Joe Schmidt is urging Australian rugby fans to keep faith with his Lions-taming project despite the feel-good factor surrounding his Wallabies taking a deflating hit at Murrayfield.
The coach was adamant he’d seen “a very good performance” from his side on Sunday, despite Scotland ultimately prevailing with something to spare, scoring four tries to one in a 27-13 victory that ended any hope of a British Isles ‘grand slam’.
But as the squad flew straight off post-match to Dublin with only a short turnaround before the Ireland tour finale on Saturday, even Schmidt had to concede plenty needed tidying up quickly.
The Wallabies missed 34 tackles, gave up 14 penalties and couldn’t find – or weren’t allowed to find – any of the attacking rhythm they’d displayed in the wins over England and Wales.
But there was also no question a flinty, sharp Scottish team, marshalled by a maestro in Finn Russell and an inspired Australian leader in Sione Tuipulotu, were far superior, particularly in defence, to the Wallabies’ previous two conquests.
Yet Schmidt hoped the progress they were making was still clear, despite the Wallabies having “lost a bit of cohesion” following a nightmarish week’s preparation.
Freezing conditions and snow disrupted training and two of his starting XV, hooker Matt Faessler and lock Jeremy Williams, were ruled out in the 24 hours before kickoff by injury and illness.
“You’ve got to be able to learn to roll with those punches, so that was a great learning experience for those guys to be put out there and to try to cope,” said Schmidt.
“That will hopefully be a way to build forward, to build experience and adaptability. We’ve got to be able to cope with an interrupted build up and still deliver, and to be fair to the players, I felt they still delivered a very good performance against a very good team.
“Just that very good is not good enough against Scotland at the moment.”
Plenty of those leading Scots – with Schmidt acknowledging that Tuipulotu could be among them – will be in the Lions squad heading down under, so would his Wallabies win the race to be ready for them?
“It is still pretty positive. What I’m hoping is that people do see it in context for next July, because I think we’re building a little bit of momentum,” said Schmidt.
“And I always said from the start, it would never be linear, because high performance just isn’t. There’s going to be days where it doesn’t go as well as you’d like.
“They’re not excuses, they’re just reasons for why we were a little bit out of kilter.
“Hopefully, people can still see there’s some quality starting to be built through an Australian side that’s actually starting to show a bit of depth, albeit with some pretty inexperienced players.
“Our skill execution was a bit off today. We worked really hard in the first half, and I thought we defended really well. But second half, there’s a fair bit to tidy up.”
