The word of the week: repeatability.
Another great example of rugby’s obsession with corporate jargon was Tate McDermott’s appearance in front of the media, where he pushed the line “repeatability”.
Earlier in the week, McDermott emphasised the importance of Australia puting back to back performances together. “The group in general has a feeling that repeatability is the biggest thing for us to move forward,” the 26-year-old said.
In recent years, Australia has been plagued by otherworldly performances one week, hollow showings the next. Look at their results versus Argentina just earlier this year, a fantastic second half to secure the win followed by an absolute drubbing.
“For us, it’s about making sure that everything we do this week, we don’t waste any time improving because repeatability and also backing up the performance against the English is crucial for us,” he added.
“We know that we conceded far too many points and quite often in Test matches, if you concede 37 points, you don’t win the game. We understand that as a team, our success is measured by what we do throughout the week… every week from now on is another new challenge.
“It’s a fresh page and last week against the English whilst it was a great moment, it’s irrelevant because we’ve got a fierce Welsh team in our face and we’ve got to make sure we’re ready for them.”
It’s important that this Australian team becomes more clinical in all aspects of their play to ensure they deliver back- to-back performances. The comments from McDermott, well, I don’t think Joe Schmidt could have said it better himself.
(Photo by Andrew Kearns – CameraSport via Getty Images)
If you’re worried about this Welsh team being a potential banana skin for this Wallabies side, let me cast your mind back to 2010, when Schmidt first arrived at Leinster.
He famously called Irish legend Brian O’Driscoll out in front of the whole squad for exactly what Ollie Lawrence did in the build-up to Andrew Kellaway’s try at Twickenham. That’s when everyone at Leinster realised Schmidt was the real deal.
When O’Driscoll dropped a short pass close to the line, Schmidt hit the pause button during a video review and in front of the whole team said, without looking away from the play, “Good players take bad passes.” Mic drop.
Or in this case, next slide, as the New Zealander continued his review like nothing happened, but the room was silent, shell-shocked even.
This little anecdote leads me to believe that Schmidt won’t allow this group to run away with themselves. In this case, it was England’s Ollie Lawrence who dropped the bad pass close to the line. It’s this level of honesty that convinces me Schmidt will be realistic with his players about the moments that went Australia’s way during the game against England.
Important to emphasise that Kelleway did a brilliant job finishing the try but it came off the back of a mistake from England in the midfield during a dangerous strike play.
I think it’s important that Schmidt doesn’t go in too heavy on this developing Wallabies side and that he merely sprinkles these “what ifs” into their team reviews. But combine this mistake with Jeremy Williams’ inconclusive try and the result of the game could have been very different.
While the Wallabies will be flying high off the back of their historic win against England, this moment will be the catalyst for Schmidt to drive improvements. They’re not the finished article, which makes their win against England even more impressive.
