Gaffney hoping for a change of fortune

ON SUNDAY, six months to the day after his last game in charge of Munster, Alan Gaffney returned to Irish shores.

The assistant Australian coach will be praying fervently that when he leaves again later this week he will have one last happy memory of the Emerald Isle to take with him.

Gaffney began his new job with the ARU just three days after that Celtic Cup final victory over Llanelli at Lansdowne Road and, at first, everything went swimmingly with the new employer.

Samoa and Italy were tasty, if unfulfilling, starters for the Wallabies' 2005 campaign before they went up through the gears by dismantling France in Sydney and South Africa in Brisbane.

Since then, their season has gone from bad to worse. In their last seven games, Australia despite playing some excellent rugby have lost them all.

"After the first South African game, things looked pretty good," Gaffney reflected yesterday in the team's Portmarnock hotel. "We went to Johannesburg and didn't play well.

"They scored too many set tries and it knocked the stuffing out of us. We came back pretty well the following week in the game in Pretoria and we should have won that one without a doubt. Ever since then we've been chasing it, the monkey's been on our back and we've been trying to get it off. We've played some good rugby in parts, but just not good enough to get over the line."

Though the side is on its worst run of defeats since 1969, those within the camp are adamant that progress is being made, that one win could kickstart a fight-back.

There's a couple of things seriously hampering their attempts to do just that. Their biggest problem is up front against England last weekend, Gaffney estimates that the tourists had no more than 29% of possession.

Basically, their tight five is creaking more than an arthritic knee in winter and, under the circumstances, limiting England to two tries both of which came while an Aussie was loitering in the sin bin was all the more remarkable.

"We've obviously been put under a fair bit of pressure up front. That doesn't need to be dwelled upon. We played some good rugby again last week and could have won the game although we didn't deserve to win it.

"It was the same the week before. We made nine clean line breaks against France to their four but they won the game. They converted the limited opportunities they had, we didn't convert any one of our nine clean breaks into points."

The other major handicap is a lack of resources. Australia's player pool doesn't differ all that much from Ireland's and, as Matt Dunning told a reporter in London last week, there aren't ten 125-kilo tight head props back in Oz waiting to answer an SOS.

Like New Zealand last week, Australia will field something of an experimental side Saturday, but where Graham Henry chose to do that, Eddie Jones has largely had his hand forced. "We've got reasonable strength in our back line and in our back row too and we've got some good players in the tight five, but we've got a lot of good players at home at the moment," said Gaffney. "We're not using it as excuse but we just can't afford to have that many players at home; guys like Billy Young, Jeremy Paul, David Lyons and then in the back line Larkham, Rathbone, Flatley, Tune."

And yet, with South Africa, New Zealand, France and England finally in their rear view mirror for a spell, Gaffney accepts that a game against Ireland is probably the ideal opportunity to bring a halt to their ever-lengthening run of reversals.

"It probably is, but we thought we could win the last two games and that didn't pan out to be the case. We were highly competitive but this is going to be a difficult game.

"Ireland's performance at the weekend wasn't what they would have liked. Neither was ours so both sides are in the situation where they've gotta win games. We'll go out to try and play an attractive brand of rugby and hope the weather holds up."