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Wallabies expect All Blacks to name Richie Mo'unga in 10 jersey

Richie Mo'unga. (Photo by Renee McKay/Getty Images)

The Wallabies believe they know who to expect in the All Blacks‘ number 10 jersey on Sunday afternoon.

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There is plenty of selection debate in a number of areas in the All Blacks team ahead of their first Bledisloe Cup test against Australia in Wellington, and the most high profile comes at first receiver, with Beauden Barrett and Richie Mo’unga battling for the role.

Mo’unga was the primary selection at 10 during the 2019 Rugby World Cup with Barrett at fullback, and it would be plausible for selectors to go with the Crusader again following a standout year in another Super Rugby title-winning season.

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The Aotearoa Rugby Pod discuss the key to beating the All Blacks and the area of the game that they have used better than the Wallabies in recent years.

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The Aotearoa Rugby Pod discuss the key to beating the All Blacks and the area of the game that they have used better than the Wallabies in recent years.

Wallabies assistant coach Matt Taylor says both men are exceptional talents.

“World class players. You’d think that Mo’unga will start, maybe with Aaron Smith, but that doesn’t mean that they [the All Blacks] might have some selection shocks or try different people out early on in their preparation. We believe that Mo’unga will probably start.”

Barrett returning to his post at fullback is a likely option, but if form is solely to go by, his case struggles to compete with that of younger brother Jordie and Will Jordan, who have been the two best outside backs in 2020.

Throwing winning records into the mix adds some spice to the debate. Mo’unga has won seven out of 10 tests when starting at first-five for New Zealand, while Barrett has won 37 out of 43 starting at 10, resulting in an 86 per cent winning percentage.

The Wallabies may prefer Mo’unga starting, with their 47-26 demolition of the All Blacks last year coming with Mo’unga at first-five. On the flip side, they have never beaten the All Blacks when Barrett is starting there.

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Regardless of who’s there, Taylor knows they have their work cut out.

“We all know the attacking ability of the All Blacks,” he says.

“We got to nail our systems, we’ve put in a few new systems in place and we’ve tried to put those systems under pressure in this environment, but the real test will be how well it has been embedded this weekend. Part of that is mindset and work rate.”

Taylor says there is an element of mystery attached to the test, with how both sides will line up.

“[We’re both] staring fresh in a certain way, the coaching group at the All Blacks are new and they’ve got some young exciting players coming through their ranks as well. We’re probably having a little bit of guessing game between both squads.

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“We don’t know how the All Blacks are going to operate, so we’ve just been really focused on us.

I think you’ll certainly see a change in how the Wallabies operate from maybe how it’s gone in the past. You’ve got to have a balance to your game.”

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AllyOz 22 hours ago
Does the next Wallabies coach have to be an Australian?

I will preface this comment by saying that I hope Joe Schmidt continues for as long as he can as I think he has done a tremendous job to date. He has, in some ways, made the job a little harder for himself by initially relying on domestic based players and never really going over the top with OS based players even when he relaxed his policy a little more. I really enjoy how the team are playing at the moment.


I think Les Kiss, because (1) he has a bit more international experience, (2) has previously coached with Schmidt and in the same setup as Schmidt, might provide the smoothest transition, though I am not sure that this necessarily needs to be the case.


I would say one thing though about OS versus local coaches. I have a preference for local coaches but not for the reason that people might suppose (certainly not for the reason OJohn will have opined - I haven't read all the way down but I think I can guess it).


Australia has produced coaches of international standing who have won World Cups and major trophies. Bob Dwyer, Rod Macqueen, Alan Jones, Michael Cheika and Eddie Jones. I would add John Connolly - though he never got the international success he was highly successful with Queensland against quality NZ opposition and I think you could argue, never really got the run at international level that others did (OJohn might agree with that bit). Some of those are controversial but they all achieved high level results. You can add to that a number of assistants who worked OS at a high level.


But what the lack of a clear Australian coach suggests to me is that we are no longer producing coaches of international quality through our systems. We have had some overseas based coaches in our system like Thorn and Wessels and Cron (though I would suggest Thorn was a unique case who played for Australia in one code and NZ in the other and saw himself as a both a NZer and a Queenslander having arrived here at around age 12). Cron was developed in the Australian system anyway, so I don't have a problem with where he was born.


But my point is that we used to have systems in Australia that produced world class coaches. The systems developed by Dick Marks, which adopted and adapted some of the best coaching training approaches at the time from around the world (Wales particularly) but focussed on training Australian coaches with the best available methods, in my mind (as someone who grew up and began coaching late in that era) was a key part of what produced the highly skilled players that we produced at the time and also that produced those world class coaches. I think it was slipping already by the time I did my Level II certificate in 2002 and I think Eddie Jones influence and the priorities of the executive, particularly John O'Neill, might have been the beginning of the end. But if we have good coaching development programmes at school and junior level that will feed through to representative level then we will have


I think this is the missing ingredient that both ourselves and, ironically, Wales (who gave us the bones of our coaching system that became world leading), is a poor coaching development system. Fix that and you start getting players developing basic skills better and earlier in their careers and this feeds through all the way through the system and it also means that, when coaching positions at all levels come up, there are people of quality to fill them, who feed through the system all the way to the top. We could be exporting more coaches to Japan and England and France and the UK and the USA, as we have done a bit in the past.


A lack of a third tier between SR and Club rugby might block this a little - but I am not sure that this alone is the reason - it does give people some opportunity though to be noticed and play a key role in developing that next generation of players coming through. And we have never been able to make the cost sustainable.


I don't think it matters that we have an OS coach as our head coach at the moment but I think it does tell us something about overall rugby ecosystem that, when a coaching appointment comes up, we don't have 3 or 4 high quality options ready to take over. The failure of our coaching development pathway is a key missing ingredient for me and one of the reasons our systems are failing.

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