I fear Wales may not have the physicality to beat Wallabies
THE result of the final game of the Autumn Series will be the one that determines if this has been a positive or negative four weeks for Wales. It was always likely to turn out this way when you looked at the order of the matches.
Wales are nursing injuries, while Australia are devoid of form. Both sides will be desperate for the win, no matter what it looks like.
As Jon Humphreys put it, Australia will want to come and play against Wales and the only way to stifle that is to slow their possession down. You must apply pressure in the scrums, lineouts and breakdown. Take away their quick ball, you prevent them from getting into a rhythm and they can look decidedly average.
My anxiety about that is that these are the areas that Wales have been struggling in throughout the Autumn series thus far. The set-piece has been poor and Wales have been secondbest in the collisions.
Without a substantial improvement in physicality, Wales will be chasing shadows. But Australia are a fragile outfit and when they have been squeezed in the last two matches, they have imploded.
The other aspect of the game that Wales will need to improve is their discipline. They have conceded far too many penalties, thus far being unable to keep the penalty count below 10 and committing infringements when under no real pressure.
However, they are not alone. Most sides have struggled to keep the penalty count down and I think that the way the game is officiated has changed over the past couple of years.
There has been a move away from a single referee in the middle with touch judges to a team of four officials that police the game. One used to say that the referee could blow his whistle at almost every scrum, line-out or breakdown for one misdemeanour or another. Good referees were the ones that were able to discern which infringements had a material impact on the game and ignore the ones that didn’t.
That is no longer the case. With such scrutiny and analysis of every aspect of the game, it is no surprise that enforcing the laws of the game has also been forced to change.
Whereas referees may have decided to let certain things go for the overall benefit of the game, that latitude has gone. They now enforce the letter of the law regardless of other considerations.
And who can blame them? They are scrutinised more than ever before and have been subjected to public humiliation by international coaches.
In some ways, rugby is a bit like American football. Lots of complicated rules governing a game where there are lots of things happening at the same time. There are seven officials on the field in every NFL match to make sure nothing is missed. Rugby is heading that way.
The influence of the TMO is evolving too. For most matches, the TMO will be sitting near the TV match director watching the same images that we see on our TVs. They also have another screen showing the same images on a seven-second delay. This gives them a chance to check anything they weren’t sure about when they watched it live.
Not only that, but the TMO also has a dedicated replay operator that will provide additional angles that have not been broadcast, to help make a judgement on any incident of concern.
Yet despite this, the swinging arm by Eroni Sau was missed by everyone. It was only seen when it was played in as an action replay of the tackle on Johnny Williams. That’s because there are about eight or nine cameras covering the action and unless you’ve got a referee watching each one, things will occasionally slip through the net.
So, possibly the most influential contribution made by anyone last Sunday was by the replay operator in spotting the offence, which led to the decisive moment of the game.
Fortunately, no matter how it came about, the correct decision was arrived at and no-one can disagree with that.
I think the underlying lesson is that there is zero tolerance on the pitch for all types of transgressions. A blind eye will not be turned for a mild infringement, no matter how innocuous it may be.
Wales have benefited enormously from playing against teams with a man sent off. They have not allowed themselves to be put in that position. What they must work on is not giving the officials any opportunity to penalise them in all of the other aspects of the game.
If they hold their nerve and keep their discipline against the Wallabies, they will have a good chance of winning. But I am anxious that Wales will not be able to dominate the physical exchanges sufficiently to stifle the Australian phase play.
I think it will be close, but I am leaning towards an Australian victory.
Wales v Australia, highlights on S4C tonight at 8.30pm.