Jeremy Guscott: Beware these danger men coming here in autumn
My expectation before the game was that South Africa would kick, and therefore the likes of Bryan Habana and Willie Le Roux on the wings wouldn’t see much action with ball in hand. As for Australia, they would try and play – but without the clean breaks that have been missing throughout The Rugby Championship.
As it turned out, the Wallabies were not in this game for the first 40 minutes, with the half-time stats read possession and territory 71 per cent and 76 per cent respectively in the favour of the Boks.
Quade Cooper, Christian Leali’ifano and Tevita Kuridrani, Australia’s inside backs, could only watch and tackle as wave after wave of South African attackers flowed down their channels.
The unequal contest shows us the gulf in these two teams ability right now, because Australia posed little threat, and their game-plan has gone from one extreme to other. They played the game in a different style in each half.
In the first half scrum-half Nic White kicked the skin off the ball and in the second Will Genia brought a passing game – which was an improvement. You had to feel sorry for White as he was the only kicker Australia employed. It was crying out for Cooper to take some of the responsibility, especially when the Wallabies were exiting their own half.
Australia where never going to win a kicking game against the Boks, so the handling game was always the route to take. It’s a mark of how far this Aussie team has fallen that no-one in the team had the influence to change the first-half tactics, even though they were failing miserably.
That’s all about taking responsibility, and until more of the team man-up they will struggle.
What cannot have gone unnoticed by the Home Unions as they prepare for Australia’s Grand Slam autumn tour is what they do at re-starts. It’s incredible. The Wallabies kick away from most of their forwards, and have the likes of Adam Ashley-Cooper, Leali’ifano and Kuridrani chase and try and win the ball back. They are up against forwards, so they don’t stand much of a chance in that department!
Zane Kirchner’s try was a case in point. South Africa caught the ball and mauled it upfield, and were soon on the front foot because they were only up against backs.
From there the Boks surprised me. Their usual trick would be for Morne Steyn to put the ball up high for the backs to chase and try to win it back. Instead, the Springboks attacked. Fourie Du Preez gave it out to Steyn, and he passed to Jean de Villiers. In front of him were two forwards covering where Kuridrani and Leali’ifano would have been, if they hadn’t been stuck in the re-start maul. Outside the Aussie forwards was poor Joe Tomane, who didn’t know whether to come in off his wing or out – and got stuck in no man’s land.
De Villiers spotted this and his pass launched an attack down the wing, where an inside ball to Kirchner and a step off his right foot put defender Izzy Folau on his backside. It was as good a try as you will see this year.
So, Northern Hemisphere teams be warned, the Boks are having a go, because right from the start of this game they ran it instead of the usual bombs from Steyn. Also, Kirchner has been criticised back in SA for kicking too much, but I’ve not seen any of that since his comeback, and he’s a real threat for the Boks.
With England‘s starting 12 and 13 unknown as yet, the Boks will have a slight advantage with their fairly settled pairing of De Villiers and the young up and comer, JJ Englebrecht. He’s 6ft 3ins, around 15 stone, and like all South African players he likes the physical aspect of the game. Englebrecht carries well, defends well, and doesn’t make too many errors The big danger for the Home Unions will be the silky running skills of Willie Le Roux who is a fly-half/full-back, and now wing. He loves to attack and given too much time he’ll cut a defence to shreds.
Le Roux took his try brilliantly in Cape Town. He had no space to work with but beat Chris Feauai-Sautia in a yard to score. It was an instinctive rugby player’s try.
Although Australia took a heavy defeat, this team has too much talent not to come good at some stage. They miss big marauding forwards like Scott Hinginbotham, who gets them over the gain-line and delivers quick ball.
This allows a young talented backline to run onto the ball – but there doesn’t seem to be a natural leader in the Aussie backline. Leali’ifano is new, as is Kuridrani, and Adam Ashley-Cooper can’t really run things from the wing.
Individually the Aussie backline looks good. Currently they lack confidence but Folau, Kuridrani, and Tomane are real talents. It’s difficult to know when the Aussies will click – but they could do worse than time it as they did last year when they came of a massive defeat against the French to take England at Twickenham a week later.
It would be a huge turnaround, an unlikey turnaround, but so was America winning the America’s Cup!
