Joe Schmidt has fired back at accusations Australia use illegal tactics at the breakdown following his side’s 25-7 defeat to England on Saturday.
A report in The Telegraph this week said England coach Steve Borthwick had pointed out some tactics allegedly used by Australia — namely deliberately entering rucks from the side — to referee Nika Amashukeli ahead of the clash.
Captain Harry Wilson rejected the claims in the week and Schmidt also dismissed them with statistics to back up his point in his post-match new conference.
“Yeah, I think it’s a bit of gamesmanship,” Schmidt said. “We’ve had, up until today, 1,256 attacking rucks. There’s two players at least in each of those, that’s 25,000 ruck entries. We had one yellow card, no one has left the field injured as a result of our clean outs.
“We haven’t ever been excessively penalized for side entry. So I always find those things disappointing but not distracting. All we can do is focus on what we do and try to do it as well as we can.”
Schmidt said he did not believe the report had any baring on how the game was officiated.
Australia travel to Udine next week to take on Italy, and Schmidt said his side are feeling the affects of a hefty travel schedule which has seen them go from Australia to play in Japan last week before the clash with England on Saturday.
However, he insisted it’s not an excuse for their defeat on Saturday.
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“All we can do is try to freshen players from week to week and obviously you get a little bit of attrition from week to week with a few guys picking up injuries and not being available,” Schmidt said.
“So we don’t want to make excuses. England were very, very good tonight.
“I think teams that come here, the intensity of their aerial chase, the intensity of their breakdown and their ball carry the bench that they brought on, I think six British Irish Lions off the bench.
“That’s strength and depth, that’s something we’re trying to build in Australia, but that takes a bit of time.”
