As you luxuriate under a hot Mediterranean sun, layered in SPF 50 sunscreen and with a chilled drink within reach, halfway across the globe the temperature is rising in the world of Test Match rugby. As three out of four semi-finalists from the 2023 Rugby World Cup participate in the Rugby Championship, it’s not surprising that the southern hemisphere is boasting about its global dominance.
In France and Ireland, grumbles continue over the controversial layout of the 2023 World Cup draw, which saw them paired with South Africa and New Zealand. Although, anyone from the southern hemisphere would simply argue, “that’s the rules.”
Sadly, the Australian team, the Wallabies, are letting the southern hemisphere side down. Their dismal performance at the 2023 World Cup saw them at their lowest, and shockingly, they kept plummeting.
Fans of the Wallabies had to tolerate an embarrassing and poorly managed melodrama, the result of twenty years of ineffective administration by successive Rugby Australia (RA) boards. The removal and replacement of head coach Dave Rennie with Eddie Jones happened months before the World Cup, despite opposition from both players and some rugby figures on the RA board. Exactly as was forecasted, the ascension of Jones led to tumult.
Hooper, the Wallabies’ iconic leader, was given the sack by Jones, and substantial staff alterations resulted in severe miscommunication in the team’s strategy just weeks ahead of the World Cup.
The decision to leave experienced leaders behind meant that young, inexperienced players were drafted into the team and were poorly prepared for the rigours of international play. In the pool stage of the 2023 World Cup, the Wallabies suffered an unprecedented defeat against Wales and a epoch-making loss against Fiji. For the first time in the World Cup’s history, the Wallabies did not make it to the quarter-finals. Instead of fulfilling his promise of four-year reconstruction, Jones chose to abandon the Wallabies and accept a coaching position in Tokyo with the Cherry Blossoms.
And then, Joe Schmidt arrived.
The decision to appoint Schmidt as the leader wasn’t popular amongst the masses. There’s been a detrimental history of incorrectly hiring Kiwis who have, as coaches or executives, pushed the game in Australia so far from its roots that current players have lost touch with the distinctive character of Australian rugby. Given this, one can see why the Australian public are dubious of another New Zealander taking up the reins as the head of the Wallabies.
An influential Rugby Australia official consulted me on my thoughts on Schmidt coaching the Wallabies, and I said that while Schmidt is amongst the finest coaches I’ve seen, he stumbled significantly in 2019. Nevertheless, I have faith that exceptional coaches can recover from their slip ups, and in due course, Joe will serve as a great asset to the Wallabies.
The greater part of the Wallabies fan base don’t share this viewpoint and are lodged firmly in the cynics’ camp. They demand a series of victories before they regard Schmidt with any belief.
Securing wins will be challenging for Schmidt as Australia’s conveyor belt of world-class, creative halves has essentially ground to a halt. For 50 years, the Wallabies were recognised for their extraordinary halves who could generate and capitalise on available space. Notable names such as Nick Farr-Jones, George Gregan, Mark Ella, Michael Lynagh and Stephen Larkham form a pantheon of greats.
Their impressive legacy over the past two decades, however, has been disregarded by coaches who ingrained a Kiwi style of play into young Australian halves. Consequently, these players have lost grasp of the specific Australian style of play.
Schmidt inherits this issue, although he was not instrumental in causing it. As the boxing analogy goes – one can only punch with the fists they possess – similarly, Schmidt has no choice but to utilize the players he has.
Maybe the implementation of new experimental rules, set to premier in the Rugby Championship, will somewhat counteract the effect of the Boks’ strategies.
The overdue inclusion of a half-minute shot clock for setting up scrums and lineouts has finally been decided. It took a long forty years to implement in Australia after the scrumhalf was initially prohibited from following the ball through the scrum in the mid-1980s. The combined hope from this change is to speed up scrum assembly and allow the ball to get to the backlines, which are uncommon occurrences under current laws.
Use of the contentious red-card law will also be observed. In instances where a player is red-carded and banned from play, they can be substituted post 20 minutes at the discretion of officials.
These law changes, positively embraced today, should have been brought into effect a decade ago. They have been directly influenced by the South African Springboks’ strategy of quick bursts of active playing followed by extended periods of inactivity to let their large players rest. This playing style results in short ball-in-play (BIP) times.
Previous games involving the Wallabies and the Springboks, such as the match in Adelaide, resulted in just 28 minutes of BIP time, while the recent first test match between the Springboks and Ireland saw only 30 minutes of BIP time. Such BIP durations are far from acceptable for players, viewers, and television audiences.
Australian rugby followers have proved resilient, even as the Wallabies hit rock bottom, Brisbane’s Suncorp Stadium still manages a sell-out. Those devoted to the country’s green and gold jersey harbour everlasting hope.
Despite the challenges, Rugby Championship is back in action, appealing to rugby devotees across the globe, particularly those in the southern hemisphere, regardless of the northern hemisphere’s opinion.