More feeble threats and grandioso statements from the Cheika. I guess when you have one of the worst tours, one has a tendency to get into this sort of nonsense.
Clearly Cheika cannot be held totally accountable for the results of this tour and in many ways it’s probably a good outcome for the Wallabies. If they had done well, they would have become even more arrogant (if that is at all possible).
What puzzles me is that, it is world renown that our scrum is our fundamental weakness. Rather than focussing on fixing this, Cheika steps right into the politics and brings Beale back into the game! The backs are still competitive (although not as dominant as during some of the “golden” eras) and if at all Beale makes them worse. Cheika should get his mind out of the politics and focus on coaching, and in particular, the problem in the forwards.
Beale was a total waste of time in both the last games. As I predicted, Cheika made the political decision to fly him (first class no doubt) all the way to UK to play in the team and make a lacklustre contribution. Unfortunately, for the next few years, he is going to be defending his decision, so Beale will be an automatic selection in the team. Otherwise the public will laugh at him (those who are not already) for unnecessarily bringing the game to disrepute and making some of the more fair minded people cringe! That’s the behaviour of a proud, arrogant coach!
It was laughable to see Genia on the bench and Nic “I ve-gotten-two-invisible-balls-under-my-armpits-and-I-will-pick-a-fight-regardless-of-my-size” white on the field. Nick Phipps was just two slow, and was trapped over and over again.
I guess it’s tough to be a coach with a “we are mates” approach and not fill the national side with your mates from the state team you coach. Particularly when you coach the wealthiest Super 15 team and can buy any player you want. So you think you already have the best players!
Cooper has his weaknesses, but I felt the Wallaby backs looked particularly dangerous in attack when he was out there and it was a matter of inches in passes that made the difference between scoring and missing out. Just don’t think Rob pony-tail Horne is fast enough to be a winger and that might have made the difference on that great Folau pass.
I felt that the Wallaby backs still out played what was put against them by the Northern hemisphere teams. The Wallaby teams off-loads were creating havoc in the opposition defence. However, the forwards were out played in pretty much every facet of the game and our kicking game needs to improve significantly.
The English teams tactics were somewhat like their soccer teams - Kick the ball into the box and hopefully one of your attackers will head it in. Similarly, here we had the Gary Owens with the hope that the Wallabies might stuff up and unfortunately we did oblige! Not surprisingly, the English had no intension of playing the game in their half.
There was some criticism of the Wallabies running the ball, but I’m not sure that we should be too harsh on the team on that front. One only scores tries when one has possession of the ball – this is very much an All-Blacks philosophy. We have a pretty good running game and so we should use it! It will always be tough to beat the Northern Hemisphere teams playing their style of rugby.
It’s gonna be a tough 11 months and it will be quite difficult to back the wallabies going all the way at the world cup. There are so many issues to sort out – some of them requiring political will. The leadership, the forwards capabilities and techniques, the lack of talent and a pool and of course the demi-god status we are giving idiots like Beale.
We will simply have to wait and see!
