Dear Wallabies, this is no time to panic, just follow Noddy’s advice

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My dear Wallabies,

And so it has come down to this. On Sunday evening (Monday 5am, AEST) in Lyon, in the third round of the World Cup, you blokes are playing with everything on the line against Wales.

Australian rugby bet the farm on Eddie Jones and you blokes – the youngest squad of the 20 nations at the World Cup – which means that this time, you really are playing for sheep stations.

No, it’s not as if a loss will mean that there is no way back from here, but it will be reminiscent of an apocryphal story Mark Ella used to tell of during the 1984 Grand Slam tour, asking a Dubliner the way back to the Wallaby hotel only to be told: “Well, I’m not exactly sure, sir, but if I was you, I certainly wouldn’t want to be starting from here …”

I hesitate, you’ll be pleased to hear, in offering any advice on how to play Wales. I am still shocked by attending your first training session in Paris to see drones in the sky, computers and analysts crunching numbers on the sideline, and a coach or support staff for every player. What could anyone like me tell professionals like you about how to play?

But against that?

Max Jorgensen during a Wallabies training session in Saint-Etienne.Credit: Getty

Well, against that, as discussed, at Saint-Étienne on Sunday I saw Fiji twice put the ball up high and follow through, only for none of you to shout “Mine!” – allowing the ball to bounce, and them to score a try on the first occasion, and sew havoc on the second.

At those points, I thought the gap between what I knew about the game and you did might be less than I thought. And that feeling was confirmed when with a minute to go and us behind Fiji by seven points, we continued to kick downfield when it was bleeding bloody obvious was that the only hope we had was to keep the ball in hand.

I still have no clue how anyone thought kicking was an option in that situation. Nor do I have the remotest understanding how, half-a-dozen times in the second half, we charged it forward into the ruck, only to be penalised for not releasing or the like. Half-a-dozen times!

None of this is to criticise the effort you put in. Every man jack of you was so exhausted by game’s end you could barely raise a trot, with the notable exception of you, David Porecki, who with great sportsmanship and as captain, forced yourself to jog over to the Fijians to be the first to congratulate them. Bravo.

Rob Valetini reacts after the Wallabies’ loss to Fiji at the Rugby World Cup in France on the weekend.Credit: AP

But, where to from here, against Wales? I still have no clue, so don’t panic. But I offer up one story from Australian rugby history when the Wallabies came good from an equally devastatingly dire situation in the hope there might be some inspiration for you therein.

See, in the quarter-finals of the 1991 World Cup, the Wallabies had been tenuously holding on to a 15-12 lead at Lansdowne Road, when the Irish breakaway Gordon Hamilton famously broke through a David Campese tackle to run the length of the field to score in the corner and take the lead with just minutes to go. The same abyss before you now yawned before them.

In the absence of the injured Nick Farr-Jones, five-eighth Michael “Noddy” Lynagh took command. Leading the team away from the scene of the tragedy – the spot where Hamilton had put the ball down – he asked the ref, “How long to go?”

“Four minutes, after the conversion,” came the reply.

Michael Lynagh takes a kick in the nail-biting 1991 World Cup quarter-final against Ireland.Credit: Getty

Just enough time for a miracle.

In a calm voice, Noddy spoke to the Wallaby huddle in concise, clear terms: “Be calm and controlled. There’s still plenty of time left. From the kick-off we will kick the ball long and to the left. From the line-out, the forwards must secure clean possession and we’ll go from there. If ever in doubt about what to do with the ball, just hold it tightly and head towards their line. We will win this game.”

Ireland kicked it out, the Wallabies won the line-out and every Australian that got the ball did as he said, taking it forward without losing it. From a Wallaby scrum, Lynagh called to his backs to execute a move by the name of “Cut Two Loop”.

The ball found its way through the hands of Tim Horan, Marty Roebuck and Jason Little to David Campese on the wing. The last, though hit by two Irish defenders, managed to bounce back inside a “Hail Mary” pass to keep the ball alive.

And – Jesus lives! – hovering right there for just such a ball was Lynagh, who gathered and burrowed his way over for the TRY! You could hear the silence from three kilometres away in the all but deserted streets of downtown Dublin. Such was the stunned shock, that a dog barking in the park beside Lansdowne Road was clearly audible.

Australia had won the game and the empire was saved.

“It just happened like that,” Noddy told me years later in an interview, with the slightest of shrugs.

But not quite. For there was so much in those brief minutes of that Irish afternoon that, dissected, have value now. One of the things Noddy had been raised on by his sports psychologist father was the importance of being positive in thought, deed and direction.

Michael Lynagh after scoring the winning try against Ireland at Lansdowne Road in the 1991 World Cup.Credit: Getty

“Instead of saying to the players, ‘DON’T do something …’, which is immediately negative,” Lynagh told me, “it’s far better to lead along the lines of, ‘DO be sure to …’, which is positive. And whatever you say in a situation like that has got to be simple and clear.”

(Great. Allow me, Noddy. Against Wales, don’t let their up-and-unders bounce. If ever in doubt about what to do with the ball, just hold it tightly and head towards their line.)

Then there was the particular move that led to the try. Lynagh’s reckoning was ruthless in continuing to hammer a weakness once you’d found it. “That afternoon we’d used that particular move lots of times with great success, so I thought that now we really needed it, that was the one to go with again.”

(Off-hand, I can’t think of a move that worked with great success against Fiji, bar the quick throw-in which led to our try, but there were several against Georgia!)

Good luck. If ever in doubt about what to do with the ball, just hold it tightly and head towards their line. Release. Lay it back without being penalised. You will win this game.

Yours, etc

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