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The Wallabies' best bet is to expose All Blacks' aerial fragility
The first Bledisloe is only hours away and the two teams are both coming off mixed results in The Rugby Championship.
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The Wallabies have had some big defeats, a record one against Argentina, while the All Blacks have experienced their own seesawing season with another loss to Los Pumas at home and two nail-biting defeats to the Springboks in South Africa.
However, the Bledisloe is often played in its own vacuum with results not truly reflecting the recent large disparity between the two teams in the world rankings.
The Wallabies must respect the prowess of the All Blacks whilst also putting trust in their coach’s instructions, their preparations, as well as their strengths.
Yes, their strengths have been few, but they’re there, and it would be folly to ignore them, and it would be equally as foolish to ignore the All Blacks’ weaknesses.
The Wallaby scrum has been good in patches, with Schmidt hoping to get more minutes out of his talisman props Angus Bell and Taniela Tupou in Sydney at the weekend.
Their defence had been solid, tackling at 88 per cent before the second-half capitulation in Santa Fe.
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Their attack has been lacking but there have been promising passages. The strongest attribute has been their ability to retain possession without giving away cheap penalties, which is a departure from trends under both Dave Rennie and Eddie Jones.
Despite these measured strengths, their trans-Tasman cousins have simply been a cut above.
Schmidt will spur his men on to perform to the best of their ability, but he must see that after the walloping in Santa Fe, it seems unlikely his men will be able to keep the All Blacks to a score less than 20, so they must find a way to attack and score points of their own.
This is evidenced by the scorelines of their past four Tests.
They’ve only scored 20 points or more, once, and this will simply not do against the All Blacks, especially in what is forecast to be a sunny Sydney afternoon.
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The Wallabies’ attack has been lack-lustre while Schmidt has tried to get his players to play narrow and direct with a short attacking kicking game sprinkled throughout.
Chips, grubbers, and cross-field punts will not work against the All Blacks. Their strike power out wide would pick apart a disorganised Wallabies defence, but it is to the air that the Wallabies must look if they hope to cause an upset in Sydney.
The All Blacks went toe-to-toe with the Springboks at set-piece, in the tackle, and at the lineout but they truly struggled with their aerial game and the Boks’ highballs.
Whenever the Boks hoisted a contestable kick the All Blacks almost always conceded a turnover, whether it was via a knock-on or a South African who managed to regather the ball.
The All Blacks’ back three were all responsible for drop-balls.
Scott Robertson’s selection choices for the Bledisloe Test shows he knows he can’t have a repeat of the scenes in Cape Town, as two of the four changes to the starting XV have come in the back three.
The experienced Beauden Barrett will slot into fullback, while Caleb Clarke who had great performance in Johannesburg is recalled to the wing.
The pair gives the All Blacks a stronger backfield aerially, while Will Jordan shifts to the wing from fullback, despite putting down some balls during the Cape Town Test.
Damian McKenzie and Jordie Barrett made their own share of mistakes under the Boks’ highballs, with the pair dropping four balls cold between them.
These weren’t the exception, they were rule, the All Blacks truly struggled in the aerial
contest.
The Wallabies are missing some of their key aerial threats, but this tactic is about much more than a clean win of the ball, it is about throwing out the rhythm of the All Blacks and resetting their defensive line.
If the Wallabies want to make this a viable tactic at the weekend, they must firstly ensure they compete.
Their kick-chase has been lame to date and must lift in both effort and accuracy if they are to get any pay out of this tactic.
The Springboks didn’t even need to put anyone in the air to disrupt the All Black catchers, sticking out a hand appeared to be enough to cause them to spill the ball.
Secondly, the Wallabies must be aware that the All Blacks’ defensive shape stacks a backrower close to the 15m channels where most of these kicks land.
In every clip above, there’s an AB backrower close to the would-be catcher, a bodyguard, to help ward off any players wishing to pounce on the resulting ruck.
This is who the Wallabies must target with their clean if the All Blacks manage to collect the ball, and they either pin them in the ruck or clean them well past it, to slow down their ball.
Thirdly, if the Wallabies are to make the most out of this tactic, they must be first to the loose ball which should result if they correctly disrupt the AB catchers.
The All Blacks’ aerial fragility was something current players on either side of the ditch noticed.
“[T]he aerial contest, contestable kicks. If we can challenge the All Blacks in that area; on Sevu Reece, maybe Beauden (Barrett), if we can put the kicks on them and nullify their running game and win the ball back, I think it can be a weapon for us,” said Bernard Foley on Stan sport’s Between Two Posts Podcast on Monday night.
Taking the game to the sky is one way the Wallabies can disrupt the AB’s defensive line, and it would offset their inability to regularly get over the gain-line.
“They’ve (the Wallabies) been the lowest percentage when it comes to (making) the gain-line… they’ve been really tight… because they want to go through teams but… they can go to their contestable kicking game,” said M?ori All Black Bryn Hall on the Aotearoa Rugby Podcast.
“Starting to think about how they can make pay without ball in hand if they’re not getting the attacking pictures that they want”.
Hall is right, the Wallabies, due to learning their new direct strategy have struggled for gain-line carries and this has hampered their ability to play with front-foot ball and to build pressure on opposition.
Hoisting contestable kicks and putting the All Blacks’ back-three under pressure and competing hard for the ball when and if it does hit the ground is a viable tactic, as evidenced by the Boks game.
Kicking in this way is as much about territory as it is about saving energy on attack if the defensive line is set.
The All Blacks have a much slower defensive system than both the Springboks and Argentina, therefore the Wallabies will have more time before they make contact, but it also means the All Blacks’ defensive integrity will generally be better.
Disrupting this rhythm will be crucial if the Wallabies are to build pressure and turn it into points.
The Wallabies must also acknowledge their strong ability to retain possession, so if they do manage to win the contestable, they will have a good chance to build an attack from it.
Currently, they are retaining ball from 96.6 per cent of rucks, the second highest in TRC, only just trailing Argentina (96.8).
Yes, they haven’t been able to do much with this possession, so that’s where a contestable kicking game against a shaky All Blacks backfield could pay dividends.
Paradoxically, if the Wallabies are not going to kick high and contestable, then they must kick well out.
On too many occasions in Santa Fe, the Wallabies suffered the consequences of the Pumas’ quick throw-in or just missing touch.
Kicking out and setting for a defensive lineout would also put faith in another one of the Wallabies’ strengths.
The Wallabies have stolen the most lineouts of the TRC as well as winning a competition high of 90.2 per cent on their own throws.
The Wallabies must trust in their strengths as well as their teachings and this harkens back to Hall’s earlier comments.
Hall mentions the fact that the Wallabies are not seeing the “pictures” they ‘need to see’ to pull the trigger on Schmidt’s teachings.
“We don’t want to be waiting for pictures, especially in the A-zone,” said outside centre Len Ikitau in a midweek press-conference between the first and second Test against the Springboks.
Ikitau here attests to Hall’s observation, the Wallabies through one fault or another, are not managing to manipulate defences to the point where they feel confident their new strategy will work.
This hesitancy must stop on Saturday and the contestable kicking game could help present these pictures more regularly, hence giving them the confidence and opportunities to utilise their new framework.
Although they are an inexperienced bunch, the Wallabies must begin to believe in their preparations and trust in their coach, because there have been moments this year when the Wallabies have played with freedom and confidence, and it’s served them well.
The Bledisloe Test in Sydney has passion, pride, and silverware on the line, and the All Blacks have looked far from their invincible selves, a notion the Wallabies must take and run with on Saturday afternoon.
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