In March 2012, Wales were soaring. Seven months previously, they were a single point and a controversially red-carded captain away from making the World Cup final. It wasn’t to be, but not even losing in the third place play-off to Australia could douse Welsh hopes. Now they were Grand Slam champions. The pain and the agony the players had suffered to reach this point was justified. Then, over the horizon, came the Wallabies.
A three-test series in Australia would serve two purposes. At least one win would be payback for that World Cup loss, as well as sending out a message to the rest of the world that Wales were the real deal.
Six consecutive losses later, and the whole of Wales is wondering where it went so horribly wrong.
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THE RETURN OF THE KING HIT: AN ALL BLACKS PR STORY
Last Saturday, the game was as good as over on 48 minutes, when Wales wing Alex Cuthbert failed to haul down second row Luke Romano for the All Blacks’ third and final try.
In truth, it wasn’t the bloodbath many had predicted. If Wales’s main task was to concede under 40 points (a tough proposition in light of previous results), then there is an ounce of satisfaction to be taken with the heavy dose of reality that shows just how low they currently sit in the pecking order.
Wales were once again denied an admittedly undeserved shot at glory in the Autumn series when Kiwi hooker Andrew Hore got away with what the Antipodeans call a ‘king hit’ (a knockout strike delivered without warning) on Bradley Davies. The calls that followed for Television Match Officials’ remit to be extended to such incidents of foul play grow stronger. Hindsight punishment of Hore will mean little to the Welsh team when, in a world of ideal officiating, it could have been the difference between winning and losing.
It wasn’t just British sports columnists crying foul, with newspapers in New Zealand recognising the implications of Hore’s dirty act. The Dominion Post said: “It is an embarrassing situation for the New Zealand Rugby Union, with chief executive Steve Tew spending much of the past three weeks in Europe extolling the virtues of the All Blacks’ brand.” The New Zealand Herald’s tuppence worth on the matter was equally indignant: “Andrew Hore’s act of stupidity will have confirmed in every Northern Hemisphere mind the long-held notion of the All Blacks as perennial thugs.” The Herald‘s sports writer, Chris Rattue, famed for calling Wales “the village idiots” of world rugby, lamented that “there doesn’t seem to be any concern for Davies’s health”.
One of the best commentators of the game, former England hooker Brian Moore, called it a “cowardly forearm”. When your on-field actions are being condemned by a man who, in his playing days, knew his way around a headbutt or two, you know you’re in trouble.
If this all sounds a little familiar –and if you haven’t read it, you really should– here’s an article written by Moore two years ago for the Telegraph on a similar All Black-related issue.
It was only in February that Bradley Davies was handed a seven-week ban for a dangerous tackle on Ireland’s Donnacha Ryan. Davies is well-loved by Cardiff Blues fans for his abrasive style of play, but that has never extended to such violent acts as the one committed by Hore (himself usually a disciplined player).
While I would rarely consider the All Blacks “perennial thugs” –after all, you don’t get to play for the greatest team in the world without having near superhuman levels of discipline– they’ve once again shown that when they get it wrong, they get it seriously wrong.
Hore’s ban was reduced from eight weeks to a pitiful five; further proof that nothing sticks to these men in black.
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Should Wales beat the Wallabies, it will feel as if the last seven months of relentless defeat had never happened. I’m reluctant to enter the dangerous territory wherein I dare suggest “this might just be Wales’s day”. There’s only so many times a man can say that before the conviction of his words begin to falter. Neither should we read too much into the Wallabies’ injury woes (although Wales have many themselves), since they’ve had those on previous occasions and Wales have still managed to fluff it.
Those two tries late on against the All Blacks by Cuthbert and Scott Williams (with an astounding 13-man lineout, no less!) put a gloss on an otherwise standard result against New Zealand. That being so, the superficiality of those scores matters little if it serves to give the Welsh players a crucial psychological boost ahead of Saturday.
It was said that last Saturday was the only time Wales have drawn on points with New Zealand in a second half of rugby. A surprising statistic that, again, might mean little in terms of the final result, but offers more than a shred of optimism to a nation running low on that particular fuel.
Prop Scott Andrews did himself no disservice when called upon to replace the injured Aaron Jarvis not long after the first whistle had blown, and centre Jonathan Davies was mightily impressive on his return to action. Liam Williams made the most of his call-up with some great tackles (we’ll forget the howler on fullback Israel Dagg). Aaron Shingler, who has impressed me for some time, continues to show that he was born to play test rugby.
