Australia will play their first Rugby Championship game under Joe Schmidt this weekend, with the Wallabies set to host South Africa in Brisbane on Saturday.
It will certainly be a difficult start to the tournament for the Aussies, who have struggled against top opposition in recent years. They will be underdogs against the Springboks, facing a team who are much further along in their development than the current Australian group.
Schmidt has been brought in an attempt to revitalise Australian rugby, with the team having massively struggled in recent seasons. Those issues culminated during Eddie Jones' short tenure in charge, with the team eliminated at the pool stages of last autumn's World Cup.
READ HERE: Olympic Boxing Inspires Brian O'Driscoll With Incredible Austin Healey Dig
Australia Legend Says Schmidt Has Binned Crazy Tactic Used By Jones
It will take time for Joe Schmidt to make his mark with Australia, although he already seems to be reversing some of the trends that developed under the previous head coach.
Speaking on the Behind the Ruck podcast, Wallabies legend Quade Cooper summed up the rather odd approach Eddie Jones asked his Australia players to take in attack and explained how Schmidt has already binned that model.
Well, I think the hardest thing was that last year, so what Eddie wanted to implement was like zero structure, right?
So, you weren’t allowed to have any detail, which you think about rugby now, I get the concept of what he was trying to do. Because I think what he was trying to do is just get people to just play more what’s in front.
But nowadays it’s nearly impossible to do that. You need an element of structure because you need to know where people are going to be.
So, if you look back at our games last year, during the Rugby Championship, we got turned over the most at the rucks out of any team in the Rugby Championship.
And that was just because we were all second guessing, like no one knew if they were supposed to be at a ruck...
So what I’ve noticed with the guys now, from this year, is obviously they’ve implemented the structure back into it.
And I think that the upside is that a lot of the boys also have the ability to play how we were playing last year with a little bit more freedom in the sense of if there’s zero structure at all, you’re going to start throwing the balls.
The next few weeks will certainly be a big test of the early progress Australia have made under Joe Schmidt, with two away games in Argentina to come alongside the tests with South Africa and New Zealand.
As a result, a good finish in this year's Rugby Championship is far from a guarantee.
SEE ALSO: Rassie Erasmus Rubbishes Joe Schmidt Comments About Infamous James Lowe Try
