By SPIRO ZAVOS - RugbyHeaven | Tuesday, 29 July 2008
Rugby doyen Norm Tasker wrote of the late Greg Davis, an iconic Wallabies captain, that he was the best New Zealand import to Australia since toheroa soup.
After the Wallabies' brilliant 34-19 victory over the All Blacks at the ANZ Stadium, Tasker's fine tribute should now be updated: Robbie Deans is an even better NZ import than toheroa soup or kiwi fruit.
The ARU made certain the All Blacks were aware this was a home ground for the Wallabies by ensuring the gold scarves in the crowd made the stands look like a field of wattle trees. Even the touch-lines were marked out in gold. This home-crowd pressure (which also affected the referee Craig Joubert, in my opinion) certainly unsettled the All Blacks. They played with the sort of unthinking and passionate desperation they did way back in 1986 at Eden Park when they lost the Bledisloe Cup to Alan Jones's Wallabies.
It is clear Graham Henry and his coaching staff do not understand the zen of the experimental laws variations. The ELVs allow teams to play expansive rugby and restrictive rugby, depending on the situation in the game.
However, the All Blacks, stupidly, tried to play expansive rugby all the time. They ran the ball from inside their 22 most of the match. They made many breaks but because they were made too far out, the Wallabies were able to get back in numbers and kill off the movement most of the time. When the All Blacks conceded turnovers early in their phases (as they did twice in the opening minutes of the test), they invariably gave the ball to the Wallabies well inside their own half.
The statistics tell the story. The All Blacks made 11 line breaks to the Wallabies' eight: they ran the ball 123 times compared with the Wallabies' 73 times: they made 909 metres running compared with the Wallabies' 503 metres: but they scored three tries to the Wallabies' four.
The test revealed, once again, a deep flaw in the All Blacks that has existed since Grant Fox retired nearly two decades ago: the inability to think their way through the ebb and flow of a match and change the tactics and the pace of play depending on what is happening on the ground. When the All Blacks clawed their way back just after half-time to a 19-17 lead it was obvious (but not apparently to them) that they needed to give up their helter-skelter play and consolidate.
They needed to play the game in the Wallabies' half, and drop a goal like Matt Giteau did for the Wallabies when they established a lead late in the test.
Instead, they continued their frenetic game and as they ran out of energy they started to slip off tackles, didn't get to the rucks and dropped the ball as passes were forced under the pressure of a mobile defensive line.
There has been only one New Zealand team in the past decade or so that has consistently played smart winning rugby, and that team has been the Crusaders.
This brings us to Deans and his contribution to the Wallabies. He has brought his Crusaders game plan and methods to the Wallabies. A direct consequence of this is that the Wallabies, now five out of five test wins in the Deans era, have immediately started to create the same sort of consistent winning record as the Crusaders by playing to the Crusaders method.
An observant New Zealand rugby journalist made the point that watching the Wallabies out-think and out-play the All Blacks was like watching the Crusaders defeat the Hurricanes. One side (the Wallabies/Crusaders) played like a team that knew what it needed to do and how to do it, and the other (the All Blacks/Hurricanes) played like a side of great individuals but not in any sense as a team.
The latest Wallabies victory at Eden Park against the All Blacks was in 1986. There is history in the making coming up this Saturday night.
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