to pick the best team available to build the combinations in the three soft tests, and would have then placed Larkham in cotton wool for tonight’s game. Larkham is the only distinct advantage Australia has over the other nations in the hunt for the World Cup. He may not be the world’s best all-round rugby flyhalf. New Zealand’s Dan Carter has that honour. Yet Larkham has the best vision of any rugby player in the world, including Carter.
Like Shane Warne in the Australian cricket team, Larkham has a quality no-one else can match. The Wallabies’ only authentic leading edge, he is also physically fragile and tonight at Newlands is his most exposed and vulnerable moment before Paris. South Africa is the dark horse in the running for the World Cup. Knocking Larkham over hard in a late tackle tonight might cost the Boks a man, but it also offers them a leg up in the wider campaign for ascendancy in France. I will be watching with dread.
This entry was posted on Saturday, June 16th, 2007 at 8:54 PM and filed under Sport - rugby.
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You’ll be watching it with relish, mate. This is goosebumps time.
Speaking of props and IQ’s, here’s a bit from “Off the Field”:
Wallabies props are renowned for being among the more interesting characters, and somewhat intellectual. According to Brendan Cannon, Al Baxter is the academic of the Front Rowers’ Union. Cannon recently wrote: “The qualified architect is a well-known resource on tour for all facts of interest. ‘Don’t Google it. Baxter it,’ it’s often said.”
Don’t you love it. I had no idea that absenteeism look – the couple of pickles short of a Big Mac – was because Al’s been computing the while! Masterly, to do it on field like that, too. And I was obviously wrong in thinking the way he studies the pack in so intently was to find where his head fits.
Australia A got flogged – not a good sign. Hopefully tonight’s match will wake the boys up a bit. Have a good one.
Posted on 16-Jun-07 at 9:50 pm | PermalinkI accidentally saw a few seconds before it put me to sleep: was Gordon Bray doing the camerawork on his mobile phone? The footage quality was atrocious.
Posted on 17-Jun-07 at 7:24 am | Permalinkrugger is going through what football went through a for a long time.
A bad side that regularly performs badly and sometimes plays well, little sign of good young talent coming through and awful administration.
Posted on 17-Jun-07 at 12:28 pm | PermalinkJohn O’Neil might help in the latter but I can’t help thinking he has chosen the wrong time.
A bad side that regularly performs badly and sometimes plays well, little sign of good young talent coming through and awful administration.
We haven’t had a “side”, just a player roundabout; there are many signs of young talent coming through (Holmes, Turner, Beale, Cooper, Ione, to name but five young stars on the horizon); and I don’t see what O’Neil can do for the administration, except perhaps talk the Sydney Morning Herald into sacking Greg Growden. The biggest blight on public perceptions of Australian rugby stem from the major city having a chief correspondent without any knowledge of, interest in, or love for the game – replacing these essential rugby reporter traits with an obsessive stalking of off-field behaviour, a childishly self-amusing sense of humour and idiosyncratic campaigns for or against particular players. Spiro Zavos apart, when it comes to rugby, the Australian is now the only paper in the country worth reading.
The real larger rugby problems are, to my mind, poor coaching and selecting, the embrace of managerial and modular player presumptions, including the highly doubtful “fresh legs” interchange thesis, and a fetish for seeking fast-food League solutions. In terms of popularity, if that’s your measure (it’s not mine – I wish rugby’s fair weather friends would go away, permanently), the main issue is the lack of free-to-air television coverage of the international provincial competition and test replays. All these problems beset rugby while O’Neil was in the job last time, so I have little hope of improvement because of his appointment.
That said, last night’s game was a huge Wallaby effort, and we may just have a basis for a serious tilt at Bill. Last night’s composure in the first half and the valiant defence of the line in the second half served up hope, in spades.
Posted on 17-Jun-07 at 4:39 pm | PermalinkThe Wallaby defence was heroic, the scrummaging much improved, the backline play somewhat more fluid, Gregans clearance a little faster. They were the positives. The lineout throwing was appalling, the lineouts poor, the kicking game often juvenile, and there were several basic errors that would have embarrassed a schoolboys team.
It always amazes me that R.League wingers/fullbacks nearly always catch high kicks in traffic, or at the very least handle them in such a fashion as to present an advantage to their teammates, whilst in Union they are routinely dropped. Is it a skill not practised? Clinton Schikofsci (?) for Australia A in the earlier games was one of the few that could be backed with any confidence.
I also wonder why, when playing All Blacks and (less often) Springboks, they keep the ball alive in the tackle, getting the ball away off the ground. I can hardly recall the Wallabies ever achieving this feat.
I suspect the ABs will win in a canter.
Posted on 17-Jun-07 at 10:53 pm | PermalinkThe telecast was abysmal, wasn’t it – I think it was mainly that they were forced into filming into the sun much of the time.
Glad to see you back CS.
I think it was a good game, too. We just narrowly missed two or three chances (Gregan and Mitchell knocking-on and us coughing it up after pinching the second five-yard line-out mainly) and made a few too many lazy errors (Huxley’s rabbit moment on the half-way line, missing a few too many line-outs, a couple of poor kicks, and conceding that soft try). But we made 130 tackles to 52, I think, and they still didn’t score more than one try, which we shouldn’t have anyway.
