The Average Joe in the postmodern world spends more time finding things than in any other waking endeavour. We use more time finding stuff than kissing, dancing, skiing, praying or telling a joke.
We could even argue that sleep is finding rest; perhaps we never have truly evolved beyond hunting and gathering after all.
Finding important things was never easy: a compatible mate, the right profession, soil which drained just right but was for sale, true friends, forgiveness, the meaning of life, the moment all the kids smiled for the portrait, that concert ticket at the right price, that look of comprehension in a teenager’s eyes, my damned reading glasses, winter gloves from last year, or the words of a breakup with someone you used to love and spent a decade finding happiness with.
As we grow older, we spend more time alone. About five hundred minutes a day, according to the best stats I could find. Thus, by the time we are 80, we better have found ourselves. This is a timeless search. Mankind has always been on the lookout for water, shelter, food, a shag, and the remote.
But now we have added: finding your 11th password combination, finding the perfect haircut and beard and angle for a mirror selfie, locating that quote in that damned slide in the deck from last year’s presentation, an authentic news story during an election, ear buds in the nook of your car’s crannies, one 10,000 photos from your trip to Bali which did not show your partner’s double chin, the perfect ironic meme, your algorithm, that white paper you read in your paperless information resource, a brand you can stay on, and an even more elusive happiness.
Joe Schmidt addresses the Wallabies at training. Photo: Julius Dimataga, Wallabies media
As we shed the need to plant and harvest for ourselves or take an hour with a mortar and pestle to stage a meal and limited the size of our families and as nannies and chefs and valets and delivery amazons and virtual shrinks shrunk the hours needed to care for ourselves and others, we were supposed to have more time to just do stuff: all our files and needs on our ever-smarter phones, so we could just ride bikes in the sun of perfect contemplation as we listen to crime podcasts.
But in fact, the proliferation of information has bogged us down in an eternal scavenger hunt of soul, body, and mind, swiping left and right and up and down as we attempt to be just the right amount of everything.
Rugby will always be about finding space, a game plan, fitness, a rivalry, a league that will have us, consistency, leaders, fictitious momentum, confidence, a tee on time, your lineout jumper, and fans.
Rugby Australia has spent a decade finding a coach-chair-chief-captain combination. Michael Cheika got 68 Tests, Dave Rennie 34, Eddie Jones nine and Joe Schmidt is still finding his feet with three wins out of three. As the Wallabies went from their best world ranking (second in 2015 and 2016) to worst (tenth as Jones passed the baton to Schmidt) captaincy was passed between David Pocock, Stephen Moore, Michael Hooper, James Slipper, Will Skelton, Allan Alaalatoa, lately Liam Wright for a Test, and others. The chair of Rugby Australia in that time passed from Michael Hawker to Cameron Clyne to Paul McLean to Hamish McLennan to Daniel Herbert, whilst the list of CEOs from 2014 to now numbers five.
Is a Schmidt-Herbert-Waugh-Captain Somebody combination the best yet?
We will find out.
1. Schmidt needs to find his leader of leaders.
The Wallabies have plenty of captains.
Alaalatoa, Lukhan Salakaia-Loto, Slipper, Jake Gordon, Andrew Kellaway, Tate McDermott, and Nic White have experience being the shot caller at club or country.
Yet Test football require greater clarity and a Schmidt team in particular, with dependence on starter plays, passing lanes, support zones, possession attack, and reload organisation, must have a coach on the field. Schmidt had that in Johnny Sexton, Rob Kearney, Brian O’Driscoll and Conor Murray out the back and Paul O’Connell, Rory Best, and Peter O’Mahony up front; but depending on the era, there was no doubt who the captain was on the pitch in any given year.
Joe Schmidt had several leaders with Ireland, including linchpin Johnny Sexton. (Ashley Western/MB Media/Getty Images)
Schmidt is a polite man but demanding. He finds sloppiness appalling, does not indulge excuses, and will need a proxy for those traits to be his skipper.
