Deans’ right with criticism of All Blacks’ tactics

Following his side’s 19-32 loss to the All Blacks in Tokyo, Wallabies’ coach Robbie Deans fired a stinging criticism at the All Blacks’ tactics, particularly while under pressure. Many in the New Zealand media has dismissed this as sour grapes from a man who now has a six match losing streak against the All Blacks, but an objective look at the game shows that Deans could be onto something.

“Can anyone tell me what the penalty count was?” Deans asked a packed press conference, more accustomed to asking the questions than fielding them. The answer was 13-9 in favour of the Wallabies, but that wasn’t the point Deans wanted to get across.

“I know of the first six penalties, four were in the red zone, and there probably should have been a couple of others when the ball was lifted out of rucks one metre short of the line,” he added. “That’s frustrating from our perspective, particularly when you play a fixture in Tokyo when we’re trying to promote the game… I don’t think it contributed well to the game today.”

The point that Deans was attempting to get across is that the All Blacks seemed to kill the ball almost every time they came under pressure. The video evidence is fairly damning, on the very first Wallaby incursion into the All Blacks’ 22, Adam Thompson flops over the ruck and kills ball, leading to Australia’s first points of the night.

Throughout the night Thompson and Rodney So’oialo spent more time flopping around on the ground than beached whales, frequently giving away penalties but effectively denying the Wallabies scoring opportunities. Only Thompson earned the ire of referee Mark Lawrence but after a brief admonishment, it was back to business as usual.

While this turned out to be a good tactic, and went a long way to securing the win, it is a high risk approach to the game. In a game controlled by a referee less lenient than Lawrence, Thompson and So’oialo could easily have been on the receiving end of yellow cards.

Perhaps most worrisome is the defence of this tactic by All Blacks’ assistant coach Steven Hansen. “It was a very contestable game at the breakdown and when you get games like that you’re going to get penalties, and get people off their feet,” Hansen said, “Both sides were guilty of it, as the penalties on the scoreboard showed.”

That may be the case, but referees will pick up on this and should Craig Joubert police this area more strictly that Lawrence this weekend, yellow cards could hold the key to Wales’ first win over the All Blacks in 56 years.

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The Deans’ right with criticism of All Blacks’ tactics by Hamish McBrearty, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.