The crinkles Wallabies must iron after Springboks' early onslaught

What the Wallabies managed to achieve at Ellis Park last weekend was nothing short of incredible, but unfortunately, even breaking a 62-year-long record won’t exempt them from having to front the Springboks again this weekend.

While it was a historic win, the performance could be improved a lot, and that starts and ends with the Wallabies’ defence.

Conceding 22 points in the first 17 minutes is as far from ideal as it gets, and the Wallabies cannot afford another opening defensive effort like that if they want to repeat their Johannesburg heroics.

The Springboks scored more than a point a minute in the opening quarter, because the Boks’ attack coach, Tony Brown, had done his homework on the Wallabies’ connected line speed defence.

While Andy Farrell and the British and Irish Lions worked hard to exhaust the Wallabies’ numbers and catch them short of players on the edges, the Springboks cut out the middleman and went direct.

The Boks’ attack relied on the Wallabies’ system working as it should, waiting back and showing them the outside.

However, the Springboks’ attack was already a step ahead early, having the inside attackers and wingers cut back in and expose a weakness in the system.

With the score already 10-nil in the first 11 minutes, the Springboks look to use the Wallabies’ structure against them.

Springboks attack 1

It all begins with towering lock Eben Etzebeth’s offload in centre field, on the 43 metre line. His ability to stand in the tackle gives halfback Grant Williams the quickest of recycles and puts the Springboks on the front foot.

In this instance, the Lions would’ve just run hard lines, attempting to manufacture a hole in midfield or run their winger at the Wallabies’ winger and look to peel off metres and set a ruck.

This is where the attention to detail and genius of Brown shines. Outside centre Jesse Kriel attacks the line, hitting the ball at pace and in doing so exposes the mismatch in centre field with the Wallabies’ Nic White.

By the time Kriel meets a Wallaby defender, he has made around 15 metres and manages to get the pass away, and this is where Brown’s plan reveals itself.

Instead of trying to keep Springbok No.7, Peter Steph Du Toit, on the outside, Kriel veers out to meet the Wallabies’ winger head-on, soaking up the apparent space outside him for the two-on-one.

PSTD cuts in, running into the gap left by the unaware inside Wallaby defenders, who realise too late they have left their backfield brutally exposed.

The backrower is then followed inwards by the No.12, Andre Esterhuizen, and the giant centre strolls in for an easy first Test-match try.

Brown and the Springboks analysed the Wallabies’ attack so well that they created an attack that had the Wallabies’ shape work for them.

Springboks attack 2

Here in the five minutes before halftime, the Springboks came dangerously close to scoring again in the right-hand corner, through almost an identical attack pattern, leading to another line break.

This time it’s a pod play which brings the Wallabies’ defence up, and Springbok captain, Siya Kolosi, runs the outside line towards the sideline that the Wallabies’ defence is trying to force attackers to run to.

All Kolisi has to do is fall and turn inwards to pop the ball to ever-present Esterhuizen, who charges onto the ball, making even more metres, and had he copied the technique of his captain perfectly, he likely would have put lightning-quick winger Kurt-Lee Arendse away for another try.

A try there, likely buries the Wallabies for good.

Although the Wallabies conceded one try through the middle and another from biting-in in defence and leaving the corner free, the Springboks’ pattern of overs-lines running followed by an inside line and pop was regularly the most potent for the Wallabies’ connected line-speed defence.

The Wallabies must ensure that until the ball is dead, they keep hunting on the inside and watch the Springboks players who are coming through. Conversely, the Wallabies managed to get outside the Springboks’ defence on several occasions, which led to mass line breaks, forcing the Springboks to scramble.

The Wallabies struggled in the first 20 minutes to crack the Springbok line, often getting caught flat-footed, behind the gainline, and without anywhere to go but to put boot to ball downfield.

However, as early as the 22nd minute, the side had started to correctly gauge the speed and coverage of the Boks’ line speed.

Wallabies attack 1

In the first phase, Will Skelton pulls back to Joseph-Aukuso Suaalii, who gets turned inside by the aggressive rush of the Springboks’ defence, but the Wallabies’ game drivers see that there are acres of space to be exposed out wide.

As with Etzebeth’s stand and delivery in the tackle above, Suaalii’s quick recycle does the same, forcing the Springboks’ defence to realign and just for a second, lose some of its speed.

The headgear-wearing Springbok winger, Edwill van der Merwe, correctly completes the Boks’ rush but fails to make the dominant tackle necessary in this instance, and a slick one-two punch from Wallaby no.10 James O’Connor and outside centre Len Ikitau leaves winger Dylan Pietsch to walk in a try in the corner, after being unmarked.

O’Connor and Co. realised here that the cover in the backfield isn’t tracking as hard and fast as it should be, and if they can get it outside that last defender, they can make some serious meterage.

WAL2

This is a great example of how badly the rush defence structure, if fully committed to off set-piece, can be exposed.

By this point, the Wallabies have dialled in how high van der Merwe gets, and Max Jorgensen throws a great cut-out ball to the replacement No.23, Andrew Kellaway.

Although he is not a speedster like his teammates, Kellaway manages to run 30 metres completely untouched before he meets a Springbok defender.

The Boks’ scramble is commendable, managing to shut down fullback Tom Wright and Kellaway as well as cover Jorgensen before diffusing the kick through, resulting in a line drop-out.

However, the lineout which launched this attack was on the Wallabies’ own 39 metre line; this crusade into the Boks’ half bore plenty of fruit for the visitors, and it all came down to clear space identification and execution.

This then became the blueprint for O’Connor in the second half as he adjusted his footspeed and managed to find his men out wide.

While the Wallabies were exposed early by some great defensive analysis by Bok attack coach Tony Brown, who had them dialled before a ball had even been kicked,

The Wallabies’ own feat of readjusting to this frailty on the fly was more impressive. The Wallabies daring to push the pass as well as execute flawlessly could have been a double-edged sword, but the Springboks got loose with standards and their core principles, which aided the Wallabies’ free-flowing rugby.

While both teams will have been filthy with their defensive efforts overall, it is perhaps the Wallabies who arrive in Cape Town with the most gained from a week’s review.

Cape Town is set to serve up a wet surface for the two sides on Saturday, so a lower-scoring affair can be expected with both sides’ defences being aided by the conditions.

Regardless, the Wallabies must plug the leaks on the inside of their defence, which the Boks exposed, and the Springboks must work harder to get square and make their tackles and scramble harder when the rush is beaten.

This is particularly so because the Wallabies are unleashing speedster Corey Toole on the wing. Because with Toole, it’s a matter of when, not if, he finds himself in space, what he can do with this space at Test level is yet to be seen.