Mortlock: 'Just above a pass'
Sat, 28 Jun 2008 14:33
Wallabies captain Stirling Mortlock described his team's performance in the first of two Tests against France on Saturday as "just above a pass".
Australia won 34-13 in Sydney, scoring four tries to one against an inexperienced, but dogged young French combination.
"We had a huge amount of possession but it just seemed as though we were a pass off clicking, which is a bit frustrating," Mortlock said afterwards.
"But, I was really happy with the effort. Some of the defensive efforts in the second half were particularly good".
The Aussie skipper said the French had played an unpredictable brand of rugby that had made it difficult for his team to build a sustained attacking platform.
"You never quite know what you are going to get from the French," he said. "Sometimes they really put us under a lot of pressure and other times they drifted and let us play them, and we found it hard to get our rhythm as an attacking unit.
"We probably didn't play behind them enough. They took a few lineout balls from us - they were putting us under pressure at one and two 2 - and we will go back to the footage and see how we can rectify that".
Mortlock admitted that the Wallabies had also batled at the breakdown.
"We got penalised a lot for going off our feet, which is another area that we need to improve on next week," he said.
The Wallabies meet France in the second Test in Brisbane next Saturday and have a week off before facing the World Champion Springboks in their opening Tri-Nations fixture in Perth on July 19.
