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No Eden Park pain for Wallabies in 2023

(Photo by Andrew Cornaga / www.photosport.nz)

After their latest Bledisloe Cup humiliation, the Wallabies can at least take heart that they won’t lose at Eden Park in 2023, with the ground off limits thanks to the FIFA Women’s World Cup.

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The Australians were rolled 40-14 in Auckland last Saturday – their 23rd straight loss to the All Blacks at the venue in 36 years.

Rugby Australia boss Andy Marinos said on Monday that the football tournament would force venue changes in both countries next year.

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He said the Wallabies would only play two Rugby Championship matches in Australia in 2023 – one against Argentina and one against New Zealand, which doubles as a Bledisloe Cup Test.

The return Bledisloe could be played in Dunedin where the Wallabies at least cracked a win back in 2001, but definitely won’t be at Eden Park.

“We’ve got limited availability in Australia as well,” Marinos told reporters on Monday.

“We will play our Bledisloe at the MCG and we’re just working through the venues around NSW for the Argentinian Test.”

Meanwhile, Marinos said Rugby Australia was making “huge strides” towards a centralised program, following the lead of the Irish Rugby Football Union and New Zealand Rugby.

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“We prefer to call it alignment … we’re busy working through a new contracting model that will create greater alignment between states and RA.

“The biggest thing with this alignment is working more closely with individual states to improve the high performance environment so we produce the players we all believe we need for the club and the national game.

“There’s a lot more collaboration and in a short time-frame an improvement in the performances.”

He said he didn’t expect Wallabies players would be forced to rest from Super Rugby games as part of their load management leading into next year’s Rugby World Cup in France.

Marinos said RA was continuing to work with Queensland to keep Taniela Tupou in Australian rugby and was confident the poster-boy prop wanted to stay.

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“We’re talking directly with Taniela and his representatives about what his longer term future looks like,” he said.

“He’s certainly expressed a very strong interest and desire to commit to Australian rugby and those conversations are ongoing.”

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Flankly 1 hour ago
'Absolute madness': Clive Woodward rips into Borthwick in wake of NZ loss

Borthwick is supposed to be the archetypical conservative coach, the guy that might not deliver a sparkling, high-risk attacking style, but whose teams execute the basics flawlessly. And that's OK, because it can be really hard to beat teams that are rock solid and consistent in the rugby equivalent of "blocking and tackling".


But this is why the performance against NZ is hard to defend. You can forgive a conservative, back-to-basics team for failing to score tons of tries, because teams like that make up for it with reliability in the simple things. They can defend well, apply territorial pressure, win the set piece battles, and take their scoring chances with metronomic goal kicking, maul tries and pick-and-go goal line attacks.


The reason why the English rugby administrators should be on high alert is not that the English team looked unable to score tries, but that they were repeatedly unable to close out a game by executing basic, coachable skills. Regardless of how they got to the point of being in control of their destiny, they did get to that point. All that was needed was to be world class at things that require more training than talent. But that training was apparently missing, and the finger has to point at the coach.


Borthwick has been in the job for nearly two years, a period that includes two 6N programs and an RWC campaign. So where are the solid foundations that he has been building?

4 Go to comments
N
Nickers 1 hour ago
Scott Robertson responds to criticism over All Blacks' handling errors

Very poor understanding of what's going on and 0 ability to read. When I say playing behind the gain line you take this to mean all off-loads and site times we are playing in front of the gain line???


Every time we play a lot of rugby behind the gain line (for clarity, meaning trying to build an attack and use width without front foot ball 5m+ behind the most recent breakdown) we go backwards and turn the ball over in some way. Every time a player is tackled behind the most recent breakdown you need more and more people to clear out because your forwards have to go back around the corner, whereas opposition players can keep moving forward. Eventually you run out of either players to clear out or players to pass to and the result in a big net loss of territory and often a turnover. You may have witnessed that 20+ times in the game against England. This is a particularly dumb idea inside your own 40m which is where, for some reason, we are most likely to employ it.


The very best ABs teams never built an identity around attacking from poor positions. The DC era team was known for being the team that kicked the most. To engineer field position and apply pressure, and create broken play to counter attack. This current team is not differentiating between when a defence has lost it's structure and there are opportunities, and when they are completely set and there is nothing on. The reason they are going for 30 minute + periods in every game without scoring a single point, even against Japan and a poor Australian team, is because they are playing most of their rugby on the back foot in the wrong half.

43 Go to comments
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