Rediscovery of turnover that broke Australia down

One of the hallmarks of New Zealand teams through the ages has been their ability to go into a Test, especially away from home, and target an area of their opponents' armoury which is perceived to be a strength and turn it into a weakness.

A couple of years ago, France were talking up their scrum ahead of a meeting with the All Blacks in Paris and boasting how they were going to dominate that area and with it the match. They found themselves rapidly reversing at the first engagement and ended up losing by 40 points.

Australia knew England would test their scrum and lineout but the area where they expected to establish ascendancy, the breakdown, was turned into their greatest weakness as the holders, in defiance of their performances since winning the World Cup four years ago, dominated the tackle area, just as France were to against the All Blacks later.

In doing so, they stopped the Australia scrum-half, George Gregan, controlling the game, exploited the inexperience of the outside-half, Berrick Barnes, whose decision making melted in the heat and nullified the midfield threat of Matt Giteau and Stirling Mortlock. The statistics had England forcing nine turnovers, but the Wallabies also lost ball in contact through errors and lost the collision battle.

The one area of concern for England was a failure to capitalise on their possession. They at times seemed unsure what to do with unexpected ball and often hoofed it away aimlessly, but it also allowed for a looser game in which the second row Simon Shaw was at last able to play in the white jersey as he does for Wasps, running clever lines, bursting through tackles and slipping deft passes.

One of the reasons England's breakdown play has suffered is that referees in the Premiership do not allow a contest for possession. As long as a player taking the ball into a tackle makes it available as soon as he hits the ground, his team will be able to recycle it and defending teams, instead of contesting the ball, fan out in a defensive line, minimising attacking options. An interesting subplot to France's victory over New Zealand was the way the English referee, Wayne Barnes, controlled the breakdown, penalising the All Blacks' open-side flanker, Richie McCaw, for playing the ball off his feet and the French were able to hold on to their possession.

"The breakdown was an area we targeted," said England's open-side flanker, Lewis Moody. "We knew that Australia had come through their group without being really tested and we saw they had become lacklustre in the ruck area. We certainly surprised them there and it was really good to see our analysis off the pitch paying such dividends. Our final two pool games against Samoa and Tonga were intensely physical and we were battle-hardened in a way Australia were not."

England's scrums and lineouts were error free but what won them the game was their ability to stop the Wallabies taking play through the phases by bossing the breakdown. Twice in the second half Australia had the ball in England's 25 only for the No8, Nick Easter, to steal it.

"The breakdown is a key area in the World Cup," said Shaw. "We saw that when Argentina defeated France and we knew that if we gained the advantage there we would win the game. We put in some big hits and forced them to surrender possession on a number of occasions. Was it disappointing that we failed to score a try? That does not come into it."

It all seemed to be breaking down for England a few weeks ago, but a month is a long time. They had not beaten a major southern hemisphere nation away from home since the 2003 World Cup final having shown, along with the hosts, that the knock-out stage is no respecter of form.

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