New Zealand Supremo Dave Rennie summed it all up perfectly after his accusations dropped the boom Australia for the second time in two weeks. While the Wallabies have shown some flashes of life in their first seven games under new head coach Les Kiss, they currently look like a poor edition All black people.
“There’s no point playing like this and then going to the World Cup and trying to play risk-free,” Rennie said.
“We know you can put yourself under pressure the way we try to play, but we’ll also back ourselves to profit more than suffer in those situations.
“I don’t think you want all the teams in the world to play the same game.
“If you look at the Wallabies, they are quite similar to us. They will want to play, and that is the point of difference, part of the DNA of both sides.”
How can the Wallabies ever escape the shadow of their big Super Rugby brother Tasman if they try to play the game the same way, but with slightly less efficiency and conviction?
New Zealand won 43-21 at the Accor Stadium in Sydney, scoring 14 tries and 93 points over two matches, and the two-legged tie confirmed the feeling that we are no longer in Johannesburg or Cape Town. High-octane attacking rugby has planted its flag deep in the land of the game, and it’s here to stay – but Kiss’ Wallabies won’t win too many shootouts against Rennie’s All Blacks.
The answer may be as simple as dusting off Paul ‘The Bear’ Bryant’s famous old maxim that ‘offense wins games, but defense wins championships’. Defensive coaches can no longer guarantee to stop the bleeding at 25, or even 30 points a game, but excellence on the defensive side of the ball still counts. It was, after all, one of the primary boards in the green and gold’s two World Cup triumphs in 1991 and 1999.
Kiss first cut his coaching teeth as defense assistant to outspoken Durbanite Harry Viljoen with the Springboks back in 2001. He was one of the first coaches to migrate to major league rugby crossover, and forged a high-pressure, blitz-based template that gave up just three tries at Tri-N2. When he was first appointed to succeed Joe Schmidt as Australia’s head coach, most observers expected him to bring an added edge to the team’s defence.
Supporters would be encouraged by comments from the man himself upon his arrival at work.
“We want to make sure we build a (defense) weapon for us, so we can attack with it,” Kiss said. “(If) we can ignite that part of the game more and create that kind of pressure and turnovers, we’ve got some nice players who can do something with it in those situations.”
So far so good. In late March, Scott McLeod, the former All Blacks defense coach for nearly 90 Tests, was announced as Kiss’s new assistant. McLeod’s main claim to fame was devising a scheme that was so frustrating Ireland at the 2023 World Cup, a quarter-final in which the All Blacks absorbed 276 tackles while conceding a paltry 24 points.
For Rugby Australia’s director of high performance Peter Horne, this was a positive sign of continuity between the two regimes: “Scott has a great understanding of the environment and standards that Joe Schmidt has run since joining the Wallabies, having coached alongside him with the All Blacks, and will provide great support to Les as he moves into the head coaching role.” With Kiss Will looking to “have control of the attacking space”, the new division of responsibilities was clear and it seemed the Wallaby supporters would no longer have to suffer the scourge of Christmas.
https://t.co/Ka1BKKOvdR
— William Bishop (@RPvids1994) March 2, 2026
During Schmidt’s time in charge, the Wallabies stuck to an old-fashioned 12/1/2 defensive system: 12 men in the line, two in the back with a scrum-half defending in the zone between the two. The system emphasized link-up between the defenders at the cost of aggression, with two full-back defenders standing deep and the forward line moving across to link up with them as the play tracked towards the far touchline. The scrum-half would fill the space in between, to fill the gaps and pick up any short kicks.
The problems with the three-layer defense were twofold: the soft shoulders and wide gaps it offered up front, and the risk of the scrum-half being outflanked in that no-man’s land between the two D-lines. It would be an exaggeration to say that McLeod changed the system greatly, if at all, from the Schmidt era. Over two Bledisloe Cup matches, Australia conceded a whopping 24 clean breaks, 23 clearances and 66 defenders beaten, while conceding just four turnovers at the breakdown among the 229 tackles built by the All Blacks.
The old 12/1/2 is still in place, with the defensive number nine hedging his bets and playing between the two lines. When aggression does occur, it tends to start on the edge, with isolated attackers ‘spotting’ attackers from drifting towards the far touchline.
Let’s look at some examples of how the scrum-half is set up first. Brumby Ryan Lonergan defends from the boot space just behind the hands, dropping in and out of the forward line into an area 10 meters deeper.
https://t.co/8YZTuXuPlB
— William Bishop (@RPvids1994) October 17, 2026
https://t.co/wwvf6LGQuT
— William Bishop (@RPvids1994) October 17, 2026
In both of these shots, Lonergan is defending about 10-15m behind the first line when two breaks are made by Damian McKenzie and then Wallace Sititi. And in both cases, when the late play enters the Wallaby 22, there are still two defenders in the shallow backfield, with Lonergan still moving between the two lines at 10:12-10:36 in the first example and 30:25 in the second. Especially in your red zone, only 12 men in the line gives every defender an awful lot of real estate to cover, and the All Blacks are happy to pillage the gaps.
Occasionally, Lonergan was caught leaving the line at the very spot where the shooting took place, the same spot he would have defended if he had stayed.
https://t.co/Rm5r85She4
— William Bishop (@RPvids1994) October 17, 2026
The second show revolved around a wallaby point that sparkled from the edge.
https://t.co/TChg5gmrwf
— William Bishop (@RPvids1994) October 17, 2026
https://t.co/J3dGVON2la
— William Bishop (@RPvids1994) October 17, 2026
The trap in both shots is related to the attack of one defender when the rest of the line retreats towards the end line. One defender takes a shot, but the rest of the defense is not in a position to adjust if he misses. Even when he nails his man, the attack can continue without losing momentum because everyone else is passive.
https://t.co/RPS5iWUGqN
— William Bishop (@RPvids1994) October 17, 2026
https://t.co/yHEIxJ2gIC
— William Bishop (@RPvids1994) October 17, 2026
In the first clip, Harry Potter shoots with some power and energy to stop Rieko Ioane, but Timoci Tavatanawai is able to regenerate the attack in the next phase of the game, before the All Blacks go back to work on Lonergan, treading water between the two lines of defence.
Defensive coaches everywhere take a deep breath, look around the next corner and glance nervously behind them. Together, they wipe their feet in the door and look forward to a tough day at the office, as the scores inevitably increase with each new change in the law.
McLeod is no exception and he will feel the heat. If there’s one aspect of Australia’s performance that hasn’t improved under Kiss, it’s the area where he first started coaching international rugby. The Wallabies don’t link up well, nor do they provide much line speed. They do not absorb pressure and do not create changes. There is blood in the water and sharks are already circling.
