A friend rang after the Wallabies defeated the Springboks at Durban, their first victory in a Tri Nations Test in South Africa in eight years, and said: "The way things are going Robbie Deans will be canonised before Mary MacKillop."
Now, after the Springboks massacred the Wallabies at Johannesburg inflicting the biggest losing margin (45 points) on them since 1899, the sainthood process will have to wait - like that of Mary MacKillop - for at least one more miracle.
Last week Deans talked about the worrying tendency of the Wallabies to "undulate" in their performances. "The key now," he told reporters after the Durban triumph, "is to back up." Once again, though, the Wallabies have backed up all the way to the corner and received the mother of all thrashings.
This long-time tendency of the Wallabies to "undulate" and not "to back up" a succession of strong winning performances has its origins, I believe, in the restricted amount of tough rugby the best players are exposed to as youngsters.
The GPS tournament in Sydney, for example, is already over. But in Christchurch, to take an example of what happens in New Zealand, the school rugby competition will be going on for many more weeks in a tournament that spans the entire Crusaders region. The strong Christchurch rugby schools play each other and teams from Nelson Boys College, Marlborough Boys College, Timaru BHS and the West Coast. This system applies all over New Zealand.
The non-government elite schools and the big government schools play each other, unlike the Sydney/Queensland practice. And, just as importantly, the best young rugby players learn how to win real away matches where they are taken out of their comfort zone, a habit that is transferred to the senior NZ teams.
Journalists are prophets of the past and it is obvious now that most of the selection changes made between Durban and Johannesburg were mistakes. Tatafu Polota-Nau is a terrific player but his lineout throwing, especially, is not up to standard. He also got rattled by the pressure early on. He might be more valuable to the Wallabies as a hooker/prop in the John Smit mould, or developed as a loose forward where he played successfully some years ago.
Timana Tahu was a failure at inside-centre. He started well enough with a long, crisp pass to his outside backs. But then mishandled and, more importantly, was exposed time and time again in his tackling and his defensive alignments.
League stars, in general, never master the defensive patterns in union. Ryan Cross has been a consistently effective defender but Wendell Sailor, Lote Tuqiri, Mat Rogers and now Tahu have struggled to make their tackles. Phil Waugh, Matt Dunning (who was hooked very early on in the Test) and Adam Ashley-Cooper (at fullback) did not justify their selections as starting players.
The case of Waugh is interesting. He is enthusiastic but too small and one-dimensional in his play to be an effective Test player. It continually amazes me that Wallabies selectors, even Deans who is an extremely shrewd judge of a player, overlook the all-round skills of Stephen Hoiles. He was the stand-out loose forward for Australia A. After George Smith, Hoiles is the obvious next choice as the Wallabies "fetcher" and bench player, rather than Waugh.
Finally, the altitude question. In 1963 when for the first and only time the Wallabies won back-to-back Tests in South Africa, one of them at Johannesburg, they spent 15 days playing and training at altitude.
One the immortals of 1963, Jim Boyce, argues that this time was a crucial factor in the 11-9 Test victory. The Wallabies should have gone to Johannesburg on Sunday, therefore, the day after the Durban victory to get in as much acclimatisation at altitude as possible.
There is one (perhaps?) bright side to the Wallabies' tendency to undulate. They were belted by the All Blacks at Auckland and then came back to win brilliantly in South Africa. Now they've been belted by the Springboks. Will Brisbane in two weeks, when the Wallabies play the All Blacks, be the venue for Deans's sainthood miracle?
