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Bledisloe Countdown: Why the Wallabies need to sledge, and sledge hard
By Jamie Wall
We’re counting down to the first Bledisloe Cup test in Sydney, so here’s a few things to consider:
- If the Wallabies don’t sledge the hell out of the Aaron Smith situation, they’re crazy. While the All Blacks probably won’t spend a great dal of time worrying about their halfback’s ridiculous dilemma, it doesn’t mean the Wallabies shouldn’t try and remind them of it. At the present time, Smith may no even play – but a few barbs about how h can’t keep his junk in his pants or be able to spell would definitely get under the skin of the Bledisloe Cup holders.
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- Ben Smith will probably be spending a bit of time a fullback anyway. Much has been made of the selection of Damian McKenzie and how he’ll cope with Israel Folau coming at him under the high ball, but the way the All Black back three play means that Smith will mostly likely be under at least half of them. Wing an fullback have been more or less interchangeable in their game-plan of late, and a positional switch for DMac somewhere along the line will probably happen anyway.
- Liam Squire needs a big one. The somewhat shock dumping of Jerome Kaino took an added twis earlier today as he returned back to NZ, but that shouldn’t worry Squire. The fact that he’s been given th starting gig despite missing a great deal of the season with injury is a big sign that he’s the man o future proof the number 6 jersey.
- The Aussie tight five need to front up. If the Wallabies have any chance of winning, it needs to done through gaining set piece parity. Nothing exactly original there, however hopefully they’ve learned a few things collectively from the beatings they all suffered at the hands of the New Zealanders throughout Super Rugby.
- This isn’t the lowest the Wallabies have ever been, not by a long shot. Skipper Michael Hooper had to field a few questions a yesterday’s press conference regarding the significance of his match, and rightly so. A win here would be a serious shot in th arm for the XV man code in Australia, which has struggled of late to draw attention du to the shocking efforts of both the Wallabies and Super Rugby sides. However, they’ll have to get an awful lot worse than this to slid in below the 1972 Woeful Wallabies, who managed to go through a tour of NZ losing to Otago, Buller-West Coast, Hawkes Bay and Waikato. Oh, and they were destroyed in the three test matches against the All Blacks.
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