Well what can you say, last Saturday’s performance by the Wallabies in Christchurch was a disgrace. What makes it worse is how much I talked up the Wallabies in last week’s article, reading it again after the match was embarrassing. We were again belted in the forwards and myself like the rest of the Wallaby supporters are absolutely sick and tired of watching our scrum disappear backwards at a rate of knots. What made the loss worse was listening to Knuckles blame the referee after the Test, come on Knuckles you can’t blame the referee for the pack getting belted around the field like a bunch of schoolkids.

It was like the school bully the All Blacks terrorising the school nerds the Wallabies. Tight head prop Shepherdson looked like a fat little schoolboy who is just about to burst into tears as he wandered around the field getting in the way of the backline and basically stealing oxygen come scrum time. What a farce, this bloke getting 10K a Test for stealing oxygen, the Wallabies had 14 men when they ran on the field. What do props do these days at training, can’t they get these blokes in the gym and at least make them strong. We used to do heaps of boxing, gave you confidence and props need to know how to throw a good punch. If you threw a punch at the current crop of Wallaby forwards they would all run for cover as the schoolyard bullies the All Blacks found out last Saturday night.

We were hanging in there on Saturday night until Rocky Elsom got sin binned and then the scrum started to disintegrate. The Wallabies could not hold on with 8 so the roller skates were applied when reduced to 7. It was downhill from here and as confidence and morale started to wane we saw some dreadful errors. I thought Holmes was doing Ok on his side of the scrum, he was hanging on grimly but it is impossible for the loosehead to hold his ground if the tight head is dislodged as Shepherdson was. Tony Woodcock the All Black loosehead is world class, he was very impressive.

I wonder what the result would have been if the Wallaby scrum and lineout were rock solid, totally different I suspect. With all the resources at the Wallabies disposal it is amazing to think that we have returned to the bad old days of the mid 70’s when we were an international joke because our set pieces could not compete with the top Rugby nations. I hope the ARU takes some action, they were talking it up after the last year’s debacle but still nothing has happened.

This week against the Springboks in Brisbane should be a lot closer with both teams coming off bad losses. I read with amusement Jake White saying that the Bok’s would target the Wallabies scrum. Jake must have thought that the Boks/French match was not shown on TV in Oz, the Bok’s were also cleaned up unceremoniously in the scrum by the Frogs. Bruce Holden’s hero Os Du Randt is in town, unfortunately Os’s reputation is a bit tarnished because of the roller skates he had on against the Frogs, I am expecting a big game from him this week. Bruce tells me that he is travelling to Brisbane for the match, looking forward to his match report on www.15manrugby.com

I hope the Wallabies are packing a 1000 scrums and throwing a 1000 lineouts this week. There is really no use talking about tactics and how to play the game until these two areas are fixed. Yes we do have a great backline but with the forwards getting smashed in a Test match the backline could get arrested for stealing oxygen they are really that useless.

I have to print a retraction this week; Soni Nuku of the Bula Boy’s was most upset when I described them last week as Kava swiping snakes. This was in response to a Broadside reader in Fiji describing them as really cool dudes and he would like to meet them. So my retraction is that not only are they kava swiping snakes but Greenpeace is also after them for unlicensed whaling, too much Bro.

Get on the message board and have your say about the Wallabies, the Bula Boys or any topic, I respond to all messages left.