Monday, November 07, 2005
Good weekend for the armchair sportsman..

One Aussie team does well….

Punter Ponting’s men have finally found some and focus. After crashing in the Ashes over the winter, they have dispatched a World XI in 3 ODIs and a Test and now crushing – utterly – an enthusiastic West Indies team in the first Test in Brisbane.

Long gone are the days of illustrious Windies teams, but this team was still expected to put up some fight. In the end, each passing day of the Test exposed an ever-growing gap in application and spirit.

It was a tale of two tails. The Australian tail wagged hard - the last four batsmen making 137 – and pushed an average score well above respectability. On both occasions, the West Indies tail offered less resistance than Andrex puppy facing down a steamroller. In the first innings they made 6, in the second, they didn’t even reach those dizzying heights. Their inability to make runs is matched only by their total failure to even occupy the crease, to at least allow a remaining batsman to push on.

It is difficult to see the Windies recover from this, but then I said the same of England after the first test. The big difference is leadership. Whereas England had both gritty and charismatic leadership, the West Indies appear to have none.

Another team does OK…..

It was a 4am start for the football on Sunday. It was worth it though, as even the atrocious Wigan weather couldn’t spoil a gutsy game. Scott Prince definitely has a future with the Kangaroos, but his debut was pretty nondescript. His distribution was one-dimensional and his kicking was downright poor.

But this couldn’t prevent the accomplished stars – Tate, Minnacello, Lockyer, Gasnier, Cooper et al from eventually unlocking the GB side and winning the game comfortably in the end.

NZ will remain tough to beat though.

But another Aussie side was simply awful…

No point in me writing anything… A colleague at work gave a thorough analysis via email this morning:

“Gregan is no longer a threat to defences, so opponents don't have to allocate any defence to him, hence they can smother our other backs. Oh, for the great days when Gregan would snipe and then have the option of Larkham outside, Horan further out with a cut-out pass, or the inside flick to Finegan or Kefu!

Gregan has to go, and Giteau should be his replacement. Then we can try Rogers / Latham alternating at flyhalf/fullback, with Johanson at 12 because Turunui is not up to test level. And we have to stop trying to make Tuqiri play like Daniel Herbert - he's not a battering ram. Reserve halfback should be Henjack, because good though he is, Whitaker is 32 and not an option for the future.

Right, that's the backs dealt with. Now for the real problem area.

I've never seen a Wallaby forward pack look less like they had been coached in the basics or had any idea of what they were supposed to do. And Jones is directly culpable here, because he never said anything post-match about the team departing from the 'game plan' - his comments were all about incompetence. The logical conclusion from that is that there was either:

(a) no game plan or
(b) the game plan was to play boring, one-dimensional, bash and barge football and hope the French would switch off through boredom.

The set piece - where do we start? Sure, we stole some of their lineouts, but who cares when our own lineouts were marginal at best? Elsom is not a third option as a jumper, and that's only one of his flaws. Our blockers (Dunning, Baxter and Waugh) were ineffective and lazy, and the holes in our line were atrocious - at least twice, Sharpe tapped balls down and they were grabbed by French locks (yes, locks, not flankers!).

That is unforgivable and Jones should have been on to that more quickly. Our hookers can't throw straight; time to give the under 21 bloke a run - we couldn't do any worse. With each test we play these days, Michael Foley is becoming a bigger loss, both as a player and as a coach.

The scrum - oh goodness me, have we ever had a worse one? Not in my time watching the Wallabies, and that goes back to the late 60s. Dunning is big but looks very unfit and has bugger all technical skills; Baxter has some decent skills but is far too light to play tight-head. Maybe an option there would be to switch him to the other side?

The locks need to be told that part of their job is to push in scrums, and Phil Waugh needs the same dressing down - he's far too eager to bind loosely to get a flying start, rather than contributing to scrum stability.

George Smith is a wonderful player but is wasted at number 8. It's a mark of the man that despite being handicapped [by being played out of position], he is still our most effective general play contributor.

So what to do? Given that we must accept that for this tour, we do not have Larkham or Flatley to provide some sanity and stability to the backline, we must play the cards we've been dealt.

And we must also accept that the past 5 years have seen the departure of a group of players who would collectively rank as among the Wallabies' best ever - it's easy to forget the names we've lost: Andrew Blades, Richard Harry, Michael Foley, Phil Kearns, Ewen McKenzie, David Giffen, Owen Finegan, David Wilson, Toutai Kefu, Matt Cockbain, Tim Horan, Jason Little, Matt Burke, Ben Tune, oh and that bloke called John Eales too. I defy any country to lose players of that calibre and remain at the top.

My great complaint is not that we've declined, that was in some ways inevitable. But I can't abide the apparent rudderless nature of our decline - Wallaby rugby is not attractive to watch any more, and it's been a long time since I've felt that way.

So let's write off the rest of this tour from a results perspective - let's start to build a team capable of being developed for France in 2007. Here's an initial 'experimental' XV I'd like to see (from within those on the current tour), with Ewen McKenzie to take Jones's job if he can't improve the team's patterns and attitude over the next 3 tests:

1. Greg Holmes (QLD)
2. Tatafu Polota-Nau (NSW)
3. David Fitter (ACT)
4. Nathan Sharpe (QLD/WF) - but on his final warning!
5. Adam Wallace-Harrison (ACT)
6. Hugh McMeniman (QLD)
7. George Smith (ACT) (c)
8. John Roe (QLD)
9. Matt Giteau (ACT)
10. Mat Rogers (NSW)
11. Wendell Sailor (QLD)
12. Lloyd Johannson (QLD/WF)
13. Lote Tuqiri (NSW)
14. Drew Mitchell (QLD)
15. Chris Latham (QLD)

Reserves:

16. Stephen Moore (QLD) – hooker
17. Al Baxter (NSW) - prop (only until they get home, then Ben someone from the under 21s should take over)
18. Leroy Houston (NSW) – backrow
19. Phil Waugh (NSW) – backrow
20. Mark Chisolm (ACT) – lock
21. Matt Henjak (ACT/WF) – halfback
22. Cameron Shepherd (NSW/WF) - outside back”

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