Who's to Blame?

[Garry Owen]

I also have an idea of what Deans is talking about when he talks a bit cryptically about DNA. The All Blacks would never have lost that game, they would have found a way to win, by fair or foul means if necessary. I think Deans is a bit exasperated that his Wallabies keep losing against teams they should never lose to.

I think it's safe to say most WB's supporters are exasperated that the WB's keep losing against teams they should never lose to, under the Dean's tenure.

 

[Dam0]

I think it's safe to say most WB's supporters are exasperated that the WB's keep losing against teams they should never lose to, under the Dean's tenure.

What I am trying to say is that I think Deans is exasperated that the players don't seem to know how to win these games instinctively. I can remember plenty of games the All Blacks have played against the likes of Ireland, Wales or Argentina where we have been in trouble going into the final quarter. We always pull through, we always find a way to win. For whatever reason the Wallabies don't seem to have this instinct and that is what I think he meant by the DNA comment.

 

[RedsHappy]

What I am trying to say is that I think Deans is exasperated that the players don't seem to know how to win these games instinctively. I can remember plenty of games the All Blacks have played against the likes of Ireland, Wales or Argentina where we have been in trouble going into the final quarter. We always pull through, we always find a way to win. For whatever reason the Wallabies don't seem to have this instinct and that is what I think he meant by the DNA comment.

He's had a mere 4.5 years to ensure a DNA transplant of his own design, and unfortunately he's conceded that the process has not yet been successfully concluded. In fact, he seemed to imply that it may not even have begun.

 

[Dam0]

He's had a mere 4.5 years to ensure a DNA transplant of his own design, and unfortunately he's conceded that the process has not yet been successfully concluded. In fact, he seemed to imply that it may not even have begun.

I'm not defending Deans, just trying to interpret what he means. I have always been skeptical of the Deans brigade who claim he is some sort of master coach.

I suspect he is just pissed off that a team with all that ball and territory in the second half couldn't find a way to win. There are things a coach can control, but his team losing to a lower ranked team when they had upwards of 90% of the territory and possession in the second half is probably not something Deans ever contemplated happening.

 

[light]

It is Giteau's fault for sure. Too much crabbing lost us this one.

 

[Nelse]

Unfortunately the recipe to knock over the WB's has become well known.

A. Slow the WB ruck ball as much as the Ref will allow.

B. Rush up defense on the WB backline.

Oppositon coaches worked it out some time ago, but our coaches haven't been able come up with a plan to counter it. Why?

That is the question isn't it. The Wallabies don't seem to have enough nous to be able to adapt as they go like the ABs can.

A is up to the forwards to get a stong clean out. Not sure whether its the bigger guys not throwing around their weight well enough, or theyre not committing enough at the ruck to get the clean ball.

We didn't see much of B on Tuesday, cos the backs would have to have had the ball..

I'd say thats why Deans persists at the centre combo's he's been using. To get over the advantage line with strong midfield running. But then to take advantage of the go-forward requires clean ball.

But yeah, it's why I chose Deans. Not because of the selections, It was a really good mix on paper. But because of he hasn't drilled into his players that they shouldn't persist with something thats not working, or if their are problems out on the field, identify and mitigate those issues.

 

[Bullrush]

BR,

I'd say that's Robinsons point. He realises Scotlands limitations, and the WB's outlandish potential, and can't fathom why we didn't use our strengths.

Yes, that is the Scott's game plan and they do it well. We do not..bleeding obvious to all except those that matter?

I'm sure that if the game was played at 2pm on a bright sunny SUnday arvo or even if the night had been just stormy as opposed to cyclonic (is that a word?) then you would have seen the Wallabies play to their strengths.

But to my mind, the weather fully dictated the only way to play this game - only one really feasible game plan which the Wallabies played.

What exactly is this 'Plan B' or other game plan that Deans should have implementd?? The WBs 'outlandish potential' is mainly in the backs. Was Andy Robinson (or any of you) really expecting Tomane, Mogg and Ioane to run in 2 or 3 tries a-piece? For slick backline moves and free-running rugby? Yes, Plan A could have had some more variation but as most people have pointed out, this was severly hampered by Genias's poor play and, IMO, Pocock's captaincy. To make those changes on the field (on kick for points when on offer!) are the role of the captain - that's why I picked Pocock. You could see on the post-game interview that Deans was not happy about the decision to not kick for goal in the 2nd half. To me, that was just dumb rugby.

And Andy Robinson is hardly the coach to listen to on how to win rugby games.

 

[mark_s]

But to my mind, the weather fully dictated the only way to play this game - only one really feasible game plan which the Wallabies played.

What exactly is this 'Plan B' or other game plan that Deans should have implementd??

See Wallabies V All Blacks in wellington 1996, still one of the Abs AB teams and performances I have seen. But you can't expect Wallabies to play like that on 2 days preparation so I agree with your comments when you overlay the logistics around the game.

