THE Wallabies’ running might be back to its best before this week’s All Blacks Test, but skipper Rocky Elsom says spring tour success will hinge on the set-piece.
And despite praise for how far the side’s scrummaging and line-outs have come in the space of a year, Elsom warned his troops that the statistics only told part of the story.
”Sure there’s been talk about how good our line-out is becoming and if you look at our percentages that’s true to a degree,” Elsom told The Sun-Herald before the Wallabies departed for Hong Kong yesterday.
”It’s great to get that 90 per cent [accuracy] or whatever, but it’s the last 10 per cent that becomes the most important.
”We obviously have a good line-out and it’s something we’ve worked hard on, but it’s turning that into a real weapon for us that counts. And going in to a new series of matches it’s hard to say how it will go. We’ve had some good success with turnovers early in the Tri Nations but to say we’ll do that is again, well, it’s too early to say.”
He said execution and consistency, and not talent, were the Wallabies’ biggest challenges. Elsom also revealed the extent to which Robbie Deans has gone to perfect the line-out – something former Wallabies coaches John Connolly and Bob Dwyer have cited as one of the side’s biggest assets.
”It’s like anything in sport – that top, right on the edge, right on the pinnacle performance is always so hard to get and you don’t know if you’re going to get it. Now we have an opportunity to have a very good line-out but we need to make sure we get it there,” Elsom said.
”The way we train reflects in our execution during the real pressure moments. I think if you look at our line-out in terms of percentage you couldn’t really fault it too much. But it’s when we really need a big play that the delivery is not exactly right and that’s cost us.
”That’s something we’ve been working on and the only way you can do that is by just being hard on all the small things that go in to something like that. A perfect lift and jump is what we’re used to doing.
”And we’re preparing for those situations at training by going in to those drills directly after some running or physical work. It’s not necessarily about exhaustion, it’s just about switching on to the next task all the time and being focused and ready under fatigue. That’s what happens in a game and that happens a lot in our training. It has recently.
”The scenario changes a lot throughout the game so we have to be prepared for that. We also do work where the line-out is done just by itself but that doesn’t happen in a game so much. It’s something we’re working hard on.”
Elsom, who will celebrate a year as Wallabies captain this month, is adamant the Wallabies’ forward pack has the ability, confidence and experience to match it with the best in the world.
”There are a fair few new blokes and I think if you look at the start of the pack now compared to the start of the year you’d say they’ve progressed a hell of a lot,” Elsom said.