How we won it: The Wallabies
It's hard to imagine that it is coming up to 20 years since the winning of the 1991 Rugby World Cup. And the actual planning of the success went back to 1989. A critical aspect of the success was the putting together of the jigsaw puzzle which are the individual players required to win a major sporting event. In 1989 we had two disappointing outcomes where the learning from our defeats was hugely important to our 91 success.
The first was the loss to the British and Irish Lions in the three-test series. In the first test in Sydney we won clearly and the Lions quickly realised they would have to change their tactics to upset the Wallabies. The result was to turn up the physicality in the next two tests. They went on to win the next two tests narrowly and I had no qualms with the rough-house tactics even though I was the focus of the bulling at Ballymore in Brisbane. But they did us a huge favour as we soon realised that a few changes would have to be made in our front 8 largely to be able to go tete a tete with the opposition should tough tactics be employed. Put simply we needed some more starch.
Then at the end of 1989 we went away for a two-test series in France. We played wonderful rugby in the first test dominating the French, however we were miserable in the second making a million simple mistakes and handing the match to our opposition. In the off season we focused on our inconsistency and realised that to win a World Cup we would need to change our culture from a team desperate to win and scoreboard focused to a team which individually did their job, trusted the guys around them to do their job (the process as we called it) and let the scoreboard look after itself.
In the two years before the playing of the RWC many key players were introduced to the Wallabies. The likes of Tim Horan, Jason Little, Willie Offahengaue, Phil Kearns, Tony Daly, Ewen McKenzie and John Eales became key team members during these important years. For mine, great rugby teams often have a blend of seasoned experienced players in key positions and a bunch of young enthusiastic newcomers who are prepared to damn the torpedoes full speed ahead. And we had this in spades.
