Peter Jackson: Clowns? No the joke’s on Wales when Aussies call

Wales take their annual autumn shot at the Wallabies next Saturday, driven by the assumption that they cannot go on missing indefinitely. This one will cost them £750,000.
Should their 12th attempt go the way of the previous 11, the result will be seen by some as a case of the WRU throwing good money after bad. Their chronic inability to confine activity to the three-week Test window explains why they have had to cough up a hefty match fee simply to ensure the opposition turns up.
The deal suits both countries – Australia because they need the money to keep their ailing domestic game afloat, Wales because they have long been hooked on the premise that the more they play the same opponent, the better the chance that one day they will beat them.
Like the gambler who keeps banking on one more roll of the dice, Wales have reason to believe that this time their number is bound to come up. They have convinced themselves of that before and failed repeatedly to apply the law of averages.
It hasn’t been for the want of trying. Since they last beat Australia, in Cardiff seven years ago, Wales have played them 11 times and lost every one, some, admittedly, by infuriatingly small margins.
Even by the over-hyped standards of Test rugby, it cannot be said that the Wallabies are in good shape. The most elastic of imaginations does not stretch that far, not after the comically ironic events surrounding their Bledisloe Cup defeat in Auckland last week. It means they arrive in Wales bristling over the ‘disrespect’ of their Kiwi superiors, as illustrated by their caricature of Michael Cheika in the New Zealand Herald with a very large red nose above a caption imploring the visitors to: Send In The Clowns.
The WRU’s spin doctors would not have liked that. They would have liked what one of their coaches of yesteryear said about the Aussies a whole lot less. Sir Graham Henry let it be known last month that he considered them “probably the worst” Wallaby team he had seen.
As is usually the case in the prophecy business, the supposedly worst team trotted out a few days later and proved too good for Argentina with whom ‘The Redeemer’ had been working as a consultant.
For my money, the worst Australian side of the last 40 years was the one that the Lions made desperately heavy weather of beating three years ago. Even then they were still good enough to preserve their winning run in Cardiff a few months later, a result which did nothing to reprieve Robbie Deans as coach.
Cheika’s outburst over his lampooning in Auckland sounded all the more ridiculous because it implied that Australia would never have stooped so low. They never stooped lower than at the Sydney Cricket Ground one infamous day in 1980.
With the Black Caps needed six to win off the last ball, skipper Greg Chappell ordered the bowler, his brother Trevor, to roll the final delivery along the ground. The New Zealand government howled with an indignation which sounded distinctly hollow in Wales.
The batsman on the receiving end, Brian McKechnie, was the full-back who kicked the decisive penalty when Andy Haden and Frank Oliver did their lineout dives at Cardiff in 1978 to cheat Wales of the rarest of wins.
Meanwhile, back at the ranch in the Vale of Glamorgan, the Welsh camp have been doing their manful best to dampen public expectation of another rare win come Saturday afternoon.
Forwards’ coach Robin McBryde gave a commendable impression of manning the barricades.
“Australia are the second best team in the world,” he said. “It will be a big challenge for us. We are trying to pump the tyres and make sure we are there for the match.” In saying so, he could be accused of over inflating the pressure per square inch on the Wallaby wheels.
They are no longer the second best team in the world but the third, behind England as well as the All Blacks.
Cheika will return to Cardiff with one arm in a sling, the result, it was claimed, of a collision in training. As proof that every cloud has a silver lining, the damage gave him a legitimate excuse to duck Steve Hansen’s invitation that the pair of coaches attempt to defrost trans-Tasman relations over a beer.
After complaining about the All Blacks going public with a still as yet unproved allegation that someone bugged their hotel in Sydney last month and following up with another complaint last week that his team hadn’t been invited for a post-match drink, Cheika will be relieved to seek refuge by the Taff.
Whatever the result, Saturday will reaffirm the fixture’s claim to be the most over-exposed of all. It will be the 17th such meeting in ten years and the Aussies have lost just once, in Cardiff eight years ago.