RISING STARS: The Wallabies, pictured during their team photo ahead of Sunday’s Test against Samoa, look in good shape as the road to the World Cup begins. Picture: Brett Costello Source: The Daily Telegraph
PERFECT timing. The rising Wallabies have it, Kiwis have the jitters because their All Blacks never do and the uncertain Springboks may just be three years beyond their peak. In a twinkling, the rugby universe has spun from a Reds-tinted craze of fist-pumping, delirious trophy lifting and victory parades into a countdown to the World Cup.
Those rugby fans who always considered the showpiece tournament as a distant horizon will have it flooding their senses from now until Cup kick-off in 56 days.
In the same fortnight that the Reds were celebrating a record Super Rugby crowd of 52,113, organisers saluted the sale of the 1,000,000th ticket to New Zealand’s World Cup.
It is a staggering number. It is also a measure of the high stakes that the code in this country is playing for when fans tune in to the third biggest sporting event on the planet.
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Results in sudden-death matches, Australia’s playing style, fresh superstars, ageing stars fading and whether there is a new engine for the code’s growth … everything is on the line. Former All Blacks halfback Justin Marshall knows the ferocity of the spotlight and expectations on the world-beaters who are at the heart of the New Zealand psyche.
He still remembers that a venomous fan penned “LOSERS” on his baggage at Auckland airport when he returned from the 1999 World Cup after the favoured All Blacks were tripped in the semi-finals.
His summation of the “nightmare” that can build out of he Reds’ victory over New Zealand’s flagship Crusaders last weekend in the Super Rugby finale was simple.
“It’s Rugby World Cup year and cue the awakening of that great slumbering giant called Australian rugby,” Marshall wrote in Wellington’s Dominion Post.Stalwart lock Nathan Sharpe has been part of the Wallaby set-up since 2002 and he has sensed strongly the potency boiling in the current crop for this World Cup.
“Timing. The last two years have been very beneficial for Australian rugby. I see a lot of potentially great players coming through and the timing of the World Cup is right for us,” Sharpe, 33, said.
A team’s awakening needs gun players but the full package comes with the right mindset and precise execution at the crunch moments.
As Wallabies trump Will Genia puts it: “Going from competing against the best to knowing you can beat them.”
It was amusing being at the press conference to announce the 40-man Wallabies squad last Sunday just 12 hours after the Reds had hit their ultimate high.
Were the Wallabies going to copy the Reds? Were the Reds … sorry the Wallabies … going to win the World Cup? They are inextricably linked. Genia and Quade Cooper are vastly superior players because they have spent so much time with the Wallabies over the past two years. They will also be better Wallabies for all they have achieved at the Reds. Genia has played 53 top-level games over the past two years, 22 Tests and 31 Super Rugby games. That’s 53 games of split-second decisions and most of them beside Cooper.
“You learn from being in different circumstances,” Genia said. “Once you are in them often enough, you are going to make that right call more often, not the wrong one.”
Everyone expected Cooper to make one catastrophic blooper to cost the Reds a game somewhere in Super Rugby. It never came, not in 18 matches. That’s his new maturity.
What did England’s Will Greenwood say to Wallaby Elton Flatley after his two nerveless penalty goals to keep the 2003 World Cup final alive.
“Balls as big as a house,” Greenwood said.
That poise and polish at big moments is everything and it’s been building within a wider vein of golden talent. It is what high-class flanker David Pocock and Kurtley Beale have built. It’s what came shining through in James O’Connor in Hong Kong last October when he scored the late try and serenely kicked the conversion that slayed the All Blacks at last.
“It’s the whole vibe of the team at the moment. There are a lot of young guys, new faces. It’s time for us now to step up and take the opportunity,” Beale said.
Yes, Cooper and Genia could win Australia a World Cup but everything around them has to be in Rolls-Royce order too.
Unscarred youth is one thing. You still need scarred, ear-mashed old heads in the pack to go toe-to-toe with England, likely World Cup semi-final rivals, and the All Blacks.
That’s why Sunday’s Test against Samoa is meaningful. It could launch giant lock Sitaleki Timani as the Tongan X-factor that Willy Ofahengaue (1991) and Toutai Kefu (1999) gave Australia’s two previous World Cup triumphs. Or it could re-ignite Dan Vickerman.
The pillar who had many of the Wallabies’ scrum issues licked is out of the Cup. Finding a front-row solution to cover for prop Benn Robinson, cut down by a devastating knee injury this week, will cause angst all the way through the upcoming Tri-Nations, mostly notably against the All Blacks in Auckland (August 6) and Brisbane (August 27). Every team has its issues, some almost imperceptible. Decorated All Blacks fullback Mils Muliaina, at 30, looks to have lost a metre of pace.
The ‘Boks still can’t work out how to fit their best skipper (John Smit) and their best hooker (Bismarck du Plessis) in the starting pack because they play the same position.
South Africa will be in serious decline when their run ends at this World Cup. The likes of Smit, Victor Matfield, Bakkies Botha, Fourie du Preez and Jean de Villiers will bow out at that moment.
Australia’s 1991 World Cup winners could not peak again four years later. Smit’s South Africans have that same feeling in 2011.
Wallabies v All Blacks in a World Cup final in Auckland on October 23.
Perfect timing if you have a ticket.
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