Conceivably, Ewen McKenzie could have been preparing Ireland to face his native Australians this week. Coming to the end of his time with the Queensland Reds, McKenzie was shortlisted for the Ireland job before it was inevitably awarded to Joe Schmidt but had Schmidt declined, for whatever reason, McKenzie might well have been the favourite to succeed Declan Kidney.
We’ll never know how serious the IRFU’s interest was in McKenzie, or whether he was using the Irish vacancy as a means of alerting the ARU’s attentions. In any case, there’s little doubt the Wallabies’ job was his preferred choice. And when Robbie Deans’ services were no longer required after the Lions’ Test series defeat, despite Jake White’s candidature, McKenzie was the stand-out choice to replace the Kiwi after his work with the Reds.
Not that, for all his willingness to field questions during almost an hour-long media session, he was giving much away on this topic at the squad’s Dublin hotel yesterday.
“There are lots of scenarios in rugby, could haves and would haves. Life works out how it’s meant to. I don’t sit around and dwell on these things. You just move along and work through it.”
“From announcing my intentions to step away from the Reds in February, from that point on this [Wallabies] was always in the back of my mind. The thing I didn’t have control of was the timing. There was an incumbent coach [Deans] contracted until the end of the year. In the meantime, if someone rings you up, you’re not going to not take the call. You always take the call. You might listen and you move on.
"That happened a bunch of times in that period before the Wallabies thing unfolded but even then that was a process. Then you're offered the job and you have to make a decision. But until you're offered the job, there's no decision so you don't spend any time worrying about it."
Toughest hand
The Wallabies probably have the toughest hand in Test rugby, forever battling against eminently more popular sports at home, and each year are judged against normally the best two teams in the world.
Hence, while McKenzie is eminently secure in his job due to there being no viable alternative now that White has returned to South Africa, he still had to endure a rough patch in three games against New Zealand (two away) and two more losses to South Africa, with last Saturday’s 50-20 win in Turin constituting only their third win in nine outings under his watch.
“If you gave anyone the same scenario, it’s not easy. The All Blacks, in an Australia-New Zealand context, they never miss the opportunity to put their foot on your throat; they won’t let you off. That’s why the All Blacks are number one, but I wasn’t shy of that contest.
“I love playing against the All Blacks because they’re the best benchmark in the game. We came up short in the first game, six tries to two, the next one was two tries to one and in the last game there was only eight points in it so we closed the gap across three games even if we didn’t win it, which I’m disappointed about, massively.”
McKenzie takes particular encouragement from the Wallabies’ improved potency citing their ability to score seven tries in both Rosario and Turin against Argentina and Italy.
“You’ve got to have something going on in the background to allow that to happen otherwise you wouldn’t get that,” he said, noting how France and Ireland both lost in Italy last season.
“What we’ve got to do is get some consistency right and continue to tidy up some elements of the game and all I’m trying to do is create competition in the playing squad. You’ve got to have depth,” said McKenzie, adding “there’s probably 20 players sitting at home with various injuries and repairs or whatever, but if they’re back next year then that gives them a run-in to the World Cup.”
Then there's the need to compete with other sports. "In Australia, winning's not enough. We have a very cluttered winter sports market place in Australia so you have to do something, you've got to get the fans to turn up. People will say that's entertainment or call it whatever you want, but we like to keep fans on the edge of their seats."
'Keeps players guessing'
"That's why a Quade Cooper for me is a really interesting player. You don't quite know what you're going to get, but funnily enough if you go on win-loss, he's one of our most successful ever Test players and he's played like 40-something Tests.
There’s a big debate that he couldn’t play at Test level, but how come he’s played 40 Tests if he can’t play? He’s the sort of guys who keeps players guessing, he keeps his own team-mates guessing sometimes.”
Conscious of the Australian fan base, he added: “You have to make them want to get out of bed at 3am to watch a game in the Northern Hemisphere and they are not going to get out of bed if it is 6-3 or something like that.”
In this and the size of the playing bases, McKenzie sees similarities between Australian and Irish rugby. “Then you say Ireland has never beaten the All Blacks and you wonder how can that be, that at no point in time have they got that right? They’ve got a chance this year but those are the sort of things that sit in the background and you wonder why that is.”
“We have a better record against New Zealand but then we play them more often, so we give ourselves a chance to do it. We actually have one of the best records against New Zealand but then that’s still 33 per cent so it’s not as good as you would like, but it’s better than lots. So we actually are quite similar.”
Except, most obviously, that record against New Zealand.
