Baxter determined to make amends

AFTER the horrors of Twickenham, Al Baxter is desperate for a chance to redeem himself against Ireland on Saturday.

Last weekend in London, Australia’s scrum was annihilated and, though the entire front row was savaged by their English hosts, it was Baxter who suffered most in press reports.

Adding to the agony, the tight-head prop was sin-binned 12 minutes from time by French referee Joel Jutge who claimed he had pulled down one too many scrums for his liking.

“It makes you more determined to get out the next week and try and prove them all wrong,” said the NSW Waratahs player. “After reading some of the stuff, I was thinking, ‘I really hope I get picked for this week’s Test so I can rip into it.”

Baxter and company are battling against the very culture of rugby union in Australia which rightly lionises the Campeses but wrongly glosses over the men operating in the meat grinder positions. The attitude of club referees is playing its part too.

“I feel strongly that in Sydney club rugby the scrums are refereed way too conservatively. You have referees repeatedly telling front-rowers to pull back, and that’s ridiculous. You don’t tell a winger, ‘I don’t want you stepping off the right foot because you’re beating the winger’.

“The England Test has brought home to Australian rugby that there needs to be a focus on the scrums. Australia in the past certainly hasn’t treated scrummaging as being a very important part of the game.

“The Northern Hemisphere places a lot more emphasis on it. In Australia, the culture is not there. You don’t have young guys saying they want to be front-rowers. Australian rugby is very much about running rugby.”

Having watched the videos from Twickenham and Marseille, Eddie O’Sullivan will consider Australia’s pack as a chink in their armour.

“Exactly,” admitted Baxter. “In our team, we’ve obviously got a very strong back line so they’ll obviously be looking to come through the forwards. The thing is, we’ve seen their games as well so it’s not like it’s all one-sided,” said Baxter.

“The Irish side is different from the English side. They don’t have the sheer size or strength of the English guys but I’m sure they’ll be focusing on the scrum. So will we.”

South Africa’s pack is of a similar size to England’s but lack their levels of fitness according to Baxter and that allowed the Wallabies to counter the Springbok’s physicality on a number of occasions this season by sapping their stamina around the paddock.

Thanks to Alan Gaffney, the Aussie scrum will also have inside knowledge of their Irish counterparts and it’s not hard to imagine Baxter bending the former Munster coach’s ear for titbits on Marcus Horan and John Hayes.

What Saturday amounts to is a golden opportunity for Baxter and his chums to make amends, and for the team in general to halt a depressing sequence of results, not that they see Ireland as a soft touch.

“If we did we’d get ourselves in trouble. Although the Irish side had a bad game at the weekend, they’ve only just started their international season and they’re only going to get better from here.

“We’ve gotta take them seriously because they’re a good side. Australia have come over here before and lost because of that kind of attitude and we don’t want to do that again.”