Only those within the camp will know whether David Pocock and Israel Folau, could have played against Scotland at the weekend but Australia’s head coach was certainly hard on himself as he challenged himself and his players to be better prepared for another match they are expected to win when they face Argentina in the semi-final.
“I’ve got to take a lot of responsibility for the team not filling its potential on Sunday. I think I let the team think too much about the games before,” Michael Cheika reckoned.
“They were still thinking about the game against England and the game against Wales and I let that atmosphere stay.
"I should have just wiped those things out and just focused on the next challenge and just focused on the Scottish scrum or whatever it was. I don’t feel that I, as the coach, performed very well last week in preparing the team for that quarter-final. I’ll make sure that doesn’t happen again this week.”
If there was any element of feeling they could get away with leaving out the players who would be widely considered their best forward and best back, they look set to reap the reward by having both fully fit to meet Argentina.
The need to get Pocock back into the line-up seems particularly important on the basis of the last three weeks. Whereas they dominated the breakdown in the match that ended England’s involvement in the tournament the Wallabies had far more trouble against the twin openside combinations of Wales’ Sam Warburton and Justin Tipuric in their top of pool decider and Scotland’s Blair Cowan and John Hardie in the quarter-final when Hooper was suspended for the first of those matches and Pocock missed the second with a calf problem.
“Pocock ran yesterday pain-free, so he’s looking more promising. Folau will run again tomorrow so I’d say it’s more chance that they will play than they won’t at this stage,” Cheika reported.
With considerable emphasis always likely to be placed on scrummaging when facing the Pumas there seems more cause for concern regarding prop Scott Sio who went off injured during the meeting with Scotland.
"Sio's going to get a scan,” said Cheika.
“He’s still very reduced in motion because he’s got a big haematoma there in his elbow, so he hasn’t got a lot of range.”
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