Super Rugby no longer able to prepare Test players

Wallabies coach Michael Cheika will be desperate to get his team firing against Ireland. Picture: AAP

Australia versus Ireland tomorrow night from 8pm at Suncorp Stadium in Brisbane.

The great Irish forward, Donal Lenihan, who captained Ireland and amassed 52 international caps, recently made a very good point when he said: “To be honest with you, a lot of people don’t place huge stock on what’s happening in Super Rugby anymore … there was a time when we’d all look down in awe at the quality of the rugby, but now there’s a feeling that it doesn’t prepare people for Test rugby.”

Well, this was before he would have seen the debacle last Saturday night between Queensland and NSW, or the Reds and the Waratahs as they are called.

This was essentially a game of touch football with no defence! How can a clash between our two Super Rugby heavyweight teams end in a scoreline of 52-41? And this in a week before the Wallabies play their first Test.

The Irish players would have been watching the footage and smiling. Jonathan Sexton, the on-field mastermind of the Irish back line, will already be plotting ways to rip into Nathan Grey’s defensive patterns. Grey is the Wallabies’ defence coach.

The feature of Ireland’s attacking play under coach Joe Schmidt is their ability to launch a “sucker” play and bamboozle the defence. Ireland did this brazenly to secure their Grand Slam victory at Twickenham last St Patrick’s Day.

They ran a short lineout play that featured their tight head Tadhg Furlong delivering the killer-pass to their Kiwi-born centre, Bundee Aki. The play was typical of Ireland’s ability to dream up strike plays and execute them with precision.

Grey will have his hands full in this series, particularly if he keeps shuffling our backs around like chess pieces in defence.

I’m sure Bernard Foley and Kurtley Beale will be pleading with Grey to let them defend in their own spots in the midfield. But we have further challenges.

For some time now, it’s been pretty obvious that Stephen Moore and Tatafu Polota-Nau would both be bowing out of Test rugby before the next World Cup. They have given outstanding and quality service. But it certainly seems odd that one or two young guns were not being groomed to take over from these good old boys, if they don’t mind me using that expression.

The best way to do that would have been to give the new boys the last 20 minutes at the end of each Test from about 2016 until now. That way, we would have grown a Test match hooker to ensure we were settled for the 2019 World Cup. That has not happened.

We now find ourselves scratching around trying to polish up a couple of rookie hookers in Brandon Paenga-Amosa and Folau Fainga’a.

I don’t know what Andrew Ready and Tolu Latu have done to be on the outer. I’ll most probably give Andrew Ready the kiss of death, but in my view he should have been there some time ago.

But make no mistake, our young hookers will be under incredible pressure against Ireland. Ireland have a very good lineout in attack and defence and they have the ability to scrum for penalties.

Our rookie hookers will feel the heat throwing into the lineout and at scrum time, as they strike for the ball. And if they don’t hold up, the Test series could be gone there and then. That is pressure. This could have been avoided.

I have to say I don’t agree with the argy-bargy that’s gone on about this fellow, Pete Samu. He’s now available for the Wallabies.

Michael Cheika is lucky to get him, because Samu was developed in New Zealand. It was the Crusaders who gave him the chance, when he’d been no more than a fringe player at the Waratahs.

The same can be said for Michael Alaalatoa, who couldn’t get a run in Australia. He, too, turned up at the Crusaders in 2016, the same time as Samu, and both players owe much of their rugby development to the Crusaders and New Zealand Rugby.

Now we want them back. Funny system.

From day one I have been a great supporter of Cheika. He ticked all the boxes to become coach of Australia. But he was cleaned out by England in the most recent three-Test series and now Ireland will be looking to inflict the same pain.

Like England were in 2016, Ireland are the best team in Europe and they have a very settled team. They’ve won 12 Test matches straight and they’ll be looking to make it 15 before they depart our shores at the end of June.

Cheika will be the first to concede that he’s had a bit of a dream run as Australian coach. Australian rugby is in such disarray, there’s been no real focus on the performance of the national coach. He and his coaching team now have their backs against the wall.

They have to attempt to cobble together a team that can grind out wins over an extremely professional and thoroughly prepared Ireland.

Make no mistake about it, Ireland are the real deal. They tour well and the Wallabies will have to perform at their capacity to compete with the Grand Slam champions. And if Michael Cheika wants to preserve his hard-fought reputation, and it’s a good one, he’ll need results here. The game in this country needs some good news. I’m hopeful the coach has it in him to deliver that news.

Meanwhile, in South Africa, a different story is being played out with the man most-responsible for the problems we now face on the playing front in Australian rugby, Eddie Jones. It was Eddie Jones who began this absurd spectator-killer approach towards rugby called pick-and-drive.

As I have previously written, we have no chance of getting back to the top of world rugby if we persist with this pick-and-drive nonsense, but that’s for another day.

This was the man, remember, who was in charge of the Queensland side in 2007 when they were thumped 92-3 by the Bulls in South Africa.

Well, Eddie is now coach of England and is back in South Africa for a three-Test series. And he too has a Test match tomorrow against the Springboks.

His side are coming off a 60-point thrashing by the Barbarians.

The jungle drums are beating in South Africa and Eddie Jones is under the pump.

Now, admittedly, the Springboks have their own issues with a new coach and all sorts of stupid quota systems, but they’ll smell blood in the water and they’ll be looking to tear into the England side in this series.

Yet I read with some amazement recently that Rugby Australia was considering replacing Michael Cheika with Eddie Jones. Someone is kidding.

What has happened is that when Jones took over England, he kept on saying he could improve the team by 30 per cent across the board. His methods of doing so created carnage, with players falling like flies at every England camp.

The club owners pay the players, so when Eddie breaks the player, it’s the clubs who suffer. He can just pick another player from another club to replace the one he’s “busted”.

It’s a running joke with the club coaches in England. Eddie is trying to squeeze 30 per cent more from England players and he’s breaking 30 per cent of the players along the way. This is what led to the Queensland crashing in 2007 against the Bulls, when the Reds took the wooden spoon.

Back then, he was looking to improve the Reds by 25 per cent across the board and he smashed up the squad with suicide training methods.

He lost the change room; he lost the support of the rugby public in Queensland; he was only one year into a three-year deal when he was forced to stand down in 2007.

And now Eddie Jones is taking another smashed-up outfit, this time England, to South Africa. Meanwhile, Bruce Craig, the billionaire owner of Bath, has been labelled by Eddie as the Donald Trump of rugby, as he escalates his feud with the owner of this prestigious club.

Bruce Craig ignited the hostilities last week by criticising Jones’s methods after 15 players, including five from his club, had sustained training injuries in the England camp.

The discord continued upon England’s arrival in Durban last Sunday for the three-Test series, when Jones responded to Craig’s view that recent remarks Jones had made were “cynical and inappropriate”.

Eddie Jones responded: “Bruce Craig sounds like the Donald Trump of rugby — he has the same hairstyle … everything we do is about training to get better. It’s not about satisfying some bloke who’s got plenty of money in Bath and thinks he knows everything about rugby. I find it a bit tedious.”

Well, this is interesting for Eddie, because England rugby supporters and his players are starting to find things more than a bit tedious.

This may be Queensland 2007 revisited. Wherever we turn, tomorrow is a fairly big day in world rugby for the coaches as well as the players, to say nothing of the poor long-suffering spectators and supporters.

Alan Jones is a former Wallabies coach and is host of the Alan Jones Breakfast Show on 2GB and the Macquarie radio network and is host of Jones & Co on Sky News at 8pm on Tuesdays