Michael Cheika’s tricks not enough in the end for Australia

The revolution is going to have to wait. Two playmakers. Two opensides. A coach with two brains. Add it all together and it is still not enough to beat the best there has ever been.

The transformation Australian made from the dark times under the coaching of Robbie Deans and Ewen McKenzie to World Cup runners up has been startling. The juggernaut may have run out of puff right at the last, but Australia deserve respect.

Part of the genius of Michael Cheika, the Australia coach, was to get all his best players on the field. Sounds simple, but it was anything but.

Some of it required administrative change. Would the Wallabies have been anything like the force they were this year, and more specifically at this competition, without the nous of Matt Giteau and Drew Mitchell in the backline? Highly unlikely.

Cheika had to ask for the constitution to be redrawn to get those two exiles in. All he had to do to get David Pocock and Michael Hooper into the same XV was to write a new tactics book.

Much has been said about the move to get two scavenging No 7s onto the field. The former Australia captain Nathan Sharpe, for one, reckons Cheika’s tactics might have “revolutionised” the way they game is played.

Maybe it has. But New Zealand showed there is still plenty of mileage in the old method yet.

The All Blacks play a basic game. Simple rugby. Winning rugby. Done right, it is unbeatable. Cheika could exhaust his book of tricks, and it would still not be enough if players like Richie McCaw, Dan Carter and Ma’a Nonu are firing for the other side.

Even Pocock was unable to resist in the final at Twickenham, as well as he tried. Just after New Zealand posted the first points of the game, Juilan Savea broke down the left touchline.

Given his pace, Savea would have broken away from most wings in that position. Had any wing got as close to him as Pocock managed – which was little more than arm’s length - they would have been brushed off, given Savea’s hulking power.

Yet Pocock both felled him, and turned the ball over in one motion. It was extraordinary.

Not long after, he won a breakdown penalty in front of his own posts as New Zealand pressed for the opening try. But it was all one-way traffic. Pocock stole possession as often as he could, but it was never enough.

Tellingly, Pocock was the nearest chaser to Beauden Barrett when he touched down New Zealand’s final try. By that point, the man wearing the Wallabies No 8 shirt had two black eyes – albeit fading, as they were from previous battles – and a nosebleed that was fresh. The Australians had finally been battered into submission.

Some injuries to key men counted against them, too.

Kane Douglas and Giteau have been generals of the Cheika revolution. Both went to first half injuries. Once they were gone, Australia’s resources were starting to be shown up for what they are: solid – but nothing like as deep as their Tasman rivals.

“They’re the world champions and they deserve to be that way,” Cheika said in his television interview after the game. “There is a no excuse mentality, that’s what I want in my team

“[New Zealand] have been the best team since the last World Cup, we wanted to challenge them as best we could. I thought we did that, but we still came up short.”

pradley@thenational.ae

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