KEY POINTS:
Uninspired, aimless and lost is the unfortunate assessment of the Kiwi team on Friday night - one of the more disappointing performances I have witnessed from a New Zealand side in a long time.
We have really only one playmaker, Benji Marshall, and it was evident that the
Australians had little to worry about with a Kiwi team unable to conjure up anything like pressure. We were in the match with the arm wrestle of the first half but we were just hanging on.
The Australians were predictable with their game plan of speeding out of the play-the-ball area, intent on making yards out of the ruck. New Zealand, on the other hand, did not have speed off the line and so was in no position to slow down the play with dominant aggressive tackles.
Yes, we did confront the Kangaroos at the tackle but not with the venom familiar with attacking defence. Only the first two sets of tackles were what I would have called intimidating defence. Outside of that, we constantly allowed the Australians easy metres, even when they were pinned in their 20m zone from a kick/chase.
Our defence was sound but on too many occasions, as happened last year, our wingers Jake Webster and Manu Vatuvei came in off their wings to shut down players. About 95 per cent of the time they are getting caught out and allowing their opposites to break out unopposed. Four of the Australian tries were scored from one of these two players caught out doing exactly what I have mentioned.
Jake Webster has a habit of doing this with little success and I think he and others need to rethink their decisions in this area.
From a team perspective, we were caught out badly around the ruck area and the Australians sensed a weakness and exploited it. Our lack of an extra playmaker was also evident as Marshall carried the burden of the role, with the less-than-experienced Ben Roberts demonstrating a lack of foresight with ill-directed passing.
Roberts was basically a link player as opposed to a creator of play. Marshall did what he is great at: ad-lib football. But there was no sign of structure in the attack and aimless was the best way to describe it.
In direct contrast to Australia, whose aim was to turn us around with quick play-the-balls, the Kiwi team showed no sign of a plan and definitely no sign of experienced campaigners who can adjust when the plan is not working.
This is where a captain has a role beyond tossing the coin before the start of the game.
The leader needs to pull the troops together, assert authority and give instructions to change direction in order to alter the situation. We lacked that and paid the price, therefore a rethink by all participants is needed to ascertain our position and what we need to do to fix it. I am not talking about declaring underdog status, because this will last as long as we lose games. We need a change of mental application and forget about passion as our one-off wins are now becoming few and far between and we now have to wait too long before our next encounter.