Wallabies v. All Blacks – Round 2 or what do the Wallabies have to do to beat the All Blacks?

Photo from http://www.flickr.com/photos/sam_herd/3029254804/

If had the ear of Robbie Deans ( and laying aside the fact I don’t quite have his coaching experience) I’d say to him ‘Robbie, or if I may call you Dingo…’ this is what you need to do to beat the All Blacks:

1. Take them on at their strengths. They like fast ball from the ruck – how about some s-l-o-w ball from the ruck. Drop overmuscled but underbrained Richard Brown, shift Rocky to 8th man, bring on another fetcher – is it Waugh, is it Smith, is it whoever, but two fetchers will slow the ruck down, while the All Black backline kick their heels and practice their swerves.

2. Kick intelligently and practice all week:

• Kick it out and steal the opposition ball from the line out (you might practice getting your own ball while you’re at it)

• Kick a few highly pressurized up-and-unders – I’ve seen Mils get the dropsies and The Rocket man bounce one off his noggin.

• If they know you’re going to run it each time that’s easy to defend so mix it up a little – and they find broken play running as hard to defend as you do.

3. Discipline discipline discipline - no more yellow cards

4. Practice receiving kick offs.

5. Fitness – hit them in the last 20 minutes when they start to tire like they did last week.

6. This is a bit underhand – but you want to win don’t you? Rough them up, be all over them like a rash, in their faces – I saw the Sharks do it to the Blues a few years ago, and in about 5 minutes flat BAM! notoriously short of fuse Troy Flavell was in the bin for trying to land a haymaker. The New Zealanders will see the funny side eventually. Probably.

7. Invade New Zealand. You have a big army, they have a little army. Simple really. They’ll never have the Bledisloe cup again because:

• Your army will take it

• It’ll be one country now, nobody to compete against

That’ll mean you’ll be hosting the World Cup next year, home advantage for a record three cups – sounding better all the time. Come on the All Wallabies! Robbie Deans will get all smug with Graham Henry – who got the better job now huh? HUH?

8. The Wallabies could claim there’s a refereeing conspiracy against them to drum up interest in the World Cup. Nah, that’s way to far fetched, that would just be silly.

There you go Robbie, spurn these pearls of wisdom at your peril.


So while I’m at it, a few sage words for Graham Henry:

1. Do exactly what you did last week

2. This is a golden opportunity with the Tri Nations practically wrapped up to try out a replacement for Achilles Heel (because there’s only one of him) play maker extraordinaire Dan Carter. Give Aaron Cruden a good go.

My prediction: well the All Blacks can’t play that well four Tri Nations matches in a row, but in Christchurch they aren’t going to lose so a 7 point win over the Wallabies.