"Eddie will come out fighting, as Australians generally do"

THERE IS an Australian way of playing, in my experience. They like high tempo and have a high skill-set. When they attack they have multiple options owing to the quality of ball-player they have. And when they run breakouts along the seam, they can afford to because of those skills.

- KEN OWENS

But I’ve also noticed the way they use their big front-five players to get go-forward or to give themselves an offloading option in the middle of the park. That attempt to go more north-south has come in, going a bit more direct. Of course, they have always produced good, strong back-rows who hit the contact area.

In Wales we went through years of losing to them by a score or by a couple of points. But once we got that win, it was almost a mind shift, to the mentality of ‘we can beat these guys’. Then we started doing it on a more regular basis.

There was a period where Australia’s set-piece really struggled as well, though I think they’ve got a pretty decent scrum at the moment. They also lost a lot of players to clubs overseas. That exposed their lack of depth a bit and they’ve worked hard to combat that.