Painful as Saturday’s Bledisloe Cup defeat was for the Wallabies, and frustrating as the Eddie Jones’s team were, they cannot afford to drop their heads. They must fly into Dunedin on Sunday and prepare for an All Blacks rematch on Saturday. Jones says they will “train on the plane” if they must. “Transforming a team from where they are now to a team that’s capable of beating New Zealand takes a lot of hard work. The clock’s ticking.”
Ever louder for Jones himself. His grand reboot of Australian rugby is still in flux after a 0-3 start to his second stint as coach and hopes are fading fast for the World Cup kicking off in 40 days. At the MCG, their last game on home soil, Jones did his impish best to inject self-belief in his beleaguered troops. “What we can do is prepare really well, get out of the blocks. If we’re able to match them in the first 20 minutes and put a bit of pressure on them, which they haven’t had this year, funny things can happen.”
