One should always call a spade a spade, and the Wallabies were truly awful in the last quarter of their game in Santa Fe.
Capitulation is the only way to adequately describe that part of their performance, which resulted in the biggest defeat ever suffered by the Wallabies in their long and proud history.
One great performance doesn’t make a team, nor does one terrible performance destroy one. This match will not dictate Joe Schmidt’s reign, but it will be part of the history books, hopefully forever.
The 20-3 point lead the Wallabies cultivated early was impressive, especially considering the side was without some star power and recent standout players.
Contrary to what many believe, the first 30 minutes were far from perfect, and the signs of defensive frailty were evident as early as the first minute of the match.
Even though the true repercussions of the defensive disunity, system diversion, and discord didn’t come until much later, the signs were there, and Stan Sport’s Morgan Turinui summed it up perfectly after 76 minutes.
“The Wallabies are chasing individually, it’s 15 men on attack versus 15 individuals,” said Turinui as Los Pumas replacement backrower Joaquin Oviedo scored his second try to make it 58-27 in the 76th minute.
At first, one would think it could have been the blurry eyes from the 4:30am wake up, but upon a rewatch, after a coffee or two, it was blatant the Wallabies were not defending as a unit for much of the game.
Some of this is down to the lack of cohesion in the side, but it occurred so frequently and amongst players who have performed and played together before that it could only have been an overzealous desire to want to make an impact and a lack of focus.
Pressure can do funny things to the brain, ‘staying in system’ when the chips are down is a thing players learn with time.
At the weekend, far too many individuals were trying to solve the team’s problems.
While the rookies floundered about, the experienced players were no better, and most surprising of all, was seeing Len Ikitau’s hand in it all.
Ikitau is a great outside centre, he’s nearing world class status: his step always beats the first defender, his palm is powerful, and most of all his nous and ferocity in defence is second to none in Australia, but he had a shocker in Santa Fe.
GIF 1 Ikitau error 1
There are several issues in this clip, the first time the system is broken is Rob Valetini’s very hard and high rush.
He creates holes either side of himself and because he’s rushing too quickly, he can’t control his foot speed.
Los Pumas no.10 Tomas Albornoz easily shifted the ball out the back to beat Valetini with the pass, and Valetini at this point is chasing hard to get back to connect with Ikitau.
The Brumby pair have defended together a lot, in Super Rugby and at Test level for the Wallabies but in this instance, they are both at sixes and sevens.
Ikitau doesn’t trust Valetini to make the distance and so his shoulders turn inwards, and he squares up on fullback Juan Cruz Mallia.
The fullback knows he’s caught Ikitau flat-footed and gives a soft tip ball to French Top 14 winner Santiago Chocobares, who makes 40-metres in the process.
According to their system, they would’ve liked to concede perhaps 10 metres in this instance before being in a position to make a dominant tackle, instead, they concede a line break and 40m.
Ikitau error 2
Ten minutes later Ikitau is again in hot water as he breaks out of system.
Hamish Stewart does well to push off the incoming block runner and swim out to connect with Ikitau. He has that inside channel covered but only if Ikitau stays in system.
Again, Ikitau breaks out of the system and jams in on openside winger Bautista Delguy, coming from the outside in.
Ikitau is too high and is not back pedalling to give Stewart time to work across and therefore he gets beaten on the inside.
That inside channel is Stewart’s and had Ikitau trusted him he would’ve made the stop, as evidenced by his narrowly missed ankle tap attempt on Delguy.
Stay in system, stay in system, stay in system. But what is the system?
The Wallabies are operating a connected line speed defensive system.
This system is one of Laurie Fisher’s pride and joys, and he used it under Dave Rennie when he was employed midway through 2022 and embedded it heavily to great effect at the ACT Brumbies over many years.
In short, the system relies on water-tight connection, achieved by steady and controlled line speed.
The inside player must work hard to get up on the inside of the ball carrier and shepherd them outwards whilst also back pedalling, ensuring to never get in front of their inside man.
This gives the player outside them the confidence to also back pedal and it means they can focus on the player’s positioning outside them and adjust accordingly.
The system, unlike the rush defence system the Springboks operate, is willing to concede the meterage so long as a dominant hit can be made from the inside out to push the defender away from their supporting cleaners.
