After a winless Rugby Championship campaign, there are multiple items on the Wallabies ‘to do’ list as they eye the dominant All Blacks in Dunedin on Saturday.
But top of the list for Eddie Jones might be attending to an ineffective maul, an area he brought up unprompted in his post-match chat with Stan Sport after the 38-7 MCG spanking which ensured the All Blacks retained the Bledisloe Cup.
“I’m disappointed in our mauling. We didn’t get anything out of that,” Jones said.
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Jones criticism is ‘disgusting’
“We’re doing a lot of work. So we’ve just got to find out what we’ve got to finetune there.”
The maul was long a strength at the Brumbies under forwards gurus Dan McKellar and Laurie Fisher, who also worked with the Wallabies last season under sacked coach Dave Rennie.
Both assistants have since moved on, with Jones turning to Frenchman Pierre-Henry Broncan as a ‘maul consultant’ in May.
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Jones has placed plenty of emphasis on the specialist dark art, including eyebrow raising sessions on the sand at Coogee Beach in June.
But despite the presence of France-based giants Will Skelton and Richie Arnold, Australia’s overall maul prowess has regressed so far in 2023.
As commentator Sean Maloney noted on Stan Sport’s Between Two Posts, it is “becoming a problem.”
“The reality of the modern day maul, if you get it set up fairly and structurally sound at the front, it’s very difficult to stop,” former Wallabies backrower turned Randwick coach Stephen Hoiles said.
“And they (New Zealand) had so much dominance down that end of the field that Australia was just hanging on. I’m not making excuses for the maul D (defence) because you’ve got to be able to stop that. But the way it goes in this day and age, a good setup should beat a good defence.
“They got beaten to the jump.”
Indeed, the All Blacks expertly repelled repeated attacking rolling maul attempts from the Wallabies while scoring a try of their own in that department through hooker Codie Taylor – who let the crowd of 83,944 know about it.
Former Wallabies lock Justin Harrison cast his expert eye over the Taylor try on Between Two Posts.
“We saw Will Skelton and Allan Alaalatoa working hard together, Jed Holloway on the left. And it spun around the left and then we saw Codie Taylor and the axis of the All Blacks maul come through, Dave Porecki tries to reposition his body height too late,” Harrison said.
“This concept of swimming through defence, it’s all about depowering. Get at hip level, get into an individual battle and separate the unity that is coming at you…
“As chaotic as it looks, there is technique and rhyme and reason to the way that you defend and you condition each individual to defend a certain way.”
Hoiles put it more bluntly.
“You’re just trying to find a little weak point. You’ve got to destroy it defensively.
“With Skelton in the side, we’d probably have one of the best in the world at destroying a maul.”
After getting outfoxed by Ireland and France in recent seasons, the All Blacks turned to Crusaders forwards coach Jason Ryan last year to improve their maul.
The results were immediate and striking and Kiwi great Sam Whitelock paid tribute to Ryan’s influence last year.
“Attitude’s definitely a key part of it (defending the driving maul) but you’ve also got to have the skillset to go with it,” Whitelock said.
“There’s no point just banging your head against a brick wall, you’ve got to actually know what you’re trying to do and how to do it.
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“Sometimes it’s actually just getting alignment through the whole forward pack of what it looks like and the key areas you’re trying to exploit.”
The Wallabies and All Blacks will name their teams for Bledisloe II on Thursday as Jones once again takes the blame for a poor start to the season.
“One thing that’s changed is the coach, so again, you can blame me, mate, if you want to. If you want the headline: ‘the problem is Jones’, use that. I am happy for you to use it, mate,” Jones said.
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