Much like his namesake from the 50 Shades trilogy, the Australia defence coach, Nathan Grey, showed a fetish for pain and punishment during his playing career. Anyone who played with or against Grey, a former 35-Test Wallabies centre, would attest to that.
People still recall his hit on Brian O’Driscoll in the second Test against the British & Irish Lions in 2001. “One of the best shots I have ever seen,” his team-mate Matthew Burke recounted shortly before the 2015 World Cup. In the second Test, he “elbow-tackled” the England flanker Richard Hill, ruling him out for the rest of the series.
Grey described the incident as an “accident” but it cemented his reputation as a player of the most feared variety. Rugby has produced many hard men but the crazy-eyed ones such as Jerry Collins, Brad Thorn, Mark “Cowboy” Shaw, Bakkies Botha, Schalk Burger and Brian “The Chiropractor” Lima are few in number. Grey, who spent his early childhood in Fiji and Papua New Guinea, belongs to the same bunch.
And now, after a thorough coaching apprenticeship in Japan’s Top League and with the Melbourne Rebels and Waratahs in Super Rugby, the 40-year-old father of four has his hands on the Wallabies defence. In a relatively short time he has imparted his unmistakable defensive signature – body-mangling, fast-off-the-line in-your-face defence. England did not appear to know what hit them last week.
Another of Grey’s former Wallabies team-mates, Brendon Cannon, described the defensive effort at Twickenham as classic Grey. “Our defence is all about character,” he told a Sydney newspaper. “You can see any side that he is involved with has that character, that passion and pride for their try line.”
There has been high praise all-round for coaches as well as players in the wake of the demolition job carried out on England. But hard taskmaster that he is, Grey still managed to find fault with the Twickenham performance. “We need to attack better than we did, we need to defend better,” he said. “We leaked a fair few line-breaks against England … you’re never happy leaking points.”
That’s not a throwaway line either. Of every nation to have competed at the World Cup since the inaugural 1987 tournament, the Wallabies have conceded the fewest tries. With only Wales to come in a pool match, Australia have only two tries against them – the tournament’s equal best.
Grey believes Wales will test Australia in very different ways to England. “They’re going to stretch us, they play the ball to the width a lot and look to capitalise. We want to be able to put pressure on the opposition with the ball and without the ball,” he said.
Character and pride, as Cannon mentioned, no doubt play a part, but Grey’s approach – rushing up to “attack in defence” by denying the opposition time and space to attack – is nothing new in rugby; it is simply being executed very well by the Wallabies. England, in comparison, were caught out by the tempo of the Australia attack, handing the fly-half Bernard Foley two of the softest tries he will ever score at international level.
Grey’s system requires discipline, with players needing to be completely in-sync when rushing up. And, as the All Blacks showed in the Eden Park Bledisloe Cup Test, it is a tactic that can be severely mitigated by a smart kicking game which ensures that if Australia are attacking on defence they should at least be made to do it from inside their own half.
Dan Carter’s kicking game did the job. One can easily imagine Ireland’s excellent fly-half Jonathan Sexton doing much the same should Ireland come up against the Wallabies in the knockout phase.
For now, though, all eyes turn to Saturday’s game against Wales. Can Grey put on another defensive masterclass against a very fit and rested Wales side, or will Warren Gatland have come up with something to outwit Australia? Carter, of course, knows what to do. He did it already in Auckland.
