These days, those ex-player chats occur on social media, not at some former Wallabies social gathering, but the point Darwin was making ("We have the cattle, we don't have the understanding") is about as close you will get to the mood among Wallabies fans and followers. When Wallabies supporters look at their squad, and then look at the English, or Welsh, or Irish, and still have a bad feeling about their prospects Darwin's message gets to the core of it. The Wallabies have the players, but they haven't been able to put it all together. Loading Replay Replay video Play video Play video Why? Well, how long have you got? To answer a question like that would need an examination of the entire Australian rugby system. And it's also why so many people in Rugby Australia are working very hard to make sure that the excellent current crop of Junior Wallabies and Australian Schoolboys stay connected, in a rugby sense, over the next five to 10 years. So, let's put that to one side. The more pressing question before the Rugby World Cup quarter-final against England is: why isn't there a greater sense of cohesion among the Wallabies at this tournament?

But maybe we need to flip that question on its head and ask: why would there be a great sense of cohesion when selections have changed so often? Loading For example, Will Genia and Christian Lealiifano haven't started a game together at this Rugby World Cup. That wouldn't matter so much if they had a deep history of playing together either at five-eighth and halfback for the Wallabies or at Super Rugby level, but they don't. The back three doesn't have much history, either. Nor does the loose forward unit. Individually? Fine. Collectively? Not so sure. Of course, Darwin isn't your stereotypical former forward, propping up the bar. Since he stopped playing, he has devoted considerable time and effort to understanding what drives performance and why cohesion is so important for sports teams. He's made a business from it.

And interestingly, in terms of cohesion, he rates the quarter-finalists like this: Japan, Ireland, Wales, New Zealand, England, South Africa, Australia and France, with the All Blacks occupying a mid-table position on account of new players they have introduced into the starting side relatively late in the day. Loading Of course, this doesn't automatically translate into results. Would anyone be particularly surprised if the Wallabies beat England this weekend on the back of an inspired individual performance by a David Pocock or a Samu Kerevi? Not really. But the low levels of cohesion we have seen from the Wallabies in this campaign do make it likely that they will struggle to produce consistently good performances, the sort of which win Rugby World Cups. This, in fact, has been the story of the Wallabies since the last tournament. It's been up and down. For one half they are as bad as any Wallabies side anyone can remember (think the first 40 minutes against the All Blacks in Sydney in 2017) and then the following week they should have beaten the All Blacks in New Zealand (remember that heartbreaker in Dunedin, when they lost on the buzzer).