As 2024 began, I wrote here:
“The Wallabies have been stymied by seven cardinal rugby sins for a decade or more. A high penalty and card count, poor referee relations, a shapeless attack, poor ball retention, overreliance on a few stars, a tendency to play to the level of the opposition (tight losses to top teams, narrow wins versus weaker team), and a disconnect from fans and their proxies in the media. Joe Schmidt is tailor made to address the first six issues.”
Schmidt has addressed accuracy, picked an affable but inspirational captain, brought shape to starter plays as well as third phase plus ball, forced dramatic improvements in ball presentation, and moved away from a star-focused mentality.
The last two iniquities are the last to be redeemed: learning how to win when you might not deserve it, and building excitement and rapport in the larger spaces of entertainment.
Joe has his Joseph now, and the signs are good, but the truth is of the six wins in 2024, half came over moribund Wales. The belief was still lacking in Sydney versus the All Blacks, and again in Dublin against another top three side stacked with confident players.
There is a happier telling of the tale: those excruciating losses were immense improvement over last year, but also the early part of this year, when big losses to Argentina and South Africa triggered rugby trauma with Lyonnaise sauce on the side.
We are affected by where the Wallabies were, as much as where they are.
As 2022 ended, I wrote on these pages: “The worst decision Rugby Australia could make for the Wallabies in 2023 would be to hire Eddie Jones as their headman. As he grows into the role, pet projects will eclipse methodology, assistants will run for the exits, some players will be vaccinated from selection and others will be immune from the drop, the press will be either domesticated or ostracised, and interminable excuses will grow like beets in the Lockyer Valley – “We’re building for 2027, mate.”
Prophetic credentials established, hear me out as I end 2024 with a meditation on the imminent Lions series. The truth is the match in July in Brisbane is just around the corner.
Injuries or form drops in the Six Nations and Super Rugby Pacific are a given from now till then. By the time August comes in Sydney for a potential decider, more will have dropped. A Lions squad never has to worry about depth, whilst the host nation does due to the drop off from a Rob Valetini to the fourth or fifth big Wallaby ball carrier, and the public policy against bringing in a Pete Samu or the like to bolster late Test depth.
Schmidt has conducted a year long lab experiment and most of it has been on the decisions made under pressure by his band of players, more local than global; why would his overseers deny him depth from abroad next year? It looks to me like the old schoolteacher first wanted to know the depth of the pool before he filled it with more stars.
Look at the coach before a Wallaby Test. He looks more intently at the drills, mock rucks and faux cleans, than any of his peers. Australia spend more time on phase drills just before any side except Ireland, from whence he came.
Joe Schmidt speaks with his players before the Test against Scotland. (Photo by Ross Parker/SNS Group via Getty Images)
He is not watching for an outcome of a predetermined ruck in these A-B-C drills; he is looking for agility, adaptability and acuity. Vision within the second or two which matters at a breakdown shorn of crocodiles and forbidden crash landings.
Our eyes apparently send a hundred billion signals per second to our brain; and that transmission is only ten percent of the whole body of data. Various parts of our mind fill in the rest: recognition, movement interpretation, risk identification, and other translations and extrapolations.
Those couple of hundred milliseconds of prediction and forecast are as vital as the hours of reconstruction thereafter. Our brains are on constant duty to tell us what might, probably, happen a fraction of a second ahead of live action, but we think we live in that tense; that the future is our present.
In rugby, the two hundred or so rucks and the premeditated and reactive motion generated can swing a match even if vital territory is lost, along with the ball. This is Joe’s obsession: to teach his local squad the clues of the patterns of the breakdown and the likelihoods of most eventualities.
A stat line in a three-minute period of play could take this cruel shape:
Ireland 22 phases, with 15 over the gainline and a few carries after a second pass, 1 kick regained, 2 offloads, a line break, and 70 metres gained
Australia 21 tackles, 5 missed, 3 missed reads, a kick not claimed, but a jackal turnover penalty by Fraser McReight.
You would take the latter if a try was not scored before the jackal penalty, because now Noah Lolesio has a chance to launch a planned lineout play from Ireland’s five.
But not all guesses are equal or correct. Just as forecast teams at the moment. It does seem as if Angus Bell, Taniela Tupou, Nick Frost, Jeremy Williams, Lukhan Salakaia-Loto, Valetini, McReight and Harry Wilson are in pole position to make the match day squad in Brisbane for Lions Test One, along with Jake Gordon, Tate McDermott, Noah Lolesio, Len Ikitau and Tom Wright, but uncertainty reigns on many other slots.
Should Schmidt select his best without regard to his former apprentice Andy Farrell’s group? Force his way into their heads? Or is the smarter choice to negate the Lions, as Schmidt seemed to do in November, putting Wallabies in lanes of forecast, spots of prediction, and the most awkward places for Ireland to build the sort of sustained pressure they need, lacking monster carriers?
Joseph-Aukuso Suaalii. (Photo by David Rogers/Getty Images)
Similarly, a Lions squad is a mere guess. My imaginary team to take the Wallabies 3-0 would be captained by Caelan Doris, and include Pierre Schoeman, Dan Sheehan, Tadgh Furlong, Maro Itoje, Taidgh Beirne, Rory Darge, Josh van der Flier (and Doris at No. 8, not Ben Earl) because that pack most resembles the Springboks’ which dismantled the Wallabies in Brisbane this year.
Speed over size, technical excellence, work rate, and bloody-mindedness; with an abundance of beef on a big bench (young men like Afo Fasogbon, Asher Opoku-Fordjour, Zander Fagerson, Sam Underhill, Jack Dempsey, Gus and Joe McCarthy, Ollie Chessum and Chandler Cunningham-South could come in frame, with Earl as a change of pace at the back).
The backline is trickier, as Ireland’s style is more difficult to sustain in an era of counter-rucking into the nine, increased kick-regain options (the fastest ball of all), and the Pocockian risk of McReight. However, an 11-12-13 trio of Duhan van der Merwe, Sione Tuipolutu, and Huw Jones is danger incarnate, anchored by either Hugo Keenan or Blair Kinghorn at fullback (one or the other on the bench). On the right wing, Immanuel Feyi-Waboso could vie with quite a few speedsters; it is his defensive lockdown prowess which may give him the nod.
The halves? Even though Marcus Smith may have been the best flyhalf of 2024, and the Irish youngsters at ten were not bad, a Lions series tends to require a steady hand. Thus, I would have Smith understudy Finn Russell as playmaker.
Jamison Gibson-Park may have made the World Rugby Dream Team ahead of le rêverie, Antoine Dupont, but both were shown up by perhaps the future best scrumhalf in the world, Cam Roigard, against whom all the Wallabies will practice. Above all things, being able to survive the Wallaby ruck mischief is the key.
To that end, I would start with whoever navigates that rough and tumble scene in the upcoming Six Nations, with Gibson-Park my finisher to read what has gone on in the first hour.
Schmidt can upgrade his scrappy six-win team with locks (the brothers Arnold, Matt Philip, Will Skelton, Tom Staniforth), flanks (Samu, Angus Scott-Young) and a front rower or two.
But he has the right kind of backline to defend and attack the Lions, as his youth brigade grows this year.
The odds were against Schmidt at Twickenham this year, and also in Dublin. In both cases, his team beat expectations and could have burgled the last match.
The final “sin” (lack of public interest) is on the chopping block: win and the love will come home.