There was a lot of Welsh naivety too, which we might expect from a youthful team (or maybe not, given its experience), but for now we should focus on the good points. After all, they are going to need to amplify them against a Wallabies side that is proving itself to be dangerously unpredictable. Having been dispatched 33-6 in France, they followed that entrée of humble pie with a main course of English heartbreak, beating the spirited Poms 20-16; this with a side order of a 22-19 near-loss to the Azzurri. (Enough food analogies?)
Wales want to upset the dessert cart. Wales need to upset the dessert cart.
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THE WAGGA EFFECT
From grassroots to professional rugby, the Australian skill levels are second to none. I say this from personal experience. In 2009, a friend and I played a season of rugby with a team in the New South Wales Country league. The town we lived in was small and rural, which made home games all the more eventful when the locals rallied around the team.
The talent that ran through each ‘grade’ was on a different level altogether from what we have in Britain. Players from the first grade were often selected for the NSW Country invitational side (who, combined with Queensland Country, will face the British Lions on their tour to Australia next year). I sometimes wondered: how did so many good players emerge from such a small place? Then I heard about the “Wagga Effect”.
The small city of Wagga Wagga, New South Wales, is only a few hours’ drive from where we lived. In fact, we had stopped there while driving from Melbourne towards our final destination, and the only thing of note we saw there in that brief period was an army base. We didn’t know at the time that this place –in the British sense, more of a town than a city– had produced an extraordinary number of sportspeople. Intriguingly, these athletes aren’t concentrated in one or two sports, but a broad array: rugby league, athletics, golf, cricket, AFL, even something really cool I haven’t heard of called ‘dancesport’.
Such is the disproportion of athletes coming from the diminutive Wagga Wagga that it led the Australian Institute of Sport to coin the term “Wagga Effect”. The theory goes that children in the Australian country towns and cities are more likely to be exposed, even fast-tracked, to higher levels of various sports. This might have something to do with the traditional concept of the arrogant Aussie: sheer confidence in their own ability. When you’re being tested against full-grown adults as a youngster, you need to develop a hardened exterior in order to hold your own.
Two Wagga Wagga products of the rugby union world are Nathans Hines and Sharpe, both world-class second rows (the former for Scotland and the Lions; the latter, more straightforwardly, Australia). Sharpe, having been convinced by Wallabies coach Robbie Deans not to retire just yet, will captain his team against Wales on Saturday.
Without doubt, the rainless climate has something to do with their outdoorsy inclinations too, which would explain why Aussies are such all-rounders when it comes to sport. Who remembers Australian prop Matt Dunning’s remarkable drop goal against the Chiefs in 2003, when even he couldn’t believe what he’d done?
There is a particular training session I recall from those outback days, when every member of the team competed to see who could kick the furthest successful drop goal. There wasn’t a single person incapable of making a good strike. I asked one of my teammates how, to a man, they were all so good at kicking the ball? “When you grow up on a farm, all you do is kick the ball up in the air and chase it.”
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WHAT AUSTRALIA IS SAYING
“[Wales are] going to throw everything at us – they’ve had some pretty tough losses so we’re getting them at a desperate time. It’s going to be our hardest game of the tour. If we recognise that, then take the intensity we did against the Italians in the first 20 minutes, it’s going to make for a great game.”
– Adam Ashley-Cooper, Wallabies utility back
”I had my first starting Test in the World Cup in ’07 [against Wales] and had other sorts of meaningful games. Just the Welsh people. They’re a good bunch of boys you play against, you rip in and have a beer afterwards. It is a bit of a step back into old school, how it used to be. It is a fitting and nice place to do it, providing I get on the field.”
– Berrick Barnes, Wallabies fly-half, ahead of his 50th cap on Saturday
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Side note: Am I the only who thinks that Australia’s revelation on the wing, Nick Cummins, bears more than a passing resemblance to the creepy recurring contestant from Never Mind the Buzzcocks?
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Back to that glorious day in March, and Alex Cuthbert’s try had sealed the Grand Slam for Wales against the French. In the aftermath of victory, Warren Gatland was asked how his young side stacked up against the great Wales side of the Seventies: “We are not at that level yet,” he answered. “But our big aim is to be consistent in beating the southern hemisphere sides. We have a young enough side that over the next few years hopefully can do that.”
That was a good place to be in. Wales were flying high. Maybe a little too close to the sun.
The Rugby City 