Australian coach Joe Schmidt admitted his team has cornucopian issues to work on ahead of their rematch with South Africa in Perth this coming Saturday.
The Wallabies, after their four-match winning run, got a ‘rude awakening’ in the opening match of the Rugby Championship – losing 7-33 to the back-to-back World Cup champion South African team in Brisbane at the weekend.
The Springboks scored five tries to one as they crushed the Wallabies to set the early pace in the Southern Hemisphere championship.
After leading 21-0 at half-time with three converted tries, they crossed twice more in the second period as the Wallabies ran out of steam in the face of a fierce South African assault.
The only Australia try came late in the match when the Springboks were reduced to 13 men – following yellow cards to Malcolm Marx and Marco van Staden.
Schmidt said the margin of the loss is not his biggest concern.
“The performance is what we really need to focus on and get a number of the elements more competitive,” he said, looking forward to the Round Two encounter in the West Australian capital.
He said they were well beaten in all of the collision areas.
“We struggled in the breakdown, they got some early traction from their scrum penalties,” Schmidt said.
“I felt we defended the line-out maul reasonably well in the first half.
“The one [maul try] they did get, with the aerial transfer I felt we should have dome better.
“We anticipated it, but didn’t deliver in defence.”
He said the Springboks don’t give the opposition a lot of breathing space.
“It was hard to find oxygen in that first half, particularly if you concede eight or nine penalties.
“They didn’t concede penalties, which made it very tough work getting out of our half.”
The kicking game – in terms of accuracy and the aerial game – is another aspect where the Wallabies fell short.
“We also were not effective enough in the contest at the breakdown.”
The new Aussie coach said the Boks have now set a benchmark for the Wallabies to chase.
(WATCH as Wallaby coach Joe Schmidt gets brutally honest about the aspects of the game his team must work on after the 7-33 loss to the Springboks at the weekend….)
“We had three Tests prior to that [the Bok loss], but that is really a starting point,” he said of his first stint in charge of Australia’s national team.
“They are at a different stage of their evolution,” the Wallaby mentor said.
“They have so much experience and some very mature players, who have played at the very top level for a long time – very successfully.
“We have a youthful side that is still coming together.
“However, we have to come together better than we did and we have to accelerate some of our leaning.
“You don’t suddenly solve the South African conundrum.
“They are very physical in the contest areas – the set piece and the breakdown – but they are also very quick on the edges.”
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