Why Australia are going to challenge

No, I am not going to say that the Wallabies will win this year’s Tri-Nations. New Zealand, with the massive depth built up by Graham Henry, their forward strength, Dan Carter’s wizardry and their pace and power out wide, have to start as favourites.

But make no mistake, there has been a revolution in Australia which could just see that nation emerge from this year’s Tri-Nations as the champion team of the southern hemisphere.

The axing of Eddie Jones as Wallabies coach late last year saw not just a change of coach. It also saw a whole change in approach. And I am not just referring here to the greater importance that John Connolly has attached to the set-scrums.

Jones used to see the scrums has a means to restart the game, Connolly realises that scrums are important for several reasons, and it might help that he has spent so much time coaching in the northern hemisphere, as indeed has his All Black counterpart, Henry.

That, though, is not why I see the Australians as being so dangerous. There has been another change in mindset that has been even more important. The Aussies are starting to lose their pre-occupation with structure.

It might have served the World Cup champion Wallabies of a previous era, but under Jones it was becoming patently obvious quite a long time ago that their highly structured game, with the emphasis on recycles and where the ball was set up, was no longer working.

Of course, you do need a bit of structure. You cannot throw it out of the window completely. In their matches against England and Ireland in the buildup to the Tri-Nations, Australia did stick to a structure through phases one and two.

But from there it became obvious that the players were given licence to give full vent to their decision making skills on the field – and what wonderful decision-makers and runners the Australians have. If they find themselves in a position where they have to rely on their own onfield intelligence when pitted directly against that of their opponents, they will win every time.

And that is particularly so when they come up against South Africa, so Springbok fans ought to be hoping that the scrumming problems exposed by France in Cape Town two weeks ago are ironed out before their side gets to Brisbane. If the Aussies have ball to play with on 15 July, the Boks could be in trouble.

Unless of course their coach Jake White has also started to see the light, and has the guts to move away from his highly regimented and structured game by giving his players licence to express their flair and make their own decisions.

Granted, the team selected for the test against France would never have been able to do that. With De Wet Barry at centre, and an inexperienced outside centre alongside him, it would have been difficult.

But if Jean de Villiers is fit for Brisbane, he should be allowed to use the decision making skills which combined so effectively with Andre Pretorius in the Mandela Challenge fixture against Australia at Ellis Park last July.

Okay, Pretorius won’t be there, but I agree with Brendan Venter’s view that Jaco van der Westhuyzen is a much better flyhalf than we give him credit for. Fourie du Preez’s poor form in some of the previous games, not to mention the poor forward play against France, did not help the Japanese based player, but if asked to play an attacking game, and to hit the gain-line rather than play from the pocket, Van der Westhuyzen can do it.

He did it extremely effectively in the 2004 Tri-Nations, where let’s not forget it, the Boks won the tournament because they scored some great tries.

Since then there has been too much of a defensive mindset, and too much of a concentration on defence, and this is why Van der Westhuyzen was seen to become less effective. If he was going to be a kicking flyhalf, he would never have been switched to fullback by the Bulls all those years ago.

Van der Westhuyzen reckons he learned a lot playing at Leicester, where he was empowered to make decisions on the field. Dick Muir is empowering his players at the Sharks to start making their own decisions on the field, and it is working.

One fancies that White is clever enough to know that against Australia and New Zealand this season, his players are going to have to be encouraged to do things they were not encouraged to do by their Super 14 coaches. It is a massive ask, but I don’t think he has an alternative if the Boks are to challenge for World Cup glory in 16 months time.