There’s been a lot of hubris around the Wallabies, all of it completely understandable given that there’s a British and Irish Lions series scheduled in Australia next year, but the bubble won’t be expanding any further because Scotland have popped it.
Thanks to the Scots bringing them crashing down to earth at Murrayfield on Sunday, there won’t be a Grand Slam on the line when Joe Schmidt takes his team back to his old home city of Dublin for the only out of international window international game scheduled for next week.
But there will be a lot on the line, and not just for the Aussies, but also for the interest around the Lions tour.
A win over the team that quite recently was ranked No 1 by World Rugby will re-establish the hype around the Wallabies, but perhaps the reality of where the Australians really are right now was best expressed with the rather blunt post-match words of Scotland captain Sione Tuipulotu.
While everyone else with a vested interest in the Lions series was raving about the Aussies, not least the English because the Wallabies being a growing force would at least explain their recent defeat at Twickenham, it didn’t look like Tuipulotu and his team were buying into the hype.
“Throughout the week we were pretty confident that we were a better team than this Wallaby team,” said Tuipulotu.
“I am not too sure if it’s an upset or something like that or how the media views it, but we were confident that we were going to be the better team. It’s a good win, but I don’t think it’s the best win or anything like that.”
In other words Tuipulotu hadn’t been swayed by what Australia had done against England and Wales before they got to Edinburgh. He saw them as the struggling team they were cast as when they arrived in the UK. Certainly that view looked justified when the Scots put the Wallabies to the sword with three excellent second half tries.
SCOTS WERE COMPREHENSIVELY BETTER
The Scottish team that lost by 17 to the Boks while putting in their best effort against the world champions Springboks a fortnight earlier were comprehensively better and could easily have won by a lot more.
They let a few scoring opportunities slip through their grasp. And the much vaunted Wallaby attacking game wasn’t to be seen, with just the solitary try from debutant Harry Potter to show for their efforts, and you could describe it as a consolation score too. The game had been won and lost too.
Apparently Potter was born before JK Rowling invented the famous fictional character he shares a name with, but on the evidence of Sunday the Wallabies are going to need some of the magical qualities of the other Potter, Rowling’s one, if they are to challenge the Lions next July.
Perhaps the Wallabies can turn the narrative back in their favour and in favour of those who’d like to see the hype around the Lions series justified in Dublin next weekend, but Ireland will have had their confidence boosted with their solid performance against Fiji and will start as strong favourites.
It might be a bit premature to suggest that Andy Farrell’s team disproved the theory that the balance of world rugby power might be moving from a top four featuring them to a top three featuring just South Africa, New Zealand and France. It was just Fiji after all, and there was a perception that once again the tier one nation was favoured by the match officials at the expense of the tier two one.
THERE’S NO CONSISTENCY IN MATCH OFFICIATING
Certainly it is easy to imagine that had it been a Fijian, and not Ireland’s young flyhalf Sam Pendergast, who was guilty of putting the shoulder in on the touchline the bunker would have upgraded the yellow card to a red card. If ever there was a clear red card that was it, or at least it was much clearer than many instances that do see a red card. So where’s the consistency? Well there is none, and we knew that already.
Make no mistake though, the Irish were excellent in the execution of their attacking game and did appear to have their mojo back. But that does not change the fact that the Irish have an ageing team, and we are going to learn a lot more about them, and their potential to challenge at the next World Cup, in the forthcoming Six Nations.
They will start their Six Nations campaign with a home match against England, who won comfortably against Japan at Twickenham on Sunday to break a losing sequence that had been extended to five matches dating back to their last meeting with Japan in Tokyo in June.
STILL BIG ISSUES WITH THE ENGLAND ‘D’
Yet while England were no doubt pleased to have a ‘W’ alongside their name instead of continuing the ‘L’ trend, their biggest problem remains. Those who predicted that the departure of defence coach Felix Jones, the former Bok attack coach, would hurt England in the Autumn Series would be deserving of soothsayer status were it not so obvious.
Whereas the England attack showed some good signs against Japan, and cued what is likely now to be a drive to have the two attacking flyhalves, Marcus Smith and Fin Smith, play in the same team by accommodating the former at fullback, their real problem remains and the dysfunction was as clear against Japan as it was two weeks ago against Australia.
England coach Steve Borthwick had rightly gone back to George Furbank at fullback for Freddy Steward, who was too pedestrian on defence against the Boks the previous week, but the England problem is a systemic one. And listening to the English television commentators like Austin Healy clamouring for the blitz D to be dropped for the Six Nations it looks likely the confusion is going to get worse.
For it was essentially the changes Jones had made to the way England defend that had put them on the road to improvement post-World Cup.
The win means the clamour to also change the head coach will be stilled for now, but there is an expectation of a competitive challenge for the Six Nations title or Borthwick will be under real pressure for his job at the end of the northern hemisphere season.
GATLAND NOT THE ROOT OF WELSH PROBLEMS
Also under pressure for his job of course is Wales coach Warren Gatland, who instead of looking like "dead man walking" took on the appearance of “dead man sitting” during his team’s defeat to the Boks in Cardiff. It was a one-sided game but no more than would have been expected and there was no faulting the effort the Welsh team put in.
Ultimately the Welsh public may have to accept that there is no easy solution to the Welsh rugby problems, and that the solution is unlikely to lie with the coach but with the need for revolution in the halls of power. Wales have structural problems in their game that make the identity of the national coach irrelevant.
Gatland was much more bullish in front of the media later in the Bok week than he was after the loss to Australia so he probably had a conversation with the Welsh Rugby Union earlier in the week where he was assured that he will keep his job regardless of the result against the South Africans. And probably rightly so, for who else would want the Welsh job right now?
WORLD RANKINGS END AS THEY STARTED
There is of course the Dublin game to come, but this past weekend’s action effectively brought the international year to an end, and it ended pretty much as it started in terms of the World Rugby rankings - South Africa at No 1, Ireland at No 2 and New Zealand at No 3.
The Kiwis were disappointing in their season finale against Italy in Turin but the game was really all about the emotion of saying farewell to two stalwarts, Sam Cane and TJ Perenara.
It may appear that with the lacklustre showing at the home of the Juventus football team following on from the loss to France that the All Blacks faltered at the end, but Scott Robertson will feel that this tour, which started in Japan, was a platform for growth - and certainly when it comes to their forward play there has been plenty of that. Whether it is enough to challenge the Boks next year is something we will find out in time.
WEEKEND INTERNATIONAL RUGBY RESULTS
France 37 Argentina 23
Ireland 52 Fiji 17
Italy 11 New Zealand 29
Wales 12 South Africa 45
Scotland 27 Australia 13
England 59 Japan 14
