David Pocock ruled out for series

The Wallabies have to find a way to beat a resurgent England without their one truly world-class forward.

David Pocock makes a break at Suncorp Stadium.

The grand experiment is over, at least for the moment, and the Wallabies now have to find a way to beat a resurgent England without their one truly world-class forward, number eight David Pocock.

Pocock’s backrow combination with Michael Hooper had been an eye-opener in world rugby, with even the All Blacks initially having trouble combating the presence of two sevens in the tackle area. It helped sweep Australia into the final of the World Cup and make Pocock a contender for Inter­national Player of the Year.

But a fractured eye socket from Saturday’s first Test against ­England has put Pocock out for the remainder of the series and also impacted the Brumbies’ drive for the Super Rugby playoffs. The Wallabies almost certainly will now have to look at more orthodox backrow formations.

True, Michael Cheika did admit he could continue with a like-for-like scenario by bringing in Liam Gill to replace Pocock. But the reality is that it’s not like-for-like at all.

Gill, while arguably the most complete number seven in the country, capable of winning more turnovers than anyone else in Super Rugby but also linking with the attack and making tackles, is only 100kg. Pocock is 115kg, and even he is light by international number eight standards, with Billy Vunipola packing 126kg into the back of the England scrum.

So that opens the door to specialist number eights like ­Wycliff Palu or Ben McCalman, who was one of the Wallabies’ unsung heroes of the World Cup campaign, unless he wants to go radically left field and select the Reds’ Leroy Houston. Cheika also mentioned Melbourne Rebels flanker Sean McMahon as a possibility but he too is only 101kg and probably best suited to coming off the bench, as he did in Brisbane.

Arguably the one upside of ­Pocock’s injury is that Cheika had to make changes to the way the backrow performed, with Eng­land’s James Haskell and Maro Itoje leading the way to win ­penalties 15-8 and turnovers 12-11. Almost certainly the personnel wouldn’t have changed but the manner in which they played might have, with Hooper and ­fellow flanker Scott Fardy being used quite wide in attack.

“Obviously we’ll miss the skills he brings to the game and that ­dynamic combination we have in the backrow with himself, Michael and Scott,” said Cheika of Pocock. “We’ll probably create a different type of combination or we could go for like. Once we look at the game again we’ll figure that out.”

Australia’s problems don’t end there. Lineout caller Rob Simmons injured his back in a driving maul and gingerly made his way to the plane for the trip to Melbourne, where next Saturday’s second Test will be staged at AAMI Park. James Horwill and Dean Mumm were on the reserves bench as cover for the second-row but Cheika stressed that he had kept a number of locks attached to the squad — including Adam Coleman and Will Skelton — that he intends to give experience to during this series.

But the Wallabies coach indicated he would only be doing finetuning to the selection of the side.

“Maybe the odd tweak here and there,” he said. “I won’t say I’m happy because you feel sick when you lose a Test … but there are a lot of things I thought went well.”

Indeed, in terms of the stats, one could be forgiven that Australia dominated: passes 194-65, ­carries 134-67, defenders beaten 22-8, offloads 13-3. But, really, that only shows the veracity of the old saying about lies, damned lies and statistics. The scrum, for example, finished with Australia winning four feeds to one, with each side losing one apiece, but the perception — and perhaps the reality as well — was that England finished significantly on top.

“I think we have to sort out a couple of things around the perception of that,” Cheika said. “I mean, Scott Sio being sent to the sin bin after one penalty, there’s obviously a perception matter. We’ve got to try to rectify that by not allowing him to go down at all. And we’ll work on that.”

Debutants Dane Haylett-Petty on the wing, Samu Kerevi in the centres and Rory Arnold at lock all performed well at times in their first Test, with Haylett-Petty in particular looking to have launched a long Test career. The usual comment of debutants is that Test football is so much faster than provincial level but Haylett-Petty thought the opposite, that Super Rugby is played at a faster pace than Saturday’s international. But he was astute enough to realise that England slowed the game down.