Maroons show the way for the Woeful Wallabies

How to convince the Wallabies of how to play when facing the All Blacks? That is the question coach Dave Rennie keeps asking himself.

The Maroons’ State of Origin fightback offered a lesson for the Wallabies

How to convince the Wallabies of how they need to play when facing the All Blacks? That is the question coach Dave Rennie keeps asking himself. He could dredge up some famous Tests of the past. Or he could look much closer to hand … to the State of Origin series.

The Wallabies all tuned in to the Origin series at their Hunter Valley training base on Wednesday night, with Harry Wilson keeping a low profile. He has played all of his senior football with the Queensland Reds and there is no prouder wearer of the maroon jumper. But at Origin time, he reverts to the boy who grew up in Gunnedah and was coached by Tim Gavin. But more on Mr Wilson in just a moment.

Despite not having “a horse in the race”, New Zealander Rennie was also a fixated viewer and quickly recognised the lesson his team could learn from Wayne Bennett’s Queenslanders.

“I loved the game,” Rennie said. “What I loved about it was Queensland found themselves down and under pressure, and they fought their way back into it, as conversely to what we tried to do last week, which was try to create a few miracles and lacked patience. So there’s a good lesson in there for us as well.”

The Wallabies conceded an early try to the All Blacks in the pivotal third Test in Sydney last weekend on the back of Filipo Daugunu’s brain explosion when he tackled Caleb Clarke in the air. Twice in the next 10 minutes, they could have conceded further tries and were only saved by rare inattention to detail by the Kiwis.

Yet still they didn’t learn their lesson and by halftime the contest was as good as over, with the All Blacks leading 26-0. In the end they were humiliated 43-5, the heaviest defeat in 117 years of trans-Tasman rugby.

“As we showed in Wellington (the First Test which ended in a 16-16 draw), if you can hang on to the ball you can apply a bit of pressure. Off counter-attack and turnover pill, that can hurt you and so really in Wellington we were accurate in out tackles and accurate in handling and we put a lot of kick pressure on,” Rennie explained.

“We need to be at our best to knock the All Blacks over and we need to play and apply pressure to them so that they are not at their best. That’s what we saw in Wellington and that’s what we need to see this weekend.”

But not until Bennett’s Queenslanders came out after halftime, 10-0 down and turned around a contest that seemingly was headed in entirely the opposite direction — eventually winning 18-14 — did Rennie have a ready example to hold up to his players.

Certainly the lesson was pounded home, even to the New South Welshman in the Queensland rugby side.

“Just the way Queensland, even when they were down, they were very calm and didn’t get too flustered and then in the second half they … slowly grinded and grinded until they got points on the board,” Wilson said

“We don’t want to be in those positions early in games when we’re down by a fair few points, but you need something to look on if we are down to know that if we can just get back to playing the right footy and playing their end and building pressure, it becomes very beneficial for us.”

Rugby is considering introducing a State of the Union contest next season and Wilson believes he would like to give it a go. “I don’t think I will break out in a rash if I pull the NSW jersey on,” he said.