This last point is most crucial to the Wallabies’ demise, the inside man was rarely in a great position to make a dominant hit, the threat of going back inside was not live, meaning the Argentines always had two options.
ARGvAUS conceding metres
Conceding too much meterage was a big reason the Pumas got a roll on in the second half.
Here we see Argentina make 20m or so, the tackle should’ve been made at the halfway mark but instead the Pumas almost make it to 40m-line.
The Wallabies in the outside channel were too passive and back pedalled too far.
Ironically, one of the Wallabies best renditions of Fisher’s system came in the 71st minute, during the late onslaught.
ARGvAUS Good d system
What’s even more ironic is that the defensive line is broken to begin with and is then mended when Stewart trips over himself and then realigns.
Josh Flook holds until the attack is on top of him, Max Jorgensen sees this and adjusts accordingly, and Andrew Kellaway can make a square one-on-one tackle to halt the attack in a small eight metres corridor.
If just one player had broken the system and jammed or pushed high, then the Pumas would likely have scored there and then.
These next two clips show how the defensive discord, which was evident throughout the match resulted in the record scoreline as players began to tire.
They are a sequence, the mistakes in each clip are materially different, but both are equally as detrimental to the Wallabies defensive integrity.
ARGvAUS dogleg D
ARGvAUS result
In the first clip, the Pumas have just won a pilfer turnover and Jeremy Williams rushes up high to shut this down.
In isolation this would be okay, but he fails to notice he only has Kellaway outside him, while the Argentinians have a four man overlap, he’s caught in no man’s land.
The connected line speed system actually deals well with overlaps, because the patience and connectedness of the line tends to force the attacker’s hand to take contact in an unideal situation.
But because Williams rushes and is caught out the inside threat as mentioned earlier is now absent and allows the Pumas to run amok.
Williams job was to stay connected and bide time for his inside players to track across, but instead his mistake meant the tackle is made 30m downfield from where it should have been made.
The issue in the second clip is Langi Gleeson’s line speed, he’s too quick off the mark, looking for a dominant hit to arrest the Pumas’ momentum.
Again, it breaks out of system, it also fails to account for who he has around him.
Harry Wilson has had a 63-minute effort at this point and Allan Alaalatoa is not the most mobile of props, great endeavour from Gleeson but he misses his target completely.
Because he misses and Alaalatoa is late on the fold because he is partially part of the tackle, Oviedo scores his first try through the gap left by Gleeson.
It is a circus of errors with many more examples throughout the match, and many of them come in the first half.
Just look back at the 30th, 32nd, 34th minute, and even as soon after the halftime break as the 41st, not to mention the plethora of examples late in the second half.
It’s concerning because nothing changed from the first half to the second half regarding their defence.
The Pumas had obviously identified this as a weakness, as they attacked the wide channels early and frequently.
(Photo by Luciano Bisbal/Getty Images)
It showed a clear lack of voice and leadership amongst the backs during the game.
The inaccuracy and inexperience were on show and the depth issue was once again exposed, as there were several rookies making material mistakes throughout the game.
Currently, the Wallabies cannot afford to be without their best XV at this stage in their journey.
One bad game, or one bad half doesn’t undo all the good work, results, and improvements made under Schmidt.
This being said, the Wallabies have had a regular issue with their line speed.
Turinui described it during the July Tests as “passive”, the weekend’s showing illustrates another teething issue in the Wallabies development.
Some are rushing up harder than others and the inconsistency of application is what caused the errors at the weekend.
The Wallabies tackled at an average of 88 per cent before the weekend, so they are a defensively sound side but it unravelled at the weekend, to disastrous effect.
Case in point, the team’s defence is better than that, the team is better than that, period.
They’ve proved it against the best in the world in back-to-back performances, the Springboks scored less in their two Tests against the Wallabies than the Argentinians did in one.
If that doesn’t render the their performance at the weekend an abnormality, then what will?
This side has positives to grow from, week-in week-out, in attack, structure, defence, and kicking but you must call it for what it was, a terrible second half of footy and overall, an incomplete performance.
The Wallabies now have a week off to recharge before the Bledisloe, a series which will be about pride and mental fortitude as much as it will be about the rugby.