Wounded Wallabies vow to make up for Irish humbling

In FAIRNESS to the Wallabies, they might have made a monumental botch job of playing Ireland last Saturday night, but their crisis management has been quite brilliant. In their Wellington hotel yesterday a number of them lined-up to take more flak following the catastrophe at Eden Park, soaking up the abuse like men rather taking umbrage about a persistent, and surely infuriating, line of questioning.

Will Genia was a classic case. Genia is a wondrous talent, arguably the finest scrum-half in the game right now. He will captain the Wallabies when they play America on Friday evening, but nobody really wanted to talk about that, although the honour means much to him. The loss to Ireland was still in the air, Genia answering questions about it at the top table when trying to preview the game with the Americans and answering more questions later on when we brought him to a corner of the hotel for a chat.

“We just have to forget about Ireland, mate,” he said. “You learn whatever lessons you can from it. To be honest, I’ve just realised that World Cup rugby is different to the type of rugby I usually play. In the Tri-Nations, it’s a lot more free-flowing and then you come here and it’s stodgy, it’s more about playing for field position and taking three points. We have to play smart from now on. So we’ve learned our lesson and we move on. Ireland is history now.”

Only it’s not history. It’s everywhere in this Australia camp. Robbie Deans, the coach, is being asked about it. Wycliff Palu, the No 8 against America on Friday, is being grilled even though he was only a sub in the Ireland game. So, too, James Slipper, the prop, and Rob Simmons, the other prop. Nathan Sharpe is talking about how everybody was really angry, even though he wasn’t in the 22 that faced the Irish. Guilty by association, perhaps.

Mostly, it’s Genia who’s getting it. “I think we try and play a little bit too much rugby,” he said. “That’s the biggest thing I’ve learned. You can’t play too much from your own end in the World Cup. You’ve got to be more clever. The word from home has been ‘How’d you lose?!’, but the support has been pretty positive as a whole. A lot of people are going around saying they’re copping flak from some Kiwi supporters. Hopefully we’ll do better this week and they can hold their heads up. But that’s what happens when you come to New Zealand. You get stick.

“We’re in a hard half of the draw now, but I don’t think it’s any problem playing the All Blacks, if we have to. We play against them a lot and for some reason we play better when we play against them. No problems at all. I don’t watch a lot of rugby on television, but I’ll watch the game between New Zealand and France. It gets too much if you watch a lot of rugby. It could feel like you’re in South Africa where there’s seven sports channels and six of them are rugby.”

Genia is asked if he thinks he’s going to be celebrating after the All Blacks play the French. “Yeah, if France win,” he says, mischievously.” Is that possible? “They’ve flown under the radar, but yeah, it’s possible. I don’t mind who we play but it would be good to see New Zealand lose. Ah, I don’t mind them really. I’m just taking the p***.”

As you could imagine, there has been all sorts of honesty sessions in the Australia squad these past few days and they continued yesterday. Deans has been spotted when engaged in lengthy debate with Quade Cooper in a Wellington cafe, Cooper being one of the chief villains of Saturday. He is truly a remarkable player when things are going his way; when his forwards are on top and the ball is quick and the weather is good. But, give him a struggling pack, slow ball and foul conditions, as was the case against Ireland, and the stand-off loses the plot. Deans as good as admitted it.

Slipper also said as much. The Queensland Red is in his infancy in this team. He’s only 22 years old and made his Wallaby debut last summer in a win over England. He has won 16 caps but 14 of them have been off the bench. One of his starts happened to be in Paris last November when Australia utterly dismantled the French at Stade de France, winning by seven tries to one and by 59 points to 16.

The Aussie, Slipper, was up against Nicolas Mas that day and he fared brilliantly against a man whose reputation is almost as large as his neck size. Slipper is not just a promising prop, he’s also carrying on the tradition of straight-talking Wallaby front-rowers. “We had a day off on Tuesday,” he said. “But today was pretty brutal. I wouldn’t say there was a lot of anger in our training session – the anger came out in the days directly after the game – but it was probably the best session we had all year. We were out there for two hours and it was excellent.” Slipper spoke about the team meeting post-Ireland. “It was more about our preparation and how mentally we were going into games,” he said.

“We were resting on our laurels a bit, we were a little complacent. We’ve got to think about it and, when conditions are like they were against Ireland, we’ve got to play it safe sometimes. Personally, I’ve only been playing professional for two years, but under 10 per cent of my games have been in conditions like we had in Auckland. I’m not used to that weather. Brisbane weather is nowhere near like this. We’re having bush fires back at home.

“It’s not an excuse. I don’t know what it is with us, but we base our games on speed and quick hands and moving the point of the attack but, when it rains, it slows our attack down and we are easier to read. We didn’t adapt against Ireland and you can tell, pretty much, from the start. You look at that game and look at when we beat the All Blacks in Brisbane at the end of August and our intensity around the breakdown wasn’t nearly good enough. We lost it there. Our decisions were not up to scratch.”

There was a moment in the Ireland game that perfectly summed up the match and Slipper remembers it. Stephen Ferris tackled Genia and lifted the scrum-half off his feet and carried him several metres downfield like Genia was some kind of rag doll. “We took that personally as a team,” said Slipper. “We won’t let that happen again. The forward pack was outplayed and that’s just not good enough. In Super Rugby it’s different and you can do the Quade Cooper flick pass, but it’s different here. I’m counting on the Ireland game being the loss we needed to win the competition.

“We’re in half of the draw now with the other Tri-Nations. I’d rather play South Africa and New Zealand than any other team to be honest. We get up for those big games and we beat both of them. The boys really turned up for those ones. It would be great if we could knock out New Zealand in the semis.”

They have much work to do before then. On the field and off it. They should take care of America easily enough, but winning back the faith of the fans is another matter. Australia are reeling, but they’re talking like a team that is ready to move on.