A defiant Eddie Jones maintains Australia can win this year's Rugby World Cup despite facing the very real prospect of arriving in France without a win in 2023.
A last-gasp try to Juan Martin Gonzalez consigned the Wallabies to a dispiriting 34-31 defeat to Argentina on Saturday night, marking the first time in history Australia have lost successive Test matches to the Pumas.
The heartbreaker was also Australia's fifth consecutive Rugby Championship defeat and followed up last week's 43-12 mauling to the understrength Springboks in South Africa.
"Ill-discipline really hurt us tonight again - a yellow card and a couple of penalties put us at the wrong end of the field and you just can't win Test matches playing that sort of rugby," said dejected Wallabies co-captain James Slipper.
"There's quite a few of us who have to look at those penalties and rectify them pretty quickly because performances like that, we won't go far at the World Cup."
Jones, though, remains "100 per cent confident" the now-eighth-ranked Wallabies can bring the Webb Ellis Cup back to Australia in October.
"At the moment, it seems like we're miles away from we need to be. But all this is going to make us harder and more hungry to get it right," he said.
"We're a team that needs to change. We know that. And that's the reason I'm here in the job."
After setting up Australia's first try with a quick tap and sharp footwork, instinctive winger Mark Nawaqanitawase looked to have saved the Wallabies' blushes with a 95-metre intercept try with five minutes remaining at Commbank Stadium.
"Fantastic," Jones said of Nawaqanitawase's dazzling display.
"Every time he got the ball, he lit the stadium up. Kids are jumping off the edge of the seat. He's that sort of player. Fantastic."
Alas, three minutes later, the Pumas snatched defeat from the jaws of victory.
But Jones is urging fans not to lose hope 55 days out from the World Cup kick-off.
"There's probably no-one more despondent than me. I probably ruined three radios in the coach's box," he said, while also confessing to "certainly sleeping less" since taking over from the sacked Dave Rennie in January and being hailed as Australian rugby's saviour.
Jones says there's no magic dust he can sprinkle to instantly revive the Wallabies' fortunes.
"It was always going to be difficult if you're coming off a base where you've been consistently unsuccessful for a period of time, which the results show that," he said.
"We're trying to change the team and also trying to change the way we play. So we've sort of double-whammyed this, and I'm quite happy to accept that we're not where we should be.
"But I'm also quite happy to tell you that I think we're on the right track and we'll get there.
"It would have been easy if I come in, take the team, paired everything back and played a really simple game.
"But that's not going to win us a World Cup.
"We need to be able to play a number of different ways and we need an attack that's unpredictable to the opposition, which at the moment is unpredictable to us too.
"We're a bit like a broken car. I remember my first car was a Datsun 1200 - you'd fix the handbrake and the next day the windscreen wipers would break.
"We're a bit like that moment. As painful as it is and as hard as it is, we'll keep working on it and we'll get it right."
