Les Kiss understands what Joe Schmidt didn't about the 'Australian way'

There are a lot of misconceptions about what ‘the Australian way to play rugby’ is, and it consistently misleads people into going down rabbit holes when looking for the answer.

Punters and pundits alike will say, ‘the days of Ella, Campese, Larkham, that is Australian free-flowing rugby,’ run the ball from anywhere type of stuff that captivates the audience and puts them on the edge of their seats.

Wallabies coach Les Kiss has, to an extent, lent into this mantra, talking about the “backyard spirit.”

“We’re a good, innovative type of thinking player and team. Let’s play with our spirit, but the other thing that’s important that comes through when we’re in the backyard or on the beach as kids, as we grow up, we’re competitive,” Kiss said in his first press conference after starting the Wallabies job at the end of July.

“We will go very hard into contact; we’ll fight for every inch. We just want those qualities to come through. When it comes out in the 80 minutes, we want the country to be proud of what they see. When we’re on the try-line, these boys will defend it with their lives, and we’ve seen good clues to date with that.”

It’s the type of talk that makes you want to run through a brick wall for the bloke, and that sentiment has, for the most part, been palpable amongst the playing group.

Kiss is an emotional character; he genuinely cares about the players as individuals and the people he meets out and about. 

It’s why the language, like when he wants his players to “live their dreams and blaze their own trail,” comes across so well and not as bad PR; he truly means it.

With less than a year until the Rugby World Cup arrives on Australian shores, this November’s Nations Championship series is one crucial step in bedding down the principles of Kiss’s plans.

To be able to do so means truly understanding how this “backyard spirit” must translate into Test rugby.

To be able to answer this question, we must go back to the time of Kiss’s predecessor, his good friend and mentor, Joe Schmidt.

When you paint a house, you can’t just whack paint on it; you need a primer.

Schmidt was that primer that Australian rugby desperately needed, and needs right throughout its rugby ecosystem, from Wallabies down to U9s.

The focus on the fundamentals- the carry, clean, pass, ball placement, ruck discipline, set-piece focus, attention to detail, running lines- all these things, which Schmidt was adamant about getting perfect, are what now allow Kiss’s style of attacking rugby to flourish.

Kiss has drastically changed the way the Wallabies attack; where Schmidt had the Wallabies breaking teams through the middle, Kiss has the Wallabies swinging into open space.

Where Schmidt built a multi-phase attack on strong running lines and a clean-out structure that demanded perfection, Kiss is leaning into the power game and selecting accordingly.

Kiss wouldn’t have been as successful as he has been to date in his tenure- five wins, one draw, and two losses- had it not been for the foundations laid down by Schmidt and his team.

The scrum didn’t go from zero to hero overnight; that is all Schmidt’s man Mike Cron, and the lineout equally didn’t become the fifth best in the world in July.

Similarly, the Wallabies didn’t learn how to properly place a ball or fight on the ground in Japan when Kiss took over; that is also Schmidt’s doing.

The one thing which Schmidt did not understand, however, which Kiss evidently does, is that Australia is not Ireland.

While that much is “obvious,” it is an important thing to state, black on white.

The changes Kiss has made to the structure and his selections are all for the better; they capture the true “Australian way.” 

It uses our multiculturalism; we have body shapes and athletes Ireland could only dream of having; we must use them, and use them differently to how Ireland would.

Kiss’s “go forward” mentality uses our adversarial nature; Kiss uses the word “competitive,” but semantics aside, the Wallabies are a crash ‘n’ bash team, with power athletes galore.

This is where the Wallabies often get it so wrong against the All Blacks; we think because we are cousins separated by the ditch that is the Tasman Sea, that ‘anything that they can do, we can do better.’

The issue with this is that the All Blacks have a focus the Wallabies do not as part of their team’s DNA; the Wallabies are an instinctive team, a team which is more like an octopus with multiple moving parts rather than an arrow which has sharp edges that all come to a point.

This is just the way it is. The Wallabies are Australian, a laid-back people, with bouts of larrikinism, and a deeply felt camaraderie, which means that no matter the background of the mate next to you, you will do just about anything to help out when the going gets tough.

If we can assume that is the very basic foundation on which the soul of Kiss’s men is founded, then it’s clear that the Wallabies should play to these strengths, play to their differences rather than what makes them somewhat capable of mimicking another country’s style.

