VICTORIA Barracks, the army base in central Sydney, has witnessed plenty of shouting, commands and threats of war over the years. So the Wallabies scrummaging coach, Patricio Noriega, certainly chose the right venue yesterday for some pushing and shoving, fist thrusts, and wild words as he attempted to get the wayward Australian scrum back on track.
Following England's dominance at the set-piece last Saturday - which directly resulted in two penalty tries being awarded against the Australian front row amid an endless torrent of scrummaging penalties - Noriega warned that the first training session for the second Test would be a volatile affair.
At the time, Noriega was sitting beside young props Ben Daley and James Slipper, who smiled. He turned to them and said sternly: ''Don't laugh about it.'' They immediately returned to their ''serious face'' looks.
Slipper was yesterday mightily relieved he missed the session as he had to travel to Gosford with the Australian Barbarians team for last night's game against England, but Daley discovered Noriega was very, very serious. It was a brutal session. For half an hour the Test forwards bashed each other in four-man opposed packs, with Noriega, the former Wallabies and Argentinian prop, demanding more and more.
As a greenkeeper calmly mowed a bowling green nearby, Noriega thumped his fists and cajoled and threatened his players, repeatedly bringing them into a huddle, where he slapped them and demanded they do better. His demands of ''Attitude'', ''Pressure, Pressure, Pressure'', ''Train as you play'', ''It's an arm wrestle'', again echoed across the barracks.
The players were soon hurtling at each other as if they really meant it. Nonetheless there was enormous relief when Noriega finally allowed them to retreat to the other end of the field, where the Wallabies back line was, as usual, mucking around.
Wallabies second-rower Dean Mumm was dragged away to explain if the message had hit. It had.
''That's the beauty of having someone like Pado around,'' Mumm said. ''He's absolute passion, and you just saw that Latino flair there that he provides us. We certainly get a lot out of his passion, and if we can take half of what he has for scrummaging into this weekend, we'll be all right. For a prop, scrummaging is all pride … Pado is a perfect example of that. It is a pride thing, and at the moment it is a little bit bruised …
''It is also good to have live scrummaging work, because it reminds you that it is a man-on-man competition, particularly for the front-rowers.''
The pack knew it had ''a bit of work to do in our scrum, but we're certainly taking up the challenge that England presented us with last weekend''.
''That was a really good, progressive scrum session, and you have to be pretty proud of how the young front-rowers have fronted up after what was not a straightforward weekend,'' he added.
Mumm said there was no point asking him about front-row technique, as he was just a humble second-rower, but he at least provided the clue that: ''It is all about maintaining the weight, and not giving up the pressure.''
''Any time we tried to fight with them, we got ourselves into trouble. So it's about scrumming on our terms, and holding the pressure as long as we can.''
Already one ''Pado'' term has sunk in. Pressure. Pressure. Pressure.