Our forwards were really good, even in the line-outs we were ultimately beaten, but they threw long often, and succeeded more than I could have thought.
Also, our scrum was really good, and speaking as someone who thought Dunning should have been pushed out of the plane over the Tasman after that game against NZ, he played a blinder I thought – really impressive. Palu as well was the best I have ever seen him play, and Sharpe was much better than he has been lately. Moore was really good, too, except a little in the line-outs. Freier was appalling – so what if he had to throw to the back, that’s the whole point of being a test hooker – Moore’s first throw of the game was to the back and he nailed it. Why hadn’t Freier practised during the game?
Other than that, I disagree that the line-out was appalling, at least before Freier – the ABs will struggle to do as well as we did, and I’m sure we will get better. Which is not to say they weren’t much better, especially with variety. They are the best in the world, after all.
I largely agree about the subs, though – I certainly wouldn’t have taken Smith off, although I would have been tempted to put Waugh on for Elsom (because he was going to the bin, as you say). I would have put Mitchell at fullback and put Gerrard on wing, too. And although I would have put Hoiles on, I would have made those changes at least 10 minutes early.
I thought Huxley played solidly enough considering this was his first game at this level – he did a lot right, in particular tackling Pierre Spies 5 yards out one on one and saving Monty’s chip. His spot-kicking is technically flawed, but that can usually be fixed, and he is shaping up as great back-up to Latham. I think, all that said, if Latham had played we might have won. Then again, if Habana had played, they might have scored again.
Gerrard, Ashley-Cooper etc, must be glad to have been on the bench – no-one from Australia A seems to have done themselves any favours!
I basically agree with cs’ extra comment, too, except that O’Neill can make more of an impact than that – maybe though, not in time.
Here’s to South Africa smashing the Blacks
– even if the ABs have named about as strong a team as they can muster, except in the second row.
Posted on 19-Jun-07 at 9:51 pm | PermalinkHi Patrick, yeah, Huxley’s tackle was a cracker. What to do here is a difficult problem. Huxley is short of the full requirement at this stage, but is the difference only a matter of experience? Hard call, which I wouldn’t like to make. Yep, and I am enthusiastically eating everything I have ever said about Dunning, who I would have once helped you throw out the plane, with gusto.
Freier was appalling – so what if he had to throw to the back, thats the whole point of being a test hooker – Moores first throw of the game was to the back and he nailed it. Why hadnt Freier practised during the game?
This, I think, goes to the fallacy of the “fresh legs” thesis (which, in turn, leads back to the managerial and modular presumptions of latter day Oz rugby). Even the very greatest batsman in the whole world is vulnerable to top flight bowling when he first walks to the crease. I am imagining a full post on this, so I can trundle out my incontrovertible evidence. But one key point is that bringing on “fresh legs” at the critical stage of a match will always create a moment of vulnerability for us, as every fresh player has to get a touch and adjust to the play. It is doubtful in general that there is any appreciable difference (i.e. so-called “freshness”) won with today’s players, who can just as easily go 80 minutes as 60 (not to mention when they are supercharged with the adrenaline and passion that accumulates in a big struggle). But we know for absolute sure, because we have seen it time and time and time and time again, that even the very best substitutes are momentarily vulnerable when they come on late, whether to dropping a ball, missing a tackle (even Phil Waugh missed one as soon as he came on against the Boks) or a bad line-out throw, as with Freier. With no appreciable gain but certain additional risk, this means that we are gifting the opposition with chances every single time that we substitute. The policy of auto-substitution at late and critical stages of matches came into Oz rugby in a big way with Crazy Eddie Jones, and that alone should tell everyone that it is madness, I tell you, sheer bloody madness that should be given short shrift immediately.
A definitive post on this soon.
(And I wouldn’t have taken Smith off either – how on earth anyone can voluntarily take George Smith out of their team for even a second I will never know, as great a player as Phil Waugh most certainly is.)
Posted on 20-Jun-07 at 1:07 am | PermalinkI agree wholeheartedly about Smith – why is Waugh co-captain, again? He is a really good player and I am glad to have him as a back-up, but co-captain??
In Huxley’s case, I think he did enough right to suggest that this was just first-match nerves/discomfort and that he will get it together over the next few weeks. He is not going to be a Chris Latham anytime this year or the next, but then again Chris Latham was a lot farther from a Chris Latham when he started playing international rugby. But he has only two matches, which will be two of the hardest matches anyone could ask for, to prove himself.
I think some changes probably should have been made earlier, at least in the forwards. But I do think international rugby teams can work out something better than sitting on a bench for 70 minutes as a warm-up!!
Posted on 20-Jun-07 at 6:42 am | PermalinkIt was a pleasing effort. Quick point to mention – those blokes in the forward pack as mentioned averaged 17.5 stone. Considering the massive defencive game we played (which does indicate a problem), the Wallabies really are to be congratulated. And that point goes to Huxley as well, vulnerable at the back in his first test – he certainly surprised me. One wonders where he’ll go: will it be better still, or will weaknesses show. Rob Egerton comes to mind; plenty of talent and worrisome in the early stages, but went on to lift and in many ways take command. We do need a force at fullback, I’m reserved on Huxley, though.
In ways, that loss was good for us. It’s excellent for head grinding: a better script would be hard to write in terms of mental preparation.
Posted on 20-Jun-07 at 11:55 am | Permalink