Wallaby coach Michael Cheika - talks a good game but that's about it. Photo / AAP
Wallaby coach Michael Cheika - talks a good game but that's about it. Photo / AAP
Call this Robbie Deans revisited - Australian rugby must call for foreign aid, again.
In other words, it's time for an overseas coach. Australian rugby is in such trouble, and so reliant on good international results, that it can't afford not to consider going offshore to lure the very bestit can find. And there aren't any domestic Aussie coaches with close to enough runs on the board.
An All Black team stung by its second half unravelling will look to go on the rampage in Dunedin.
Coach Michael Cheika must shoulder a huge portion of the Sydney blame with poor selections - the benching of Tevita Kuridrani chief among those - central to the first half shocker. And tactically - haven't got a clue what they were up to.
Australia's 20-point defeat in the opening test was far worse than it actually looked, and not only because it might help the hopeless Cheika survive. Beauden Barrett was wrongly denied a try and Israel Folau incorrectly awarded one in the second half.
The controversial Deans appointment may not have worked out in terms of results, but it doesn't mean future foreign appointments should be canned.
Australian rugby has made one hard but necessary decision, cutting their number of Super Rugby teams back to four. Now they need to keep swinging the axe and get rid of Cheika, who has got them on a fast track to oblivion.
The Wallabies always flourished, or survived, on smarts. And these Wallabies aren't the bozos Cheika has turned them into. He's all mouth, quite frankly.
The world's best coaches are almost all New Zealanders. Australia needs to snare one of them, on a long term deal.
Someone like Ireland's Joe Schmidt, probably the smartest coach in world rugby, could work wonders. Apart from the All Blacks, Australia still has the best attacking potential. It's not as if there is nothing to work with.
Yes, Super Rugby tells you that the Aussies are in despair. But Cheika is making the situation look far worse than it actually is.
The All Blacks lost their way for about half and hour in the second half, enabling the Wallabies to latch on to some soft tries and probably save Cheika's job for now.
The All Blacks' first half performance was about as good as test rugby gets, but they didn't meet much resistance. At halftime, they were on track to win by maybe 60 points.
Had they done so, Cheika would have struggled to survive.
Instead, they fashioned an unlikely revival as the All Blacks failed to re-group and control the tempo of the game. And so the Cheika era lives on, to fight a few more days than is wise for the Wallabies.
The Australian coach has an aggressive demeanour and talks a good game, but the results - particularly against the big guns - are pretty hopeless, and don't appear to have any upward swing involved. He even lost a home test to Scotland, although Scotland are respectable.
Speaking of Scotland, their former coach Vern Cotter comes to mind. Now there's a subject. New Zealand coaches dominate the international landscape.
In real professional sport like the English Premier League (and even European rugby), nationality has very little to do with coaching appointments. All teams and clubs know they need the very best.
The only Aussie coach with a high world rating right now is Eddie "England" Jones. And there is a queue of Kiwis ahead of Cheika.
Brilliant Joe Moody on the burst in the crushing Bledisloe Cup win on Saturday night. Photo / Brett Phibbs
• Joe Moody is well on the way to being the best loosehead prop I've seen in New Zealand rugby. He has a lot more energy than the redoubtable Tony Woodcock, and was sensational in the Sydney test. He did it all, from a desperation diving tackle to a mighty charge with the ball. Until now, the 1987 World Cup winner Steve McDowall - a groundbreaking prop because of what he did around the field - was the best I've seen. Moody is a rare thing - a prop star in the making.