This is more than just a simple: are they a guaranteed starter and do they handle referees well? Schmidt needs an ally, a kindred spirit, a perfectionist, and a teammate dedicated to perpetual discontent. Due to this irascible need, Alaatotoa (“proud of the boys”) and Slipper (“take plenty of learning”) may not fit the long-term bill. Will Skelton’s omission (even if occasioned by French club vexatiousness) is telling. If he were Schmidt’s man, it is difficult to believe he would not have navigated the red tape for him.
None of the flyhalves named are Wallaby captain types yet but all the nines have the mentality Schmidt likes. Props are injured as much as flanks, which poses issues. The two best players (Rob Valetini and Marika Koroibete) are not vocal strategists. This leaves Schmidt with a skipper search.
2. Schmidt is still finding his loose trio.
Valetini has been the most physical and consistent Wallaby gainline carrier and stopper for years. He is also adaptable: he can play six or eight without missing a beat.
Harry Wilson’s engine is reminiscent of a player Schmidt stuck with through thick and thin, for richer or poorer, in sickness and in health: CJ Stander.
If he wants both on the pitch to start a match and potentially go all 80, one will switch to blindside. Valetini seems more of a big bouncer six than Wilson at Test level.
Schmidt and Laurie Fisher were still finding that answer against Wales and Georgia when they did have the Reds tearaway on-the-ball specialist Fraser McReight available.
Harry Wilson in action for the Wallabies against Georgia at Allianz Stadium on July 20, 2024 in Sydney. (Photo by Brett Hemmings/Getty Images)
Now that McReight is out, and Brumbies’ bench baller Luke Reimer, forceful Carlo Tizzano, and Seru Uru are grouped with Tom Hooper in the squad, the plot is no thinner.
Hooper was not strong enough in 2023 in the collision zone unless he had ball in hand. He did not make a dent in rucks, either way, and needed a running start to win contact. He is a mongrel in mentality, but his body is not that of a top five team blindsider. Can he play openside? He has a couple of times and in the one which mattered (Wales in Lyon) it did not look natural. Could he learn it? Maybe, but not versus the Springboks, who chewed him up and spit him out in Pretoria last year.
Reimer is the most like-for-like to McReight and would allow the Valetini-Wilson duo to play more specific roles. He is also the least likely to be carded of the rookie trio.
Perhaps the long-term look would be to audition Reimer for a bench role when the Wallabies go 6-2 or play a ruck-dependent team like Ireland or New Zealand.
Another way to play this is to move Salakaia-Loto or Jeremy Williams to big six, a la Courtney Lawes and Pieter-Steph du Toit, to stack the lineout and add heft to the tight stuff.
3. Schmidt is still finding his Australian Way
The most Aussie thing Schmidt has done so far is to sniff at the claims of Pete Samu (who could help on point two above), Angus Scott-Young, the Brothers Arnold, Skelton, Sean McMahon, Izack Rodda and others playing well abroad, only turning to a sure thing in Koroibete (he would win a one-on-one both ways with any of the current Wallaby outside backs).
But there is always the internal debate which rages: is winning enough if it is not more attractive to the fan calibrating winter sports dollars between league, AFL, soccer, basketball, and rugby? Losing so dismally in 2023 seems to have rightly put that on hold for now. The joy of winning tends to do that.
Playing a weaker team like Georgia does two things: boosts confidence and reveals “what might be.”
The Wallabies will not find as much space against the Springboks, the stingiest team in rugby over the last five years, but it is illustrative to see what Schmidt’s attack did when it did have space. (The generosity to Wales and Georgia on the scoreboard is another issue entirely and no doubt animated Fisher and Schmidt in training more than any other thing).
When we look at what each of the old “tri-nations” did in their last Test laugher, we see a few clues.
The Boks scored ten tries against Portugal, the All Blacks seven on Fiji, whilst the Wallabies six. But the way they did it is noteworthy.
The Wallabies gained far less metres per carry than their rivals (3.2 m/carry versus 5.2 for the Boks and 5.1 for the All Blacks) and beat ten to 20 fewer defenders. The key was passing. Schmidt’s style is less about the “league style” run and more about the shift to channel using short passes.
