3. Dan McKellar would give the Waratahs instant credibility
The former Brumbies coach has been unceremoniously dumped by Leicester after just one season, with the English heavyweights displaying a football-like impatience in the boardroom. Rugby Australia shouldn’t waste any time asking what his plans are, because the Waratahs are in dire need of a coach who knows the Australian playing group and who could hit the ground running.
Dan McKellar has been dumped by Leicester and Rugby Australia should waste no time in bringing him home.Credit: Getty
McKellar, of course, is a proud Queenslander but the timing is absolutely perfect and the Waratahs would benefit immensely from the edge and structure he would bring.
Super Rugby Pacific has just been won by the team with the nastiest forwards and most effective set-piece: this is exactly the currency McKellar trades in.
4. Welsh woes started at the scrum
Wales were predictably beaten 41-13 by South Africa in London on Saturday after playing little to no rugby in their own half.
Their insistence on putting the ball into the skies off No.9 and No.10 means the Wallabies will have to think long and hard about what they want from their fullback in next month’s two-Test series.
The Wallabies will see the Welsh scrum as an area they can exploit in next month’s Tests.Credit: AP
However, the main lesson from the game was the weakness of the Welsh scrum, particularly on their tighthead side. Of course, the Springboks are an immense scrummaging unit, but the Welsh were never competitive at the set-piece and new Wallabies guru Mike Cron will like his chances of getting the Wallabies’ scrum to be an effective platform to launch from in Sydney and Melbourne next month.
5. TMO nightmare returns at Twickenham
The Wales-South Africa game was error-strewn in itself, but the pace was slowed down even further by the repeated use of the TMO to check possible foul play. Here’s the issue with that (apart from putting the crowd to sleep): it was clear that the referee, the assistant referee and the TMO couldn’t even agree on what they were seeing.
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This was particularly true of the yellow card handed out to Springboks fullback Aphelele Fassi, who was shown a yellow card for collecting Welsh flanker Taine Plumtree with his boot as he was taking a high ball. That, of course, shows the stupidity of using video replays for subjective decisions: if the match officials can’t agree on whether it was foul play, why on earth are we wasting minutes on watching multiple replays from different angles? It’s a blight on the game, especially as the same officials actually missed a blatant forward pass for the Springboks’ third try.
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