There\u2019s still a lot of rugby to be played before the next World Cup in Australia and, at present, you\u2019d have to say that coach Rassie Erasmus will have to depend on his ageing warriors if he is to pull off an unprecedented hat-trick of World Cup wins. However, even when Erasmus opened the bomb doors after about 45 minutes to parachute in his celebrated bomb squad, the Wallabies still managed to put the Boks under pressure, getting the ball wide \u2013 doing so (in the second half anyway) with fewer handling errors than the All Blacks during their four-test series against the South Africans.<\/p>\n
The Wallabies also held their own at the scrum and won the lineout duel. The bomb squad changed matters \u2013 a Wallaby eight that once shunted the Boks back suddenly found itself in the same reverse gear as the All Blacks\u2019 scrum when hooker Malcolm Marx, props Ox Nche and Wilco Louw, lock Lood de Jager and No 8 Jasper Wiese came on in a mass substitution, along with first-choice halfback pairing Morne van den Berg and first-five Sacha Fienberg-Mngomezulu.<\/p>\n
Finally \u2013 and most importantly \u2013 the Australians won the kicking contest with the Boks, a skill at which the All Blacks were decidedly lacking in the Greatest Rivalry tour. In terms of recoverable kicks, the Boks put up eight high balls or short kicks, recovering five. The Wallabies put up seven and recovered five. The stats alone don\u2019t reveal the significance of the Australian regathering. Their kick retrievals led to three tries with their back three \u2013 Joseph Aukuso-Sua\u2019ali\u2019i, Tom Wright and Max Jorgensen \u2013 all prominent.<\/p>\n
Sua\u2019ali\u2019i, normally a centre or fullback, was shifted to the wing by coach Les Kiss in a clever move designed to take advantage of his aerial skills. His leap for a high ball rebounded, a bit luckily, straight into the hands of Lennie Ikitau, who scored. Wright\u2019s delicate grubber through the Boks defence set Jorgensen away, leading to a prolonged assault and Ben Donaldson\u2019s try just before halftime. Then Jorgensen\u2019s terrific take of a Ryan Lonergan high ball created the momentum and field position for a Wallaby siege that eventually ended with a try to skipper Harry Wilson. South Africa defended desperately but those three kick receipts were ample evidence of the game-breaking nature of retrievable kicks in today\u2019s defence-heavy game.<\/p>\n
After 63 minutes and a runaway Jorgensen try, the Wallabies led 42-17 and were only a few minutes away from the manic ending to this test match that stamps it as one of the oddest of all time. What should have been a comfortable Wallaby win turned into near farce.<\/p>\n
What followed was two disallowed tries and four Wallaby yellow cards, all brandished within seven minutes. Australia were down to 11 men at one stage. A technology glitch saw Italian referee Andrea Piardi ludicrously forced to use a cellphone to receive TMO\u2019s advice, colouring the end of the match with equal shades of absurdity and horror.<\/p>\n
The last 10 minutes of the test took almost 20 minutes with all those stoppages and TMO reviews and, unfortunately, Piardi lost control of the end of the match \u2013 not so much in a discipline sense, but offences that previously earned penalties were overlooked in the messy maelstrom of this finish. Rugby has to do something about this. The yellow cards were mostly legitimate (though Sua\u2019ali\u2019i\u2019s was a mystery), but 15 men against 11 is just stupid \u2013 though somehow it all managed to be exciting as the Boks almost clawed back the 25-point deficit before running out of time.<\/p>\n
The All Blacks\u2019 brains trust will have noted, in particular, the match-winning qualities of regathered kicks from the test. The Wallabies also demonstrated that if the forwards make metres in close (something else the All Blacks struggled to do against the Boks), and move the rucks and mauls forward, the passes tend to stick when going wide.<\/p>\n
This win will invest the Australians with all sorts of confidence and, with the All Blacks\u2019 kicking game now a prolonged weakness, the Wallabies have a weapon. A few weeks ago, the Bledisloe Cup looked a foregone conclusion. The Wallabies are now undefeated after six tests. Game on. <\/p>\n