Autumn Internationals 2022, Week 4

Before we dive in, during the matches the sad news of the death of Dodie Weir from MND was announced. While we’ve known it’s coming, and he looked really frail a few weeks ago when he came onto the pitch before the Scotland v New Zealand match, he battled to the end, raising millions for research into MND and always with a smile. A great man and the world is diminished without him.

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On to the rugby. Only two matches both on 26/11

• Wales v Australia

If I’d written this report immediately, I would have had to have tagged this blog for adult content given the amount of swearing. I’m still wondering how Wales lost, even being down to 13 for basically the last 15 minutes, but we did. However, we still scored the most points ever against Australia, we were pretty good at converting our chances and until losing two players we were doing well at closing down the Australians in all aspects of the game.

Although Wales didn’t have as many injuries as Australia, between injuries and players unavailable because it was outside the test window, we had a lot of youngsters playing, and players who were out of position. That didn’t help either. In addition, the bench was a huge weakness for Wales. That really exacerbated the combination of youth, out of position and, in the case of Priestland, out of form and it hit at a time when we really needed experience to cope with being down to 13 players.

This was a match in three phases in essence. For the first 20 minutes or so, both sides were trying to find a sense of identity and cohesion and it looked like it was going to be bad. Then Wales went straight through Australia's gut, a nice offload from AWJ and a try. This inspired the Welsh and for the next 50 minutes the game was pretty one-sided. Wales were dominant in all phases of the game, and although they didn’t convert all their chances they were still efficient. Then came the cards, and the replacements. And four tries for Australia.

Wales lost, yes. But they looked good in attack even if the Australian defence was bodged together. Probably because it was thrown together is a better choice of words. With 15 players their defensive system looked superb. Even with 14 players, Wales looked mostly OK in defence, Australia scored a quick try through Tipuric's channel but otherwise it coped. But down to 13? OMG it was bad. Even then, there are reasons it was bad. Suddenly Wales was largely playing with people with fewer than 10 caps. There were certainly exceptions, like North, but a lot of very inexperienced players at a time when they really needed old heads to cope with the situation. Talk about a baptism of fire…

It would have been far better if Wales had won but this was an unlucky defeat with positives for Wales, very different to last week.

Australia will be happy to have won, yes, but with calm heads it’s more of a sense of relief than anything else. There’s no sense from a lucky escape like this that they’ve really turned a corner and this is a new beginning even though it’s definitely a morale booster.

• England v South Africa

It’s tempting to say that the outline of this match broadly matches the previous one, although the details differed a bit. And that temptation exists because it’s basically true. Poor first quarter, one side scores a try and dominates, then there’s a card that somewhat changes the final part.

For the first quarter both sides played the same game, with the packs feeling each other out in the scrum and lineout (scrums probably not helped by some calls that Dave Flatman thought that the ref mostly went tit-for-tat but was being too kind to England. He is a convincing person when he talks about scrummaging technique and penalties so I will bow to his expertise). We also had both sides playing two-to-four phases then a high box kick and chase. Then two things happened, more or less at the same time. One, the Bokke started to get consistent dominance in the scrum and lineout. This probably wouldn’t have changed their tactics on its own, they’re used to this after all, but Arendse (with some help from Willemse and the le Roux) made a gorgeous break from deep, a lovely sidestep and scored in the corner. This seemed to take the shackles off SA and although there was still a lot of big humans running hard lines into the English, there was skill and speed from the backs in space too. Notably, SA lost the automatic “two phases and kick” play of the first 20 minutes - it didn’t completely disappear, sometimes it’s the best tactic and we see it from pretty much every team, but it dropped back to be choice when they had bad ball rather than the default. Like in the earlier match this one-way traffic basically continued until the Boks got carded. Then… unlike that match, the Boks carried on dominating. Yes, England scored a try, but it was only one, and SA ran out 14-point victors.

It’s worth asking why there was such a difference compared to last week for England? The Bokke lost a prop, that mutated into a flanker at the first scrum. With Marx on the pitch and the way their scrum was so dominant this didn’t slow them down in most phases of the game. The All Blacks lost Beauden Barrett at 15, and with a winger in his second test and Clarke on the other wing… they essentially lost their back three in defence to one card. That’s not entirely fair on Telea, I think he went from good to OK after the card, as his remit got wider and, honestly, for a player in his second test he did fine. Clarke's inability to defend though, that cost the All Blacks.

But something else happened. Against the All Blacks, Farrell left early. Smith burst into his full, free-running, offensive glory. England’s pack played very differently off just Smith than off Smith-Farrell. As a result, England scored three tries. Against SA, Smith left early. Van Pootvliet inspired a quick try while SA were concerned about a possibility injured player but time was still on. And that was it. England briefly looked better after Smith’s departure before the Bokke reasserted their forward dominance. While I’ve never been a fan of the Smith-Farrell axis, it’s clear Smith-Farrell-Tuilagi is really not productive and Smith-Tuilagi-Slade is a much more potent attacking threat than any other combination we’ve seen from England. It suddenly galvanised England into this flexible system Jones has been talking about for ages and produced three quick tries. But he’s not going to drop Farrell is he?

Happy Coaches

Nienaber has to be on top of the pile. SA came out after two tough matches and changed their style of play to totally dominate England at Twickenham. While the red card was 100% justified, it wasn’t a huge brain fart. Du Toit adjusted his tackle to try and hit the ball carrier and ended up putting a shoulder into his head, all at the last second. There’s still a big ban coming, but it’s much more ‘one of those things’ than Kremer’s hit last week. SA are probably, genuinely, behind Ireland and France, broadly on a par with NZ and ahead of England, as the WR rankings show. This match just reinforced that.

Rennie is next. This tour was a bit of a disaster with two lucky wins - they could well have lost against Scotland and Wales. Arguably they should have beaten France, but it was a clash of a team with a winning habit and a losing habit, and it showed; the arrival of Jalibert made a huge difference too. But he finished the year with a win and that’s better than a loss.

Pivac next. Yes, the last 10-15 minutes were bad, but there are a lot of positives in that match for Wales. Overall a poor November but still some positives.

Jones dead last. This match was a disaster for England. The Autumn International Series was bad for England. They beat an out of sorts Japan, they got beaten by Argentina who then lost to Scotland. They somehow got lucky enough to steal a draw against New Zealand that, although I don’t like the phrase, they really didn’t deserve. Even without that run, this match showed that England can easily be bullied and just don’t have a plan, they can’t even comfortably dominate the SA pack when it’s down to seven men for 20 minutes.