from:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/ru...should-be-ashamed-they-play-like-England.html
Rugby World Cup 2011: Australia should be ashamed – they play like England
Boring, boring Australia. For the previous four years the Wallabies have been prancing about in their green and gold outfits like contestants on Strictly Come Dancing.
By Mark Reason, Wellington12:10AM BST 10 Oct 2011
But when it came to a match that really mattered, the Aussies played with the ambition and imagination of wombats. Is that all they have got?
All we ever hear from the Australians is: “It’s all about entertainment, baby, and you guys in the northern hemisphere are dull, dull, dull.” Oh, sorry, I’ve just woken up from last night’s bore feast. I do remember Wales and Ireland putting on a thriller in atrocious rain on Saturday night, but Sunday is a blur.
Whatever happened to Quade Cooper? He is the bloke who does outrageous things. He will kick across his own in-goal area or dance on a solitary blade of grass. He will jink and sprint and flick passes out of the back of the hand like magic.
Against South Africa he was the most boring man on the planet. You see, the Australians are afraid that he will turn into Carlos Spencer and blow the World Cup with a daft mistake. So he has been told to behave. Quade has been asked to stay indoors and do the homework.
Cooper’s kicking is not good enough to control a game at this level. No wonder the Australia tackle count ticked past the 100 mark in the second half. Cooper kept kicking the ball back to South Africa. What a betrayal of the legacy of players such as Mark Ella and Stephen Larkham.
How much have we heard about not wanting to go back to the aerial ping pong of 2007? Australia took us back in time, yesterday. South Africa tried to play a bit. Not much, but a bit. Occasionally they even put two passes together before a big man biffed up the middle. But the Australians are afraid to make a mistake. At one point you wondered if this was England in disguise.
There was one break from Kurtley Beale and that was about it. James O’Connor and Digby Ioane, wonderful players both, were like England wings from the Seventies. It was 20 minutes before Ioane received a pass. This is a guy who can celebrate a try with a wicked hand spin. Ioane might as well have done his dance, because he did not have a lot else to do.
Oh, and by the way, the Aussies are cheats as well. David Pocock is a terrific player but he got away with daylight robbery. Time and again the Australians did not release the tackled player, or they came in at the side or they played the ball off their feet. But Bryce Lawrence did absolutely nothing.
The New Zealanders bridle when I say that their referees are useless, but if Lawrence is the best, then heaven help the rest. Lawrence was given charge of the Super 15 final and exactly the same thing happened. The match turned into a shambles because the players went unpenalised at the breakdown.
John Smit, the South Africa captain, is the most diplomatic of men, but even he said: “[The breakdown] was a talking point. Between myself and the ref, the messages I was getting through weren’t being listened to. Normally you get rewarded as the attacking team. It wasn’t that way tonight.”
Come December there will not be any Merry Christmas Mr Lawrence coming out of South Africa. The vitriol will be flowing through the South African blogosphere today. The Springboks feel cheated. But not half as much as the rest of us. The crowd spent yesterday’s game in a vast waiting room. Then the final whistle went and not much had really happened. They should rename them the Dullabies.
