Bernard Foley on how he used his Wallabies axing as a chance to improve his game
BERNARD Foley had every reason to feel hard done by when he was ditched as the Wallabies chief playmaker. But rather than sulking, the 29-year-old is coming back stronger.
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BERNARD Foley had every reason to feel hard done by when he was dropped after the Wallabies’ second Bledisloe Cup defeat in August.
By his own standards, he hadn’t played at his absolute best in the early internationals, but he certainly wasn’t alone.
There were massive problems all through the team after the Wallabies lost twice in a row to Ireland then twice more to the All Blacks.
The forwards were being pummelled and the set pieces were crumbling under pressure while the backs were struggling to score tries and missing too many tackles.
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Drastic changes were needed and so Foley copped it, unceremoniously ditched from his prized role as chief playmaker for a new experimental combination of Kurtley Beale and Matt Toomua.
He was bitterly disappointed and was never really given a clear explanation of what he’d done wrong so was left to figure it out himself.
Instead of sulking at being singled out, Foley took a cold hard look at every aspect of his game and did find areas he wanted to improve so went to work fixing them.
“I definitely had time to reflect on my own game and do things a bit differently,” he said.
“What I saw as weakness, I’ve tried to work on those.
“So I see this as having been a positive opportunity to get better.”
The new Beale-Toomua partnership never really got going so Cheika cut his losses after three matches and called Foley back as starting five-eighth, partly because he was so impressed with the way he handled his demotion.
“He didn’t sook,” Cheika said. “He got back into training with the other players and made sure he tried to improve himself.”
Cheika is taking a gamble by bringing back Foley but it’s a calculated one.
The 29-year-old is renowned for keeping his cool under pressure and delivering in the big matches. And this weekend’s clash with the Pumas is definitely a big one for a lot of people, especially Cheika, whose future in the job will come under intense pressure if the Wallabies lose again.
After three weeks on the bench, Foley will have to hit the ground running if he’s to spare the Wallabies from another defeat. They already lost to the Pumas at home three weeks ago and face an even tougher task turning the tables in South America.
His first job is to stop the backs from squandering so many tryscoring opportunities. If he gets that right, he reckons the Wallabies could rack up a huge score.
“We’ve definitely spoken a lot about our inability to score tries,” Foley said.
“We’ve given ourselves plenty of opportunities but we probably just don’t have that killer instinct at the moment so we’ve really made that a target for this week.”
“I’m excited for what this team can do because there’s so many great players so much potential so we’ve just got to crack it and hopefully the floodgates will open.”
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