 

[Train Without a Station]

If we can't beat the 12th ranked team off a limited preperation when we are supposedly ranked 2nd there is something fucking wrong. We're not talking about the All Blacks here, this is Scotland. The only teams ranked below them are tier 2 nations.

 

[Scarfman]

Unfortunately the recipe to knock over the WB's has become well known.

A. Slow the WB ruck ball as much as the Ref will allow.

B. Rush up defense on the WB backline.

Oppositon coaches worked it out some time ago, but our coaches haven't been able come up with a plan to counter it. Why?

Ok, I'm going to make this point just one last time. The ruck ball was fine for most of the night. The piggies did a reasonable job of clearing out. But then Genia deliberately waited 5 seconds at every ruck, looking around, allowing the defence to reset and make the rush-up so effective. Either he had a brain snap and forgot the most basic requirement of a halfback (which I think is true) or he had no options in the backline (which is plausible but I think much less true).

 

[Brisbok]

Interesting article from a South African journalist below. I generally don't agree with most things he writes about but he does make some interesting points here. Obviously, being a South African journalist, it is written from the perspective of a South African with some South African bias.

There's a storm brewing in world rugby


Sometimes when a storm approaches, it doesn’t approach with thunder and glory, but rather as a whisper, moving slowly until it opens the heavens for a shower of rain that catches you unawares.

Similarly in the game of rugby, sometimes game changes approach at such a whisper that we hardly realise it until it is too late, and we pay the price for not being prepared. Forewarned is forearmed as they say.

So some may call me paranoid when on Tuesday two incidents brought on a mild case of alarm, but knowing how rugby runs its course, I can see some deeply worrying roads lying ahead for the sport.

As I finished watching the Newcastle ambush of the Wallabies, a defeat built on administrators' belief that the modern rugby player is a machine that needs no preparation, a press release from the International Rugby Board flittered its way into my inbox announcing that Ted – World Cup winning coach Graham Henry – had replaced Jake White on the IRB’s Rugby Committee.

Now at first glance these two would seem as normal day-to-day happenings in the modern game, but if you delve deeper, you would have to worry a bit more at some of the trends that are starting to appear.

We all know by now the problems with a long and drawn-out Super Rugby season, and we will only see the effects of a seven-month season in the next year or so. The draw, made for television appetites, has favoured Australia in so many ways, giving them a conference, a guaranteed spot in the playoffs and more rugby than they have ever had before.

But in contrast it has lengthened the season, played havoc with player injuries, and has all but devalued the domestic competitions in both New Zealand and South Africa.

For the Aussies though, it has been a goldrush, as they finally have a system to try and increase their depth and strengthen the product in markets they never had before.

Now back to the ambush. There is no rugby brain in world rugby that would have approved a test match three days after the conclusion of a round of derbies in Super Rugby. It was short-sighted, it was stupid and it set the Wallabies up to fail.

While it may have been about commerce, the decision had no rationale. As is the decision to play Six Nations champions Wales four days after the Newcastle debacle.

But it would have made financial sense. It was a revenue builder. It was another test for the public to buy into, and John O’Neill, the ultimate commercial spin-doctor, has spun the web so well that team success and player welfare are a secondary consideration.

O’Neill ironically is someone who comes up whenever the game is being “modernised”, and whenever changes are made to a product that seems perfectly good as it is.

While the seemingly unrelated bit about the IRB Rugby Committee might seem far from the point, the worry is not so much about Ted’s elevation as the fact that as a prominent rugby nation, South Africa no longer has a voice in the way the game is shaped.

The Rugby Committee is the soul of the game, I was once told. It is its heartbeat, its conscience and the movement whereby rugby men keep the game on its course.

New Zealand now have two voices there, with Kiwi convenor Graham Mourie, while the rest of those making up the committee are Bill Beaumont (England), Giancarlo Dondi (Italy), Michael Hawker (Australia), John Jeffrey (Scotland), David Pickering (Wales), Agustin Pichot (Argentina), Koji Tokumasu (Japan), Pat Whelan (Ireland) and Raul Martins (FIRA-AER), player Fabien Pelous (France) and coach Graham Henry (New Zealand). A further announcement detailing the appointment of a leading former women's international player will be made in the coming days.

While South Africa’s physical strengths have always been a problem abroad, the Aussie blueprint for making the game more like Rugby League is something that has to a large extent, dominated changes in the way rugby has been played over the past few years.

Scrums have been tinkered with so much that they are now simply an eyesore, and we don’t even need to mention the breakdown.

The one light at the end of the tunnel has always been a rugby debate by opposing views so that physicality is not taken out of the game forever. Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for improvements, but the way the breakdown has changed over the past few years makes it quite possible to see us heading towards a rugby league tackle-and-place situation.

With competitions getting longer, and tours now being squeezed between domestic competitions, the only logical way to level the playing field is to come back to a global season, an idea killed off by the Northern Hemisphere.

Until then we will continue to see midweek tests, little time for preparation, and teams’ physical resources being stretched beyond the limit. These will have their own consequences, which are likely to impact on how the game is being played, and in essence the work of the IRB’s Rugby Committee in future.

