New-look Wallabies have All Blacks operating in the dark

The All Blacks are operating in the dark when it comes to deciphering what tactics the Wallabies will throw at them.

Matt Toomua says Super Rugby AU has taught the Wallabies to deal with uncertainty Picture: Getty Images

The All Blacks are operating in the dark as they attempt to establish what threats they face in the opening Bledisloe Cup Test against Australia in Wellington on Sunday, says Wallabies utility back Matt Toomua.

The New Zealanders on a 23-game, 19-year winning streak on home soil against the Wallabies and could be forgiven for sleeping soundly despite their lack of useful reconnaissance on the opposition in the build-up to the world’s first Test match since the COVID-19 lockdown.

History strongly suggests the All Blacks are not prone to sloppy preparations and the unknown quantity of the Wallabies will be of concern to them, especially with more than a third of the 44-man Australian squad being uncapped and an entirely new coaching staff in place under Dave Rennie.

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The Wallabies, to be sure, are no better off. The All Blacks have not played in almost a year, their galling play-off for the bronze medal against Wales at the World Cup, and by the time Sunday rolls around it will be 400 days precisely since they last performed the haka on NZ soil, for their warm-up Test against Tonga.

The July Tests weren’t played this year – on both sides of the ditch – because of the global pandemic so, aside from the North-South trial played in early September, the Wallabies have little that is current to work off themselves, aside from the seriously scary matches played as part of NZ’s domestic Super Rugby Aotearoa competition.

“It’s a little hard to analyse them because they haven’t played a game,” said Toomua on Tuesday. “We’ve taken clips from our two games last year and their last game against England (in the World Cup semi-final, which the All Blacks lost 19-7). Teams that did really well against them. We’ve used that as a guide and also the North v South is a nice game to get a bit of context.

“But I think they will be in the same boat as well, maybe even more so because we’ve got a completely new coaching staff. You know the old cliche about focusing on ourselves … well, we probably don’t have a choice but to focus on ourselves this week because there is not much footy around.”

One of the Bledisloe Cup matches played last year produced not just a Wallabies win but arguably the peak performance of the Michael Cheika era, a stunning 47-26 victory over the All Blacks in Perth. And while normal transmission was resumed the following week at Eden Park where New Zealand weathered an early Australian storm to win 36-0, the triumph at Optus Stadium did provide all the many “newbies” in the Wallaby ranks with a valuable checklist of what to do – and not do – against the Kiwis.

“Probably the speed of our ball and, once again, our contact,” said Toomua. “The speed of our ball was very good and we managed to limit our turnovers. Typically with Australian teams, we always have that endeavour to play an expansive, exciting game but sometimes we don’t back it up with execution. But that night you could tell that we weren’t giving them any free shots. So that helped us.”

Against Cheika-coached sides, the All Blacks knew they could commit heavily to defence because the Wallabies rarely had permission to kick the ball. Inevitably, they would make a mistake and the All Blacks would score off their counter-attack.

But with Rennie as the new Australian coach, the Wallabies tactics aren’t so easy to discern. While historically his sides have always been ferocious at the breakdown, they also kick to good effect. The new coach hasn’t had sufficient time with the team to develop the full game he wants to play but all indications are the Wallabies on Sunday will be the least one-dimensional they have been in years.

Toomua quipped that the team was still in its honeymoon phase with the new coach, although he suspected that even though the starting side for Sunday wouldn’t be confirmed until Friday, the players weren’t stupid and would quickly work it out for themselves whether they had been selected or not.

“It is still very much early days,” he said. “We are almost in a honeymoon period. He hasn’t dropped me yet, he hasn’t dropped any of us yet, we haven’t had to experience too much stress in that sense.”

That will all change when the side is named and comes out of quarantine to makes its way to Wellington on Saturday, having been forced to hold its captain’s run while in isolation in Christchurch. But after a season in which Toomua’s Melbourne Rebels side spent 79 days on the road for the Super Rugby AU, the Australians have become unfazed by last-minute glitches.

“Super Rugby AU gave us a good taste of that. By the end of Super Rugby, we were happy that it was only an hour and a half, two hours’ drive to the game, whereas in most years (that) would be seen as obscene.”