Rugby: It's time for the real deal

By WYNNE GRAY

This is the World Cup duel rugby supporters yearned for last year.

The curtain-raiser in Sydney last month was a classic, but today's encore shootout is the real deal. This is for the heavyweight rugby championship title for 2000 - all the silverware is on the line.

The winner will take the Bledisloe Cup and most certainly the Tri-Nations Cup.

The Wallabies deservedly took the fourth world crown in Cardiff last year and the French, also deservedly, won their place in that final at the expense of the All Blacks. But it deprived that tournament of a more absorbing contest, a chance to see the Southern Hemisphere superstars slug it out in neutral territory.

Sydney was a drooling spectacle of what might have been - the Wellington match will top off the suspended excitement.

It will deliver the absorbing answers to whether a better team, the Wallabies, can defeat an All Black side with more explosive individuals.

If there is any comfort in statistics for the All Blacks, the Wallabies have won just one of their last eight tests in New Zealand - in 1998 in Christchurch.

The preparation for the Wallabies will have been about harnessing their defensive screens against the attacking strengths of Jonah Lomu, Christian Cullen and Tana Umaga, while the All Blacks will have concentrated on brushing up their defence to nullify the Wallabies' layered play and organising a more cohesive forward possession platform to unleash their backs.

All Blacks coach Wayne Smith said yesterday that his side could not let thoughts of winning two trophies consume them today.

"We have done well this year because we have gone out and done the tasks without thinking too much about the pressure and the outcome," he said.

For some time Smith has been an admirer of the rugby league coaching philosophy of the Brisbane Broncos' Wayne Bennett. They have kept in regular contact, with Smith keen to adapt Bennett's coaching ideas to rugby union.

Success came with the Crusaders and already this season the All Blacks have shown progress with new strategies.

Smith likes the way Bennett anticipates how his next opponent will play and the way he designs his entire week round countering and outfoxing that style.

It may sound a risky concept if the opposition are good enough to second-guess or alter their ideas significantly, but Bennett's success rate signals his quality side and coaching appraisal.

One of Smith's commandments today must be taken from the coaching manual of one of his national and provincial predecessors, Alex Wyllie.

As Canterbury looked at a huge halftime deficit during the epic 1985 Ranfurly Shield game with Auckland, Wyllie strode on to the park, plonked a ball down in the middle of the players' huddle and brusquely said: "This is what it is all about - get your bloody hands on it," and strode off.

If there has been a disconcerting aspect for the All Blacks this year it has been their lack of possession. Defence and glittering individual tries have saved them from that paucity of possession.

But you have to wonder how many times in the national strip they can do a Crusaders on the Brumbies. The Wallabies have too much presence with the ball to think that they can be repelled consistently.

Once the All Blacks create some phase-play they have to be more patient than they have been. They need more composure about when to have a real crack or continue to build momentum. With the intensity and pace both sides have, chances will come if a team hangs on to the ball long enough.

There, the Wallabies look to have the advantage, with the interplay between George Gregan and Stephen Larkham the hinge to continual smooth transition among the loose-forward runners or the barrelling Daniel Herbert.

Gregan was ruffled last week against the Boks and it is almost unthinkable he will be disturbed two weeks in a row.

Another edge for the visitors appears to be from the bench, where Toutai Kefu, Jeremy Paul, Matt Cockbain and Ben Tune offer significant impact and suggest they will bring the Wallabies a rare recent victory in New Zealand.