Australian men’s rugby has a dream draw this year, a World Cup coming, a ‘new’ coach’s honeymoon, and a big question.
Who do we emulate? Why not Ireland?
The Irish have held the number one rugby ranking for 35 weeks, trailing only New Zealand, South Africa and England as frontrunners. Andy Farrell’s men have swept the Six Nations, beating every team by double figures, and nearly averaging a 4-1 try margin.
Why copy Ireland instead of other All Black challengers, the Boks and the French? And why copy anyone?
Well, Australia is currently ranked seventh and needs a template.
The brutal collision experts in France and South Africa do not provide Australia the best path. It is modest-sized Ireland who shows the way.
Rugby in Ireland, like in Australia, is not the most popular winter sport.
GAA holds a 21 percent share, soccer 19 percent, and rugby trails at 14 percent in Ireland; a position familiar to Australian rugby backers.
Ireland has about 5 million inhabitants; a smaller pool of potential players than Australia.
There are four professional rugby clubs in Ireland; three of them furnish the majority of the Test team. The Brumbies, Waratahs and Reds tend to staff the Wallabies in the main.
Ireland does not mock their private school breeding grounds, nor count it as a weakness that so many players come from a handful of top schools. Blackrock College has won the Leinster high school championship 70 times.
Australia has prime rugby schools, too, perhaps not as concentrated.
Rather than think of this as a flaw, it allows Ireland (and Australia) to teach a style, recognise talent, hone that talent into an academy setting, a system well known to an Australian, David Nucifora, who has built one of the best high performance units in rugby.
When rugby league is excluded, the two countries actually have similar player pools at the moment.
Both countries are modern democracies with low corruption; their rugby does not depend on the kind of ‘sugar daddies’ the Top 14 has. Analytics are common to Irish-Australian business; both have experienced sustained growth in GDP and clean capital.
The two countries share a history.
As for style, the Irish Grand Slam was built on a style which seems akin to the ‘Australian Way’ spoken of by Michael Cheika and now, Eddie Jones.
Ireland did not kick the most (that was France), passed more (897 passes in the Six Nations) than any team except Italy, was one of the weaker carrying teams (a low metre per carry and far fewer tackle busts than France and Scotland or even Italy); their style was built on high and fast ruck count with accurate kicking and passing.
There would be two big workons. Ireland were never carded in this year’s Six Nations, and were the least penalised at less than nine a match.
Recent vintages of the Wallabies have been profligate penalty teams and carded aplenty.
Eddie Jones can pick a Wallaby team which does come close to mirroring the best of the Six Nations, or even Ireland itself.
If a team including the likes of Hugo Keenan, Mack Hansen, Huw Jones, Sione Tuipulotu, Damian Penaud, Finn Russell, Caelan Doris, Josh van der Flier, Tadhg Beirne, James Ryan, Richie Gray, Cyril Baille and Dan Sheehan had to be Aussie-fied, it seems more feasible than, for example, Bok-ifying or Frenchifying the Wallabies.
Hansen and Tuipulotu are pretty Australian. Antoine Dupont and Tadhg Furlong would be fairly difficult to copy.
But Jordan Petaia, Hunter Paisami, Len Ikitau, Marika Koroibete, Quade Cooper, Rob Valetini, Pete Samu, Michael Hooper, Nick Frost, Rory Arnold, and Taniela Tupou match up fairly well with these stars, man for man.
A high ruck, wide attack (until the red zone), kick-pass, ultra fit, fighting spirit Wallaby format is easy to envision, because it was the kind of style that was at the root of prior Aussie success.
Copy Ireland. It is the most similar to the Australian way.
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