Andrew Slack: Strong Brumbies a boost for Wallabies

AN era or so ago, the belief was that if Queensland rugby was strong, Australian rugby was strong.

Nic White

AN era or so ago, the belief was that if Queensland rugby was strong, Australian rugby was strong.

Whether any of the provinces can be apportioned blame for the Wallabies' inconsistent results in big matches over recent seasons is a matter for debate, but should Ewen McKenzie's time coincide with a resurgence of the national side, it may be that the Canberra connection will argue Australian rugby is strong when Brumbies rugby is strong.

Perhaps they'd be right.

Certainly, if the Reds and the Brumbies are both in a good place simultaneously, the portents for the Wallabies are promising.

A championship title and three successive finals campaigns tells us the Reds have been doing something right, and in the space of not much more than 18 months the Brumbies have turned from pretenders to proven performers.

Last year, in a season where many predicted them to be wooden spoon contenders, it was only a wayward kick that cost them a finals spot. Winning the Australian conference this year and reaching the tournament decider against the defending titleholders last night was proof this is a team of some ability.

The question as the first game of the Rugby Championship beckons in a fortnight, is whether what happens in Super Rugby translates as something meaningful to the international arena.

12 of the Brumbies grand final starting XV are in the 40-man Wallabies squad and while there is expectation that the likes of Nic White, Matt Toomua and Jesse Mogg will attempt to turn their formidable reputations on the provincial stage into ones that have them feared at international level, the fact is that this can neither be proven nor disproven by how they perform in Brumbies colours.

When the Brumbies were most recently the key cogs in a winning Wallaby outfit was when George Gregan, Stephen Larkham and Joe Roff were strutting their stuff, and as promising as White, Toomua and Mogg may be, you could hardly yet put them in the same category as that esteemed trio.

So while the Brumbies have given us something to be encouraged about in terms of the depth they might provide to our Test team, we won't have a real idea of whether a strong Wallaby team equates to a strong Brumbies team until the end of this year's Grand Slam tour, and maybe not even until the three-Test series against the French is done and dusted next season.

Having successful Super 15 teams is better than the alternative, but ultimately it doesn't guarantee international success.

This year's Super Rugby finals series provided a reasonably rare statistic. Two teams from each of the three nations made up the six playoff sides. On the surface, that suggests the three nations are pretty evenly matched, and when you pick your best 23 man squads from New Zealand, South Africa and Australia, there probably wouldn't be much difference between the talent assembled.

Dig a bit deeper though, and I'm not sure Australia's second, third and fourth string side would be within sniffing distance of the All Blacks equivalent. Their depth is incredible. As the Brumbies have shown, ours has the potential to improve.

No longer can Australian rugby afford to have just one team providing most of the personnel for the Wallabies  having at least a couple of our five teams contending at finals time is what's required to make us feel good about our chances when the big show comes to town.

The form of the Brumbies and the Reds combined with an improved year from the Waratahs is what would give McKenzie more cause for optimism than just one side playing the house down.

The trick now is for the Australian selectors to make the right choices regardless of which Super 15 team they play for. In the past few seasons it could be argued the selectors have let Australian rugby down more than the players.