Joe Schmidt laments ‘frustrating’ aspect of Wallabies’ play which proved crucial in loss to All Blacks
Wallabies head coach Joe Schmidt.
Wallabies head coach Joe Schmidt believes his team’s inability to recycle the ball quickly played a crucial role in their defeat to the All Blacks in Wellington on Saturday.
New Zealand continued with their Bledisloe Cup dominance over their trans-Tasman rivals as they sealed a 33-13 victory at Sky Stadium in an entertaining Rugby Championship encounter.
Although the Wallabies were competitive during the opening half and were still in the match at half-time with the All Blacks holding a narrow 19-13 lead at half-time, they lost their way after the interval and failed to score points in the second stanza.
Australia were rewarded with a Fraser McReight try after just eight minutes but New Zealand managed to stifle their attacks and Schmidt believes his team’s poor recycling led to their downfall.
‘We had a lot of frustration’
“I thought we created a few things early but what we had a lot of frustration [about] in that first half was slow ball,” Schmidt told Stan Sport.
“We were digging ball out from amongst bodies on our side and that was really frustrating because it broke our rhythm. We started really strongly, got that try and then missed a couple of chances.”
By contrast, the All Blacks soaked up the early pressure and once they hit they hit their straps on attack, they proved difficult to contain.
“They connect so well back off the sideline a couple of times running back laterally and then connecting up with square runners,” said Schmidt.
“Caleb Clarke doing it, Will Jordan doing it and we didn’t quite stay connected. They run some pretty good guys in screens in those areas so we’ve got to be able to push past them and still make those tackles.
“But just talking to Scott Barrett there, we made them work for it and we’re going to keep working for ourselves and make sure opponents do have to work for anything they get and we try to get a little bit more.
“Certainly the start was really positive. I felt we carried really strongly. Our carry-clean game was really strong.”
Excellent start from Australia
Australia came out firing from the kick off and caught New Zealand by surprise when they switched their direction on attack from the back of a scrum close to the halfway line in the third minute.
Andrew Kellaway found himself in space and booted the ball upfield.
Beauden Barrett failed to gather the ball close to his try-line and Jake Gordon was quickest to react to his error but instead of just diving onto the ball when it rolled over the whitewash he tried to scoop it up first and lost control of it.
That incident showed that the Wallabies were trying a new approach and although they stayed in the fight for the rest of the opening half, they could not sustain it after the interval.
“We recognised we’d been pretty box kick heavy of late and we thought teams are analysing us and dropping a little bit more into the backfield and we saw run space available,” said Gordon.
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