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The Wallabies’ 40-6 loss to Wales is the most gutting defeat in Australian rugby history.
Old-timer Wallabies used to talk about the loss to Fiji in 1954. There are Wallabies in their dotage now, who still lament the loss to Tonga in the early ’70s. Nick Farr-Jones still grieves the third Test loss to the Lions in 1989.
In the past 20 years, there have been too many shocking losses to enumerate – mostly against the All Blacks and Springboks, although a 3-0 home series loss to an Eddie Jones-coached England side in 2016 still has the capacity to sting.
But this one against Wales in Lyon on Sunday night (Monday AEST) has got them all covered. It’s the joker in the deck, the one that beats all the others hands down, loser-takes-all.
For it wasn’t just the loss itself, which was shocking enough. It was the final and complete humiliation of a Wallabies side not strong enough to make it out of the weakest pool at the World Cup.
Wales and Fiji will deservedly go through to the quarter-finals. The Wallabies, equally deservedly, will be at the airport with Georgia and Portugal.
Nick Frost (right) with Robert Leota during the match against Wales.Credit: Getty
How did we end up like this, “savaged like sick rabbits by dingoes behind Uluru,” as former Wallabies coach Dave Brockhoff used to say?
Let’s go macro first with the structural failures, then go micro with what happened on the night.
Structurally, this year Rugby Australia pinned its hopes on Eddie Jones. Backed by commentators like me, RA reasoned that with Eddie having a World Cup record second to none, it was a no-brainer to bring him back.
Listen, we said, Eddie has had so many major achievements at World Cups, it is hard to keep track. But in all of 2003 (coaching Australia to the final), 2007 (World Cup victory, as assistant coach to the Springboks), 2015 (coaching Japan to victory over the Springboks), and 2019 (coaching England to the final) his teams performed.
Eddie Jones at his press conference after Australia’s 40-6 loss to Wales.Credit: Getty
So, of course, you’d put him in charge of a Wallabies side that seemed to be crying out for a human cattle prod like him. We knew there’d be tears, that a few older players would be put to the sword, that assistant coaches would rush to the exits with exhaustion, and there would be blues with journalists in explosive press conferences. All those things are standard Eddie Jones fare, and they’re often painful for all.
But Eddie got results, see? Did we mention his World Cup track record? We were ready for the ugly, because we knew the beautiful times were just ahead. And it was this belief that Eddie knew best that meant we kept the faith even when seemingly bizarre decisions were made, including the chopping and changing of the team, leaving so many veterans at home that we had the youngest team in the Cup, and having five or six different captains in as many Test matches.
For he was Eddie Jones, and he got results! They were coming, hear? He told us so, every press conference, and even after a shocking loss to Fiji, we still believed him when he said, “We will beat Wales.”
Well, I did, anyway.
Because, I mean, it was just inconceivable that Australian rugby was going through all that pain, and would have nothing to show for it – bar a single win over Georgia.
And yes, there was that story by Tom Decent that while Eddie was calling on the Wallabies to show commitment to the jersey, he was talking to Japanese rugby about the top job there. Well, that was devastating, but we’d deal with that after playing Wales. Because they will beat Wales, won’t they? Eddie’s the expert at miracle wins and he’s going to show us.
So we watched, closely.
In the warm-ups, Wales were all out onto the field well before the last of our blokes. They went through a series of intricate drills while the Wallabies ran around a bit. Yes, there were a few back-line moves from the Australians, and a few scrums, and Eddie was out there, but he did not look remotely engaged. Other coaches ran our drills, and he looked on, but barely spoke, if at all.
Jac Morgan scores for Wales just before full-time.Credit: AP
The Wales blokes looked seriously intense, like they were playing for the right to continue in the World Cup. We looked, light and hopeful. Two of our blokes on the sideline were laughing over some kind of rocks, scissors, paper game.
The game started and Wales scored almost immediately. Seven-nil.
Lucky punch?
Maybe, because we came up with two penalty goals, to close to 7-6, and frequently threatened their line. There was no lack of effort from the Wallabies and, occasionally, things worked – right up to the Welsh line, without ever getting over that line. Wales got out to a 16-6 lead at half-time, but still we believed.
Eddie must have something! Some of his stuff seemed mad, but there had always been method in that madness, and we are about to see it now. You’ll see.
But no. Just as last week, there were balls bouncing between our players after no one called for it, and endless penalties for tackled players not releasing the ball. We saw basic errors from the Wallabies that simply have no place at this level. There was a crooked throw in the lineout; balls twice kicked out on the full; a crucial lost lineout just when we were pressing their line once more; a ball passed to no one that went over the sideline; knock-ons; at least 10 box-kicks, only one of which led to us getting the ball back; too many scrum penalties to count, with no one rectifying whatever the problem was.
Meanwhile, Wales just kept scoring, and scoring, and scoring, all the way to 40 points, and the game was over. I repeat: it wasn’t as if the Wallabies weren’t trying. They tried their guts out. But they seemed to have no clue how to stop the schoolboy errors and fix the things that weren’t working.
Just how they lacked the capacity to get even the basic things right in an Eddie Jones regime is a mystery to me. His track record really does speak for itself. The hallmark of his teams has been their ruthless professionalism, in his image. Eddie’s teams didn’t make mistakes, they just crushed the life out of opponents.
Tate McDermott passes from a ruck.Credit: Getty
But this one didn’t. This time, with everything riding on it, we were crushed. Eddie didn’t look happy about it, though that may be because every time his image flashed up on the stadium screen, it seemed like two-thirds of the crowd booed. At the final whistle, he came down the stairs, grim, and went straight to the dressing room – again, seemingly disengaged. It was left to Will Skelton to gather the players in a circle and talk to them.
There is no way around it. The Eddie Jones experiment has been a disaster. All of us who thought it would work have been proved wrong. The magic he had has definitively gone, and there is not the tiniest sign of it re-emerging.
Where to from here? I have no clue. But if Eddie is indeed going to Japan, that would solve one problem.
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