The Wallabies clearly have their style, and their style is short bursts of overwhelming power, creativity, and hard yakka.

If one needed more evidence of this, then the difference between Schmidt and Kiss’s try-scoring patterns can be of some assistance.

Across three matches in July under Schmidt, the Wallabies scored 18 tries in three matches.

The Schmidt-coached Wallabies scored six tries in 10-plus phases; an extra three came in phases six and seven. Meaning half the tries were scored after phase six.

If we take a look at the Kiss-coached Wallabies, they scored a total of 32 tries in seven matches, with 24 of those tries coming in six phases or less.

Only a few have come in 10-plus phases.

For good measure, it is worth mentioning that the Wallabies are conceding tries closer to or around 10-plus phases as opposed to the first few.

This speaks to the power element of the playing cohort on either side of the ball, a fact that will not be lost on Kiss and his defence coach Scott McLeod.

It paints a stark picture of how this Wallabies team can adapt, but equally, how much they still have to grow under their new coaching staff.

It also highlights how deadly this Wallabies team can be with only a handful of phases, and those tries in six phases or less have come from literally all corners of the field.

With this in mind, this is where one of two glaring issues for the Wallabies rears its head: the kicking game.

 The problem at Test rugby is that these moments of brilliance by the Wallabies, no matter how good they are at it, don’t always yield results, and it’s these moments where the Wallabies are shooting themselves in the foot.

Once the Wallabies have settled into their rhythm for two to four phases, they are primed to let their creativity and “backyard spirit” shine.

Two-to-four phases is a very purposeful metric because the Wallabies have always, under either Dave Rennie, Schmidt, or Kiss, been able to execute a great set-piece move off the first phase.

It’s once the Wallabies find their groove and enter those higher phase counts like eight, nine, 10 and beyond, when they are outside the 22m line, that is the biggest cause of concern.

The creativity comes to an abrupt end, and rather than feeling free, the attack becomes suffocating.

This is where the biggest fallacies and incorrect diagnoses of what the “Australian way” is, and it’s where most people get it wrong, even the players.

Test rugby requires kicking; to be successful, it demands good kicking. You can’t win Test rugby consistently with bad kicking; it’s as simple as that.

The Wallabies have very recent examples of this: exit your own 22m well, kick well for touch after a penalty, and weight your contestable kicks perfectly, and you can topple the Springboks.

Exit poorly, get limited metres from kicks to touch, and fail to make the contestables genuine contests, and the All Blacks will almost put 50 points on you in back-to-back weeks.

Of course, there were other factors in all of these results, but the kicking is one factor which will play a very big part in the wetter northern hemisphere conditions, so it is a prudent point to lament.

Now that we have established that the Wallabies are a power team, with the players, game plan, and mantra of causing maximum damage in short bursts, we must now see it translate onto the field.

If the Wallabies aren’t creating those moments of ‘Aussie magic’ early in the phase count, kicking must also be a reliable weapon to reset the counter.

Kiss knows the territory battle is being lost by his men too often; he has mentioned it in several ways in his post-match press conferences, even when the Wallabies win.

The Wallabies must begin to think of kicking as a weapon, not just a last resort when things have become stagnant.

This is also what punters must understand. Kicking resets defences, recalibrates team mentality, and, should you regain a contestable, is just as devastating as getting ‘six again’ in rugby league.

It is also a way to pin sides and frustrate them into error, should they be doing a poor job of exiting their own half.

Against England, Scotland, and Wales, the Wallabies must know that none of these opponents can serve up the physicality, speed of ruck, or attacking threats like the All Blacks and Springboks can.

This means they should be confident in their game plan.

The Wallabies must trust that the Australian way of fast, furious, and powerful rugby demands an equally strong tactical kicking game.

“Backyard footy” is not played in phases of 10 or more; backyard rugby is the freedom of expression with every run you take.

The Wallabies must go to Europe and think: if the first handful of phases don’t work, kick to put pressure on; fight like hell to make the exit difficult.

Kicking is essential to any great rugby team, full stop.

A reliance on their strong set piece and their big, powerful ball carriers should, provided the kicking game is at an adequate level, put them in a situation where they can walk away unbeaten in November.