Australia’s captain, Harry Wilson, dismissed accusations his team are guilty of illegal breakdown tactics on the eve of England’s meeting with the Wallabies at Twickenham on Saturday and suggested it was English “whingeing”.
The England head coach, Steve Borthwick, reportedly raised the issue of Australian players frequently joining rucks from the side with the referee, Nika Amashukeli, in a pre-match meeting, according to the Daily Telegraph.
Wilson, however, batted away claims of illegality and compromised player safety due to the alleged infringements while the England scrum coach, Tom Harrison, declined to confirm if the issue had been raised by the hosts.
“Firstly I’d like to question how many of them are illegal,” Wilson said. “And to say they’re dangerous, they are definitely not. There’s no way Joe [Schmidt] will coach a team to be illegal at the breakdown.
“I think we’ve had over 2,000 rucks this year and for them to cherrypick a couple of rucks out of it, it’s quite amusing. We’re pretty excited for the opportunity to go out there and have a really good fair game.”
Adding a dash of extra spice, Wilson also said Borthwick was looking for an “excuse” when he drew attention to England’s relative lack of training time together. “They have had four months together, we’ve got four sessions,” Borthwick said on Tuesday. Asked if the Wallabies have an advantage in that respect Wilson said: “Yeah, I guess so. They want to put that out there as an excuse for them. We’ve been playing together all year. We’ve had a lot of footy in a row … the continuity is there because we’ve been playing a lot.”
At England’s later media briefing, Harrison insisted Borthwick’s meeting with Amashukeli was private. “I haven’t been involved,” he said, after querying the accuracy of the report on the alleged protest to the Georgian referee.
“Steve has conversations with the referees and I’m not involved in those meetings. I think you can respectfully say those meetings are kept private.”
Harrison, however, added that rugby is “grey” in certain areas and that the officiating of rucks and other elements of the game will inevitably spark debate. “I think in every game there’s always controversial issues around breakdowns, scrum, lineout, offside … the game of rugby is grey,” Harrison said. “Referees play a huge part in the game from an entertainment point of view, from a disciplinary point of view.
“What I would say is Nika is an outstanding referee. He’s strong in his approach. One of his strengths as a referee is the breakdown. I think we are fully looking forward to that.”
Wilson had stressed that Australia “try and make it easy” for referees around rucks to avoid such complaints from the opposition.
“When a team is playing 10 or 11 Tests any team would have some from the side,” he said of ruck play in general. “We think we’re quite good at attacking breakdown … referees have a lot on their mind. They’re under the pump and we just want to try and make it as easy as we can for them by trying to be as square as possible. So there’s not too much whingeing.”
On whether some pre-match needle is good for any England v Australia fixture, Harrison said: “I can’t say it’s a bad thing.”
