In 28 days, Ireland will face the might of New Zealand in Chicago. With the second Bledisloe Cup Test being played in Perth on Saturday (10.45am Irish time), in what has been the most competitive and entertaining Rugby Championship ever staged, Ireland must prepare for the coming of an energised southern hemisphere.
Across this Rugby Championship, there have been two unique aspects that have dominated every game.
Firstly, there has been an almost revolutionary implementation of positive attacking strategies from all four teams – in every match – creating exceptionally entertaining rugby. Secondly, this philosophy has empowered a stream of emerging young talent to strut their precocious skills across the tournament. These fine young players will soon be appearing at the Aviva for Irish rugby fans to enjoy.
We first saw the New Zealand scrumhalf Cameron Roigard in the pool matches during the last World Cup. Since that time, his understanding and mastery of his craft has skyrocketed.
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He is another in the long tradition of world-class New Zealand 9s. From Justin Marshall to Aaron Smith, remembering that Jamison Gibson-Parks’s foundational rugby education was also in the ‘Shakey Isles’, Roigard has a slice of all these great scrumhalves in his play.
Athletically strong like Marshall, with a scintillating pass like Smith and Gibson-Park, it is Roigard’s outstanding running game that has him as the leading scrumhalf in the southern hemisphere.
A beneficiary of Roigard’s exceptional play has been Billy Proctor, the recently capped New Zealand winger. Like many of the new generation of young outside backs across the Rugby Championship, Proctor is not a behemoth, bludgeoning over his opponents.
Like Australia’s Max Jorgensen, there is a cadre of smaller backline players, with exceptional speed, agility and footwork that have emerged on the international stage.
At 5ft 11in in the old speak and weighing only 87 kilos, he is not a Jonah Lomu look-a-like. Proctor’s exceptional skills were honed in the New Zealand Sevens programme and he is a Paris Olympian. Which is another example of how shortsighted the IRFU were when they cut their men’s Sevens programme.
After Chicago, Ireland’s next southern hemisphere opponent will be perhaps the most improved in the championship.
The power behind Australia’s progress has been the huge improvement in standards from the Wallaby pack.
The maturing of their 25-year-old secondrower Nick Frost to become the centre piece of their lineout has been at the heart of the Wallabies’ progress.
I first saw Frost when he was 15 and even at that tender age, he stood at 6ft 9in. He was then the New South Wales’ under-16 100m hurdles champion. He was also attracting interest from American college basketball programmes, but thankfully he loved rugby.
Frost’s story tells you much about what has been wrong with Australian rugby below the professional teams for many years. On meeting Frost, I immediately rang New South Wales Rugby, where I had worked for a decade. Before I was head coach of the Waratahs, I ran their elite talent pathways programmes.
I told them I had just seen the most athletic Australian secondrow prospect since John Eales and for them to get him into their elite player pathway.
Years passed. When they finally contacted Frost, it was nine months after he had signed with the Canterbury Crusaders academy in New Zealand.
Ridiculously, he was not selected to play for Australian Schools. Perhaps the two years he spent out of the Australian system and learning in New Zealand was the best thing for his development, as the Australian system was so broken.
Now playing for the Brumbies, he has emerged not only a world-class lineout exponent, but his extreme athleticism sees him as a highly effective ball carrier and a dynamic defender.
Out wide, outside centre Joseph-Aukuso Suaalii is Australia’s underutilised superstar.
After representing Australian Schools at rugby, Suaalii immediately switched to the enormity of Rugby League in Sydney.
When he was lured back to union, his first senior game since leaving school was a player of the match performance at Twickenham when the Wallabies defeated England. Like something out of a movie, Suaalii dominated England despite having never played a single senior game of rugby. A simply unprecedented scenario.
Here is one of my only criticisms of Joe Schmidt as the Wallabies coach. His game plans have not maximised Suaalii’s immense talent. Far too often, Suaalii has been condemned to clearing out rucks rather than carrying the ball.
You don’t hire Michelangelo to paint the backyard fence. Suaalii is an artist who needs a canvas.
If the Wallabies give Suaalii far more possession with time and space, he is a match winner. With the ball in hand, he can light up the Aviva.
However, it is the new running game from the Springboks that may prove to be Ireland’s highest hurdle.
Playing with a radically different attack to their traditional game plan, the Boks have selected a radically different outhalf, and the precocious skills of Sacha Fienberg-Mngomezulu have unlocked the huge potential inside the athleticism of the Springboks backline.
In what has been his breakout international season, Fienberg-Mngomezulu has been empowered to use his backline at every opportunity.
Unlike the recent past, the Boks have been a joy to watch.
Fienberg-Mngomezulu also possesses astounding individual attacking skills. Last week against Argentina, he scored three tries, with 13 ball carries beating 11 defenders, running over 182 meters and scoring 37 points.
Those are staggering numbers for an international outhalf.
Another major beneficiary of the Boks’ newly minted running game is their 22-year-old outside centre Canan Moodie.
Tall and smoothly athletic, his moves are reminiscent of the great Wallaby World Cup winning outside centre Jason Little. Moodie displays the same supreme attacking skills that all great outside centres possess. He can beat his defending centre with hard running lines on their inside, or burn them with pace and footwork on the outside. He has made some excellent defenders look out of their depth.
These exciting young players and their attacking tactics will be arriving at the Aviva in a matter of weeks. Which makes this November one of Ireland’s most challenging for many years.
