Wallabies hope to win battle of the boot

The Wallabies face a tough tactical call after Ireland turned their aerial advantage into a disadvantage.

Wallabies five-eighth Bernard Foley at Leichhardt Oval in Sydney yesterday in front on images of Balmain Tigers Test rugby league players

Risk-reward … that’s essentially what international rugby comes down to, finding the precise balance of one for the other.

Yet rarely are the stakes as cutthroat as they are in Saturday’s deciding third Test at Allianz Stadium, with Australia coming to realise that their most potent attacking weapon from the first Test in Brisbane, the crosskick to Israel Folau and Dane Haylett-Petty, was turned entirely on his head by Ireland during last Saturday’s second Test in Melbourne.

Instead of giving the Wallabies easy access to the wide open spaces behind the Irish defensive line, their shock weapon was effectively defused by the men in green at AAMI Park and appropriated into Ireland’s systems and structures where it was used to fed their greatest strength — their ability to grind through the phases remorselessly until eventually the Wallabies’ line cracked.

Michael Cheika admitted after the first Test win that the ploy went against his broad coaching philosophy. When the Waratahs won the Super Rugby side in 2014 under him, they were, predictably, the team that kicked the least and it would have to be said that the Wallabies have essentially stayed true to it. But, perversely, they will go to their kicking game again on Saturday. They admitted as much yesterday.

Said Haylett-Petty: “We know that’s a strength of ours so we’ll definitely be sticking with that. Probably the biggest thing is executing. We were pretty poor on the weekend in terms of the execution and we just ended up giving them the ball back, which is exactly what they wanted. They just had so much ball.”

Said Bernard Foley, the Wallabies playmaker and the man who, with Kurtley Beale, will be putting up the kicks: “We don’t want to be handing over the ball to them. That’s where it all comes into play about being clinical with our execution, which is paramount as well.”

So it means doing it better, doing it more craftily. And sometimes, perhaps, shaping to do it and then doing something else in its place. There does, after all, seem to be a fixation with exploiting Folau’s aerial ability. For most of Folau’s 64 Tests, it was his left-arm fend and right foot step that the Wallabies were seeking to use. Now suddenly, on the strength of the Brisbane Test and a couple of mighty leaps in Super Rugby, he is being viewed as rugby’s answer to Roy Cazaly. Does he not have other attributes?

Certainly the Wallabies attack coach Steve Larkham hinted at that when he noted that Ireland were essentially providing two “escorts” for Folau every time he presented himself out wide for the crosskick. That was how Ireland prevented him from getting his hands the ball in Melbourne and Larkham correctly raised the question of whether, in effectively double-teaming the Wallabies fullback, Ireland were leaving themselves open to other attacking ploys. Grubbers, chip kicks.

If everyone is alert to the fact that they are about to be deployed, they can be every bit as dangerous as Folau’s wing-walking. Or, as a tactical variation, why not go back to the old Cheika formula of keeping ball in hand and relying on physicality and skill to bring the Irish undone?

It’s Foley’s job to be on top of that at Allianz Stadium. Certainly, his option-taking in Melbourne was not the best, as former Irish five-eighth Tony Ward was quick to point out in the Irish Independent, as he contrasted Foley’s performance at AAMI Park to that of Irish playmaker Johnny Sexton. “This was one of his great games in green whereby he oozed leadership and control,” wrote Ward of Sexton. “He was everything his opposite number wasn’t.”

Ouch! That may be true on one level but it utterly fails to take into account both the amount and the quality of the possession that passed through their two sets of hands. Sexton not only was given the ball going forward but usually going forward to further rob the Wallabies of room in which to manoeuvre. Small wonder he shone. Small wonder Foley, who operated with scraps of ball hastily flung his way, did not.

Still, all the tactical cards have been laid on the table and while they will be shuffled a bit by Cheika and Irish coach Joe Schmidt, essentially the teams have to play the hand in front of them. And that appeals to Foley and the competitor inside him.

“Exactly right,” said Foley. “There’s that familiarity now among the side following the past two games and the third game, while there will be changes, there’s also just trying to do what you have been doing — but better. I think it’s really exciting where it’s one match and the winner takes all.”

But even if he does put up the pinpoint kicks that Folau feasted on at Suncorp Stadium, Foley does not want to see a repeat of the incident in the All Blacks-France Test that left Beauden Barrett concussed and unlikely to play in the third Test.

An all-Australian World Rugby committee overruled the red card that Australian referee Angus Gardner handed out to France’s Benjamin Fall, in part because All Black Anton Lienert-Brown had contributed to causing Barrett’s spectacular fall by pushing the French fullback into a position where he took out his teammate’s legs. Foley queried whether Lienert-Brown might have been investigated.

“Once you’re up there, you’re in a vulnerable position,” he said. “Two guys are bustling for the ball and then he gets bumped and falls underneath and takes the legs out (of the player in the air). Who’s actually at fault? Does Leinert-Brown have a role to actually answer for because the player was injured?”

That would be a first. A player sanctioned for accidentally taking out a teammate.