LONG READ Why the rest of the rugby world is worried about Australia

In a little over seven months, the British and Irish Lions will step out at the Optus Stadium in Perth for the first game of their tour of Australia against the Western Force. For Joe Schmidt and his coaching staff, it must seem as if time is hurrying by, without so much as a sideways glance.

Only the double-header against the All Blacks in the current Rugby Championship, and four tour games in Europe at the end of the year, against England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland remain. Six matches and 480 minutes of rugby separate the Kiwi from his nemesis next July. In terms of preparation time, it barely tips the scales at all.

The Lions tour is Australia’s first major opportunity to showcase rugby on its home patch in the latter half of the current decade, ahead of the men’s 2027 Rugby World Cup and the women’s version two years later. On their current showings, the Wallabies will be struggling to meet the first hurdle in a rapid-fire succession of challenges.

It has come to something when two stalwarts of Welford Road, Leicester’s Ben Youngs and current England tight-head Dan Cole, are questioning your right to host a Lions visit at all. Tigers have a richer historical link with Australian rugby than most, but it did not stand in the way of some blunt words on the For the Love of Rugby podcast. The Lions started to maul Australia before they ever set foot Down Under. Youngs did not sugar-coat his concerns:

“I have been really patient with Australia because I think in Joe Schmidt, they have an obviously proven, [and] very, very good coach.

“They beat Wales and [then] they get beaten by South Africa. I [thought they were] building towards something and then boom! You don’t get beaten like that in a Test match like that very often, if ever.

“What on earth has happened there? Argentina just blew them away. By the end, Argentina caught a kick-off and ran the length of the field and scored again.

“I’m thinking like, ‘Blimey, that’s dark, like proper dark’, and it’s just not good to see for Aussie rugby.

“I’m looking at it and thinking the Lions are better off going to South Africa and touring there. Given the last time they went, there were no fans allowed.”

It never rains, but it pours polemic. On an edition of The Rugby Pod a few days later, another man of Leicester, ex-England fly-half Andy Goode chimed in: “Australia were 20-3 up at the weekend then got hosed 67-27. Can we campaign for the Lions to flip the tour and go to South Africa, please? It can’t happen – but if you’re the Lions now at the end of the season and you’re picking anyone to play, it’s South Africa.”

Coming hot on the heels of Tigers parting ways with one of the best coaches in Australia [Dan McKellar], the East Midlanders are struggling to sustain a traditional link which includes luminaries such as Bob Dwyer, Pat Howard, Rod Kafer, Matt O’Connor, Duncan Hall, Peter Hewat, Phil Blake and Dan Palmer in their illustrious past. They have tried to pump new life into the relationship with the appointment of Michael Cheika, but make no mistake – the defibrillator is out and the paddles are warm.

The Lions situation looks a whole lot worse when you think of the 37-man squad head coach Andy Farrell could select next year.

That mixture of 15 Irishmen, 12 Englishmen, seven Scots and three Welshmen would be a match for any other team in the world, including the world champions South Africa. And there would be some very good players indeed left out of it, particularly in the back-row and outside backs, where British and Irish rugby is kissed by sunshine at present. For the Wallabies and the other opponents on the Lions’ 10-match tour itinerary, it could be entirely too much.

Add a few sprinkles from the other nations to a dominant, seasoned Irish Test unit and there is a cohesive, balanced Test side ripe for the picking.

Youngs did not pull his punches, predicting a ‘field day’ for the tourists in 2025. The problem for Schmidt is he is trying to teach his would-be Wallabies to run and walk at the same time. There were plenty signs of an improving attack during the two-match series in Argentina [‘running’], but the coloured building blocks of defence and exit strategy [‘walking’] went missing underneath the layers of progress. That would leave a bad taste in the mouth for any dyed-in-the-wool, Tiger-striped supporter.

The Wallabies started well in Santa Fe, with two confident takes by Force lock Jeremy Williams moving play out to the Australian 40m line and easing the clearance. The complications began with the third exit in the seventh minute, and scrum-half Jake Gordon under pressure from the more stringently enforced five second law at the ruck.

This law means there is no time to assemble a four-layer ‘caterpillar’ which removes the half-back from the orb of influence of a big man looking to block the kick. In this instance the breakdown is no more than two metres deep, and Gordon is so long and leggy in his wind-up that Tomás Lavanini has ample opportunity to charge the exit. Ben Donaldson then compounds the error by taking the ball straight back into trouble at the following breakdown. It was one of four mistakes Donaldson made on exit plays during the game.

The next kick-off receipt foundered on a lack of communication between the forward pod around Williams and the back sitting behind him, Marika Koroibete.

As the match unwound, it became clear the Wallabies were uncomfortable if they could not make the clearance through their number one option: Gordon.

Gordon is again being hurried as referee Pierre Brousset shouts ‘two!’ [two seconds left] just before the kick is made, but it is nonetheless a decent nudge by the NSW man. The problem is, it is too close to the sideline, and too far ahead of the single chaser [Koroibete] to discourage a return by the Pumas.

Donaldson calls for the ball from the backfield but never gets near to making the catch, and the passivity of the Wallaby defence thereafter allows Mateo Carreras to score on a sharp angled run to the posts.

The difficulty with a distracted scrum-half clearing from positions deep in the 22 persisted until the very end of the game.

This time it is Tate McDermott kicking from the base, but only 10 seconds later Argentina are camped back on the Aussie 22, and after only 30 more seconds they are scoring their sixth try.

I outlined the strife Australia endured when the nine was out of the exit picture, or the Wallabies looked for other options, in my previous article. Here is a brief resumé.

A picture paints a thousand words, as the saying goes. When he tried to put that haunting final picture of Australia’s exit strategy into words, Youngs could not contain his sense of bewilderment or exasperation on the podcast:

“[Ben Donaldson] is then presented [with] the ball, they are three metres from their line, so you’re thinking: ‘right, just clear it’.

“The 10 has come in and instead of getting [a kick] off himself and clearing the lines, ‘Boom!’ he hits Rob Valetini up behind his own [goal-]line.

“I don’t know what he’s expecting so he gets banged, bless him. Argentina tackle him – like, ‘What are you doing? This is Test match rugby’.

“I’m just looking at some of these basic parts of the game and I’m thinking ‘What are you doing? It’s Test match rugby.’ Test match rugby at its basic level is just get out of your bloody half and they can’t even do that efficiently.”

Leicester rugby folk are no Aussie-haters. When players such as Youngs – who enjoyed the best years of his distinguished career under a coach from Randwick, Eddie Jones – tell the unvarnished truth, Australian ears ought to prick up and listen. They speak out of a concern for the game down under, and in the earnest hope it will improve and revitalise. If they say Australia is not good enough to host a Lions tour, it probably isn’t. Australian rugby needs to prove otherwise, and time is running short.