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Why Dunedin heartbreak could prove a World Cup blessing for Wallabies
By Iain Payten
In recent years, Australian rugby has made an art form of extracting positives from defeats. It’s a defence mechanism of sorts, and a natural go-to for coaches and commentary teams looking to keep everyone feeling good and turning up next week.
How many times have we seen coaches lauding opportunities to score that were created but not converted, or slightly awkward ex-Wallabies legends asked to puff on some embers of hope from a one-sided thumping.
The job was a bit easier on Saturday, when the Wallabies bounced back from a big defeat at the MCG and pushed the All Blacks to the wire in a 23-20 loss in Dunedin.
The improvements were obvious and everywhere, and compared to the group that was physically blown off the park in Pretoria, the Wallabies were a different team. In the first 40 minutes, Australia were unquestionably the dominant side.
Running with power and purpose, the Wallabies won the collisions and the rivers of goodness flowed thereafter. The All Blacks back-pedalled, Australians got arms free and, after barely seeing the red zones of the Springboks and the Pumas, the Wallabies set up camp in the Kiwi half.
Tate McDermott kept the ball flowing, Carter Gordon looked assured and Mark Nawaqanitawase continued to look like a world-beater. Tom Hooper showed why Eddie Jones loves him, and pumping Pone Fa’amausili gave confidence there’s depth in the No.3 ranks.
Eddie Jones before the game.Credit: Getty
Under pressure, the All Blacks looked mortal and made mistakes. They turned to their traditional weapons – the set-piece, a kicking game and the 10 minutes before half-time – and none of it worked. The Wallabies’ defence, at times, was impenetrable.
But then New Zealand came out in the second-half and, with their benched stars deployed, dominated the Wallabies, patiently worked their way back into the game, and then took the lead. The Wallabies fought hard and drew level, but the Kiwis were clinical in the dying moments and snatched the win.
But in the Wallabies’ hunt for positives from this defeat, perhaps defeat is also one of them.
Stay with me here.
Braydon Ennor fends off Jordan Petaia.Credit: Getty
One of the other things Australian rugby has become good at is glossing over the bad stuff when victories come, so joyous is the moment. And it’s a point Jones made in his weekly media conference last week in Dunedin.
Asked if the Wallabies just needed a win to spark up a successful run, Jones said a team needed to be “ready to win”.
“If you get a win before that, then sometimes it can hide problems within the team,” he said.
“You’ve got to play a number of games, work out your problems. Then when you’re ready to win, that then cements all the good things you’ve been doing. Because you don’t want to cement old bad things.”
Nick Frost is brought down after a restart.Credit: Getty
A victory over the All Blacks in New Zealand for the first time in 22 years would have been sweet, no doubt. After a tough start, it would have given the Wallabies some much-needed good vibes at home and a huge boost of confidence heading towards the World Cup.
But would it have helped them go deep at the World Cup? That’s an entirely different question.
After such a strong first-half, the Wallabies’ second-half performance was frustratingly pale, with self-inflicted damage allowing the Kiwis to turn pressure into points. It was a display of patient predation from New Zealand.
They knew if they turned up the pressure in certain areas – notably the breakdown and the scrum – then the Wallabies would likely get the wobbles and give them opportunities. And the wobbles came, via things like handling errors, one-out runners and poor support play, ill-advised counter-attacking and penalties at the breakdown.
The Kiwis banked on the Wallabies’ bad habits returning. And they did.
“It’s a Bledisloe Cup, and having been on the other side of it and won in the last minute, you understand the emotion of it and the need for you to be able to be good when you’re under the most intense pressure,” Jones said post-match in Dunedin.
“And we just don’t, at the moment, have the capacity to do that.”
You can bet Jones will pore over the second half, and a spotlight be shone on all the screws that came loose and led to defeat. They would have been scrutinised anyway, you argue, but nothing sharpens the focus on bad habits quite like the sting of defeat.
And while that may mean more pain now, when the going gets tough in the second halves of sudden-death World Cup games, those tough lessons – the positives from defeat – may turn out to be the most valuable of all.
“You know it’s going to go down to the wire, you know it’s going to be a battle, you know they don’t give up,” Jones said of New Zealand.
“For us, we don’t want to forget that feeling today. That’s a really important feeling we have today because, you know, we’ve got a devastated group of men in there.
“But if we learn from it, it’s going to be the most potent lesson.”
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