Les Kiss says England kicked so little in the 45-22 Wallabies vs England Test at Twickenham because the Wallabies kept letting them play deep in Australian territory.
“A lot of people talked about England didn’t kick much,” the Wallabies head coach said. “Well, you don’t kick much when you’re 40 metres out all day. You play footy more. And that was the reason they didn’t have to kick much.”
Forty metres out means 40 metres from the Wallabies’ try line, close enough to run the ball instead of kicking it away. Kiss was speaking as he named his team to face Scotland on Sunday, with Carter Gordon back at fly-half.
Did England choose to run it at Twickenham, or did the Wallabies leave them no reason to kick?
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Wallabies vs England: ‘We gave them too much of a gain line’
Kiss first made the point when he was asked why Lukhan Salakaia-Loto had been left out.
“We gave them too much of a gain line for sure, which allowed them to play on the front foot the way they did,” he said.
The gain line is the line a team has to cross to be going forward. Kiss said the three locks picked for Scotland have “a lot more speed across the ground”, with Lachlan Shaw on the bench.
“So the momentum isn’t just through carries, it’s through other components and I don’t think we quite got that right,” Kiss said. “So we’ve made sure that we’ve fixed that area. We’ve got our exits better. Try and push the game into a different space a bit more.”
Exits are the kicks and carries a side uses to get out of its own half.
READ MORE: Wallabies defence leaks 138 points: can Kiss fix it in a week?
‘Collectively we were below expectations’
“There was more than one area, that’s for sure,” Kiss said of the defeat. “I just think collectively we were below expectations of what we expected of ourselves. That’s for sure.”
“The aerial game last week, we won seven of the 12 aerial battles,” he said. “So we went well there, but how do we profit off that better?”
“The boys are putting their hands up,” Kiss added. “They didn’t like the way… that game went for them. They’re very real and honest about it…”
Australia face Scotland at Murrayfield on Sunday 15 November. Scotland lost 43-21 to New Zealand last weekend, with hooker Ewan Ashman scoring a hat-trick.
“The transference of good training over the last two weeks has to come out in the 80 minutes,” Kiss said. “That’s the bottom line.”
READ MORE: Les Kiss admits Wallabies’ training is ‘not transferring’
READ MORE: Kieran Read fears for the Wallabies against Scotland
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