Duncan Casey: Wallabies restore some pride but they were too late to Lions party
FAMILAIR FACE: Australia's head coach Joe Schmidt and Lion's Dan Sheehan shakes hands after the match. Pic: INPHO/Dan Sheridan
I’m fond of nailing my colours to the mast with a strong opinion but equally, I’m happy to hold my hands up and accept defeat when I have been proven wrong. I had to do a bit of the latter on Saturday, as it became clear my prediction of another armchair ride for the Lions was way off the mark. I was actually sending WhatsApp messages to people prior to kick-off, bemoaning what I thought was an over-the-top effort from Sky’s pundits to hype up a contest that had been such a dud seven days earlier.
If anything, the pre-match hype didn’t do the ensuing 80 minutes justice at all. We were treated to a proper test match between two well-drilled, organised sides, each with its own version of talent and physicality. From Australia’s perspective, it turns out welcoming the likes of Will Skelton and Rob Valetini – weighing 150kg and 117kg respectively – back to the fray does, in fact, add a very destructive dimension to your game. Both men got the Wallabies enough front-foot ball in the first half to keep the Lions on their heels, struggling to impose themselves defensively.
You can see this in the lead up to the penultimate penalty before James Slipper’s try in the 23rd minute. Australia launch a lineout attack on the Lions' 22 and after a few phases of momentum around the corner, Skelton runs a good line tight to the ruck between Furlong and Porter. Furlong doesn’t roll and Australia get the advantage. Valetini picks and goes immediately from the base and once again wins the collision, stealing a couple of metres and getting another advantage, this time for Porter failing to roll.
There is nothing complicated about this but basic, around-the-corner rugby can become lethal if it is done effectively, with the right pace, the right shape, the right intensity and most importantly, the requisite amount of power. You don’t have to break a tackle to win a collision and force a penalty, and Skelton and Valetini are good at that. Both carried nine times in a short period – just 47 minutes for Skelton and 40 for Valetini – and would surely have caused more problems had they stayed on the field for longer. We can’t credit them alone with Australia’s revival, however.
This side was unrecognisable from the one that blundered its way through proceedings in Brisbane a week before. To put it bluntly, they didn’t play like they had all met for the first time 48 hours earlier and were making things up as they went. While Joe Schmidt’s fingerprints were noticeably absent from the first test, they were all over this one. His men delivered a well-executed aerial game plan, kicking smartly from nine and ten and winning the territorial battle in the first half.
They complemented this with the non-negotiables of any Schmidt strategy: aggression, cohesion, and relentless work off the ball. This put the Lions on the back foot, forcing them into errors that invariably come under sustained pressure, and starving them of possession where they wanted it. The lineout stats were illustrative of this, with Australia having 19 over the course of the game, compared to the Lions’ nine. This tells us the Aussies were happy to keep the ball on the field and back themselves to get the upper hand in the aerial ping pong, which they did.
It's right that we give Australia sufficient credit for delivering the performance they did, particularly given how far off the pace they were the first time out. Ultimately, however, they coughed up an 18-point lead and a position of utter control to the Lions who, to their credit, rallied exceptionally well to close the gap and steal the result at the death. The Irish contingent was central to all of this and while everyone played their part, some individuals stood out.
Though he had a quieter game with ball in hand with just seven carries, Jack Conan made 24 tackles and delivered a brilliant assist for Tom Curry’s first-half try. The focus is on Curry’s excellent step inside to finish but none of that happens without Conan. He pops out of a ruck, busts his ass to get around the corner on the short side and give an option to Gibson-Park before throwing a speculative pass over the top of Max Jorgensen to feed Cury on the touchline.
The deftness of hand, vision and above all else, confidence a player needs to pull off something like that should not be underestimated. That is a low percentage pass for a forward to make and it is testament to the self-assuredness Conan is playing with that he executed it so effortlessly. While he has recently carved out a niche for himself as the perfect finisher off the bench, it will be interesting to see how he fits into both Leinster and Ireland’s respective plans next season. He is just too good not to have on the field for as long as possible.
Andrew Porter chipped in with 16 tackles in just 54 minutes. This is a remarkable figure for a loosehead prop and underscores what a point of difference his work rate is. It’s one of many things that make him the world-class player that we are very lucky to have wearing a green jersey. The best Irish performer, once again, was Munster’s sole representative on this year’s tour, Tadhg Beirne. 12 tackles, 11 carries, the most metres made of any forward on the pitch, and the try that put the Lions within touching distance with 20 minutes to go.
Beirne’s journey from pizza delivery guy and Leinster reject to indisputably, one of the best players in the world, will make his autobiography an interesting one, I’m sure. There are few players who seem to push their ceiling higher and higher every year in their thirties, but he is doing it. With the mass exodus of experience from Munster in the off-season, his role as captain will become even more crucial than it was before.
The game ended on a controversial note, with much debate over whether Jac Morgan should have been penalised for his clear-out on substitute Carlo Tizzano. Various Aussie broadcasters were unapologetically certain it should have been a penalty and a disallowed try, and Schmidt clearly thought as much in his post-match interview, even if he presented it more diplomatically. Not only do I think it wasn’t a penalty, I actually think it’s an example of a textbook clear-out from Morgan that coaches everywhere would be delighted to see.
Tizzano gets into a good poaching position, with his head close to the ball carrier on the deck and his hands on the ball. It’s a virtually impossible position to get lower than as the attacking player arriving, but Morgan manages it. He arrives at pace but drops his height enough to get his head under Tizzano’s left collarbone. It’s difficult to generate enough force to finish the clear out properly from that angle, but Morgan does it and removes Tizzano as a threat.
The Stan Sports pundits actually displayed the text of the law that was supposedly infringed when they were reviewing it at full time: “A player must not make contact with an opponent above the line of the shoulders.” That sounds compelling, but this applies to both the tackle and the breakdown. This law isn’t designed to stop poachers with their heads pointing towards their own try lines, four inches from the ground, being immune to any attempt at a clean out.
We have seen clear-cut applications of this law at the breakdown, when players make obvious contact with the face or head of an opponent. Morgan’s action isn’t head-on-head, nor is it shoulder to the head. It is, as I said, a perfect demonstration of losing your body height and finding the correct window to take care of a well-positioned threat over the ball. Regardless, all the chat around Morgan’s clean-out is irrelevant because if you look at the still images of the split second before the incident, you can clearly see Tizzano entering the tackle from an offside position.
He does not retreat to come through the gate after James Ryan’s carry, as the law requires. At best, he approaches the tackle from a 45-degree angle, and when he makes his initial reach for the ball, he is actually standing on top of Ryan’s right foot, such is the lack of effort he has made to enter legally. So for all the dissection of the ins and outs of the laws around the breakdown, there has been no focus on the fact that Tizzano should not have been there at all, and was only in the position he was because he broke the rules.
Despite this, a large part of me was hoping the penalty would be given and Australia would win. Saturday’s game might have restored some faith in the tour to Australia but it came a week too late. The Wallabies will rue the lacklustre display they gave a week earlier in Brisbane and while pride is always at stake when you pull on your nation’s jersey, the third and final test in Sydney won’t carry the appeal it might have, had they got their house in order a little sooner.
