LONG READ 'Whisper it, but the Wallabies could out-scrum the British and Irish Lions this summer'

Walk a few hundred yards north from the Place de la Concorde on the Rue Royale, and chances are your rugby nose will sniff out a bar that bills itself as ’Le Temple du Rugby à Paris’. Its anglophile name is No scrum, no win, but it has a quintessentially Top 14 maxim, ‘Inspiré par la force de la mêlée’ engraved deep in its French rugby soul.

If any one area of the game won the British and Irish Lions a series in Australia the last time around, it was the scrum. Wallaby tight-head Ben Alexander struggled to cope with the set-piece strength of English powerhouse Alex Corbisiero, and after conceding his third penalty in only the 25^th minute of the game, the French connoisseur of scrum officiating Romain Poite lost patience and sent him from the field.

You lose the strongman who should be anchoring your entire forward effort, and that weakness in one specific area of the game spreads like wildfire. It can become a crushing blow to team morale. I predicted it would happen before the game:

“M. Poite has a reputation in the northern hemisphere for sniffing out the weakest member of the six front-rowers and penalising him mercilessly. He is also a ‘three-and-out’ ref who will not hesitate to yellow-card his victim after the third penalty for repeated infringement.”

‘No scrum, no win’. Speak it in a whisper, but the boot may just be on the other foot this time around. It depends on a raft of ‘what ifs’. What if Joe Schmidt junks his previous selection policy and anoints Europe-based behemoth Will Skelton as king of the Wallaby second row? What if Taniela Tupou can work himself out of the most spectacular slump of his professional career? What if the Wallaby coaches can persuade all three Test-match officials to police Leinster loose-head Andrew Porter as harshly as Wayne Barnes in the World Cup quarter-final?

A lot needs to fall into place, and many a doubt resolved for the Wallabies to field that physically imposing right side of the scrum, with upwards of 280kg offering the very opposite of ‘the Ben Alexander effect’. Will Skelton be seen as a starter, with his club La Rochelle currently lying seventh and just outside Top 14 play-off qualification? Even one round of les barrages will occupy Skelton until 14 June, six days before the Lions tour begins.

Schmidt has recently been coy about the prospect of overseas-based players representing the national team.

“We don’t want to preclude anyone, we want to be as strong as we can be for a pinnacle event,” he said.

“What we do know is if there are close calls, we will reward the guys who have committed their future to Rugby Australia. It’s not just about the pinnacle event of the British and Irish Lions, but also springboarding into the 2027 World Cup, which is magnified in importance because it’s here in Australia.”

The La Rochelle leviathan is an invaluable asset because of his own physical talent, and for the impact he has made on Leinster forwards in the past – there are after all, no fewer than six Leinster tight forwards in the Lions squad. But he has also been a galvanizing presence for the man he packs behind in the scrum, Tupou.

As ex-Wallaby head coach Eddie Jones attested in a recent Roar interview, “One of the guys who undoubtedly has the most influence [on Tupou] is Skelton. In that World Cup squad in 2023, Will had him up every morning at 5 o’clock when they were training together. And then it’s not the coach telling him to do it, it’s another player, so he feels responsible.”

Motivating Tupou is one of the biggest problems facing Schmidt on the runway to the Lions series. ‘Nella’ has lost his starting spot at the Waratahs and slipped behind journeyman Dan Botha in the pecking order. He is currently paid AUD $1.2m per annum but there is no sign of a new deal from Rugby Australia in the final year of his contract. As Tupou told The Sydney Morning Herald in a forthright interview only last week:

“If I am being honest with myself, I’ve no chance of making that [Wallaby] team [to play the Lions], because of how I’ve been performing this year.

“I really think it’s mental, because I start to second-guess myself, and start asking questions. ‘Can I do this? Is this for me?’ Or, ‘am I good?’ You start playing in your head.

“Sometimes, I go out there, and I finish the game, and I’m like, ‘F*** me, do I know how to play rugby anymore?’

