Australia may never get a better opportunity to wrest back the Bledisloe Cup than the one they were gifted on Saturday. At home under sunny skies, with a full-strength side, they faced an underpowered All Blacks outfit almost as determined to shoot itself in both feet as they were. Yet the Wallabies still couldn’t get the job done.
To their credit, Australia knew how lucky they were to get to 31-28 at the end. “We got close tonight, but not close enough,” captain Harry Wilson said of a 22nd straight year of Bledisloe failure. The scoreline wasn’t even worth a glass-half-full outlook, growled coach Joe Schmidt. “You lose a Test match, there’s not a lot of water in the glass.”