And despite winning two World Cups and consistently being in the top three in World Rugby we won’t have a voice as a leading rugby nation. When even Japan and Italy can decide how the game is played, and there is no South African say, I get worried.

There are danger signs in world rugby at the moment, not least a Wallaby team losing on a Tuesday in horrendous conditions. I may be worried for nothing, but how far away are we from an altered game which produces tries and negates the setpiece, which produces high scores and forgets the soul of the game?
Rugby has its share of problems at the moment, but more games will only see more players seek the peaceful and well-paying shores of Japan and France. More changes will only see the game head towards being a League hybrid.

As I feel here for Robbie Deans licking his wounds after defeat, and hope for Heyneke Meyer’s first test to be more merciful, I am hoping that this game doesn’t head that way.

If I’m wrong I’ll be only too happy to admit it.

http://www.supersport.com/rugby/blogs/brenden-nel/Theres_a_storm_brewing_in_world_rugby

 

[barbarian]

See I thought that article was OK until he dropped this:

While South Africa’s physical strengths have always been a problem abroad, the Aussie blueprint for making the game more like Rugby League is something that has to a large extent, dominated changes in the way rugby has been played over the past few years.

And I stopped reading.

A completely bullshit argument that I thought was well and truly dead.A throwaway line used by the ignorant around the time of the ELVs, often from SA or the NH.

At the moment the game is so far from rugby league- the defensive team has never been more advantaged at the breakdown. There is so much competition on the ground (the very antithesis of rugby league) that teams are forced to kick in their own half almost all the time.
.

 

[Reddy!]

I wanna know what old mate Bob Dywer thinks about the game this week.

I thing that most annoys me about the Wallaby play is that they don't use their talent effectively. There is rarely 2 dimensions to the Wallabies play these days. Attack and Defense. Or aggressive forward play and expansive backline play. It's either all defense, where they can't score a try to save themselve. Or all attack where they bleed tries and our forwards get monstered.

 

[cyclopath]

Ok, I'm going to make this point just one last time. The ruck ball was fine for most of the night. The piggies did a reasonable job of clearing out. But then Genia deliberately waited 5 seconds at every ruck, looking around, allowing the defence to reset and make the rush-up so effective. Either he had a brain snap and forgot the most basic requirement of a halfback (which I think is true) or he had no options in the backline (which is plausible but I think much less true).

It's noticeable that Aus teams, in general, apart from instances with the Reds that RedsHappy will point out to me , are all slow to clear the ball, and employ the "laying an egg / meercat" technique to allow the defence to set for them. Watch the NZ teams, and mostly it is moved very fast by the halfback. Their support play seem miles better with seemingly always someone ready to take the pass.
I hear you, Scarfy!

 

[Jiggles]

That article is just a thinly veiled swipe at Australian Rugby for the failures of South Africa in recent years.

 

[Braveheart81]

It's noticeable that Aus teams, in general, apart from instances with the Reds that RedsHappy will point out to me , are all slow to clear the ball, and employ the "laying an egg / meercat" technique to allow the defence to set for them. Watch the NZ teams, and mostly it is moved very fast by the halfback. Their support play seem miles better with seemingly always someone ready to take the pass.
I hear you, Scarfy!

I think Nic White and Brendan McKibbin have been two of the better halfbacks at delivering quick ball this season.

The only problem for the Waratahs is that this normally means the opposition fullback fields a kick on the full before the forwards have had time to get their heads out of the ruck.

 

[Brisbok]

That article is just a thinly veiled swipe at Australian Rugby for the failures of South Africa in recent years.

I wouldn't expect anything more constructive than that from you. You've made your views on SA clear a number of times, thanks.

BTW, I didn't realise winning 3 out of the last 5 Super Rugby competitions and 1 Tri-Nations was considered a failure. Clearly it would be considered a failure by the lofty standards set by Australian rugby "in recent times" though.

Well done for taking the thread down this path btw.

 

[Brisbok]

See I thought that article was OK until he dropped this:



And I stopped reading.

A completely bullshit argument that I thought was well and truly dead.A throwaway line used by the ignorant around the time of the ELVs, often from SA or the NH.

At the moment the game is so far from rugby league- the defensive team has never been more advantaged at the breakdown. There is so much competition on the ground (the very antithesis of rugby league) that teams are forced to kick in their own half almost all the time.
.

As with most articles written by rugby journalists, there are things that you agree with and things that you don't. As I stated when posting the article, more often than not, I do not agree with anything he writes, but he does make some interesting points here. A lot of which has been discussed at length on this forum, but which wouldn't be at the forefront of the greater South African rugby public's minds. I.e. the midweek Aus vs Scotland test followed by another a few days later. Therefore I thought I would post it on this thread. I also mentioned that it was laced with South African bias, as would be expected from a South African journo.

 

[qwerty51]

What are the interesting points?

 

[barbarian]

Oh don't take it personally Brisbok, it certainly was a discussion-provoking article.

And I agree with the initial points about the debacle in Newcastle.
.