The Wallabies celebrate an early try against Georgia at Allianz Stadium on July 20, 2024 in Sydney. (Photo by Brett Hemmings/Getty Images)
Compare just the Boks and Wallabies when each had dominance. Both put boot to ball 19 times.
The Wallabies made 74 more passes than the Boks, but ten fewer offloads.
The similarity comes in territory: both teams held 56-57% of it and this is surely going to be at the core of the battle in Brisbane.
Schmidt wants arms to be chanced but not in the tackle per se, and only in the right area.
The pass out the back is the Schmidt offload: the timing of this against a blitz-on-crack defence like the Boks’ is key. Much of the responsibility for this after flyhalf-midfielder phase one is on phase three-to-ten pod leaders like Taniela Tupou, Angus Bell, Salakaia-Loto, Wilson and Valetini.
But what happens if, as occurred in Durban against the Irish, a Bok opponent is starved of line breaks, and can only score one try?
Will the Wallabies turn to drop goals, a maul, or kick-passes?
If a couple of matches are lost without many Wallaby highlights, will the honeymoon be over and will the jackals start to bark about running rugby?
4. Can Schmidt find the language of accuracy?
If there is one constant from Cheika to Schmidt so far it is the stubborn high penalty and card count.
This cannot be fixed overnight. But answers must be found so that particularized practice and devoted drills and dedicated planning can be done before kickoff. The patterns of ruck cleaning and the order of arrival and the zones of carry and pass and the kick landing patches and the height of the throw and the manner of bind and the way in which a jumper is lifted and the elastic relationships in midfield and how quickly a reload occurs: this is an imperative.
Give the Boks easy entrances to the Wallaby 22 and it is likely a hard day. Give them easy exits and the Wallabies will find it difficult to score 20 plus.
Today’s Wallabies are best known for being penalised more than any other top ten team: no matter where, who is reffing, and what the score is; this is what Schmidt must find an answer to. For a decade now, the Wallabies average about ten or more a game.
Joe Schmidt must find the right language to ensure the Wallabies keep on the right side of the whistle. (Photo by Chris Hyde/Getty Images)
You do not have to be the least penalised team to win a league or a tournament. But if penalties turn to cards (and they often do) it is a way of quickly finding the bottom or exit.
As Fisher preaches, you can be a lot more accurate when you are closer. ‘Proximity’ is a better word than ‘discipline’ as a mantra and that means fitness and hardness. Being hard on the ball or the ruck is mostly about hitting the correct body part in a supremely dominant way.
To the extent there is a Schmidt-ball, it depends on two things: precision and awareness, so that decisions are ‘easy’ and the score keeps ticking.
This is a subtle shift from the Cheika-Rennie-Jones vibe which resulted in the Wallabies becoming the heaviest team in world rugby with poor final quarter margins
5. Can Schmidt find the right sledge?
Rassie Erasmus has been on his best behaviour, which is of course easier when you are a back-to-back world champion coach and star of the most successful documentary in your sport. But even after tough losses to Ireland the rogue of the Republic has been magnanimous and cheerful. He has launched a charm offensive in Australia, describing Schmidt as a “coach who brings the best out of the players” with a “great work ethic” and that this is “a big test for us” of “great magnitude.” Hardly boastful from number one to number nine.
For his part, Schmidt has only made one mini-sledge, depending on the word ‘tend’ whilst saying the Boks ‘tend to get a bit of luck’ in refereeing calls in his press conference, but quickly adding the Boks make their own luck.
This may be more about the final in Paris last year, but is sly banter, seeking to needle Erasmus on the one topic (Berrygate) he is still most reviled for in Australia.
It does not seem to have riled Erasmus, who is never a closed book on his emotions. His tweets are positive and earnest to his fans: “Think you all know our two tough test matches against Australia. … We need you to carry and help us through the next two weeks.”
A back-to-back mini-series, however, will surely provide Schmidt more chances to try to poke the bear.
As Schmidt seeks to find a loose trio, an attacking groove, a more accurate ruck protocol, and momentum, the eyes of the rugby world tend to Brisbane, where the biggest Test of the week is played.