“It feels like I just don’t know what I’m doing, you know? I am nervous to do things I used to do well, I used to just be running the ball, and just offloading, and just able to do things.

“I hope I can find a solution, because I want to play well for the ‘Tahs, and I want to hopefully get back in the Wallabies one day.”

With demons running riot in the Tongan Thor’s head, there is little chance of him renewing his evident synergy with Skelton fore and aft, or combining with Allan Alaalatoa in that highly effective one-two punch the Wallabies are able to field at tight-head with both men fully fit and firing.

What magnifies the importance of Skelton and Tupou’s presence in the Wallaby tight five this July is the amount of negative attention [rightly or wrongly] the likely Lions starting loose-head, Porter, has received for his own scrummaging technique.

It all came to a head in the World Cup quarter-final against New Zealand, with Porter penalised at two critical scrums when Ireland were the dominant force, but the decision-making process of referee Barnes had already been primed by the All Blacks coaches.

As none other than 2013 Lions scrum hero Corbisiero explained on X, “Porter has a history/perception of scrummaging on the [inward] angle/poor shape, All Blacks would’ve raised it to refs and then used tactics to go after it”. If it was undoubtedly an excellent tactic by New Zealand to focus attention on Porter’s angle, it is also true their own scrummaging emphasis left the Leinsterman with no choice about where to go. As ex-Leinster and Ireland tight-head Mike Ross indicated: “New Zealand tried to create a three-on-two, and the way they did that was with [loose-head] Ethan De Groot pulling his head outside of Tadhg [Furlong] and trying to slip outside him. And then [Tyrel] Lomax was turning in and angling across the scrum, trying to create a three-on-two to leave Porter behind him. Porter is penalised [while] going forward, which – if that’s a French referee – you’re getting those calls.”

If the tight-head angles in, the opposing loose-head has to follow him – at least, if he is worth his professional salt.

The other problem mentioned in passing by ‘Corbs’ is the low, tucked position of Porter’s left arm. Porter does not have the shoulder flex of a Joe Marler or a Joe Moody, so he can bind all the way round to his opponent’s right hip. Porter’s superstrength is he is comfortable in a ‘squat’ position and able to release energy through it. The problem is referees often perceive that low left arm as a picture admitting weakness, and a tendency to collapse.

That is what happened to Porter in the Six Nations game against Wales, when he gave up two of Ireland’s four penalties against an unheralded Welsh front row.

Welsh tight-head WillGriff John does little more than ‘pancake’ straight into the Cardiff turf, but referee Christophe Ridley’s perception is established and Porter cops the blame.

From the Aussie perspective, Tupou is the man best qualified to achieve a similar outcome in the Test series. The following clips come from the big man’s Super Rugby Pacific round four performance against the Force and in opposition to Wallaby hopeful Marley Pearce.

New South Wales hooker Dave Porecki binds up first on his tight-head, rather than on the loose-head as is more usual. That tight bind shows where the pressure point will come, and it is accentuated by Tupou’s angle just before ‘set’ is called: his hips are out and his angle is inwards, compared to Tom Robertson on the other side, who is square and straight with hips tucked in.

The impact of Nella’s set-up was obvious at a couple of later scrums.

With his starting angle and Pearce’s bind as short as Porter’s, it is relatively easy for the Tupou to either move through him and leave Pearce behind in the first instance, or pull him straight to deck in the second.

Although there are now fewer of them than ever before, the scrums in this Lions series could yet prove as influential as those in the decisive third Test 12 years ago. Moreover, refereeing perception of the set-piece will be every bit as important now as it was back then.

If they want to hurt the Lions, it will be a case of ‘do as you would be done by’ for Schmidt’s Wallabies. He has the possibility to pick a huge tight-head side of the scrum – but a mix of selection policy, Tupou’s lack of form and a change in officiating attitude to Porter may stop it moving from the planning blackboard on to the pitch. A lot of ‘what ifs’ need to translate into hard reality for the pub maxim to matter: No scrum, no win.