If gamesmanship could win test matches, Eddie Jones’ Wallabies would beat the All Blacks at the Melbourne Cricket Ground on Saturday and take a giant step towards returning the Bledisloe Cup to Australia after 21 years.
Unfortunately, test matches tend to reflect hard facts and a cruel reality.
The Wallabies have made a 0-2 start to the season with losses to South Africa and Argentina. New Zealand is 2-0 after comfortably beating the same two teams.
In Jones’ world that means the All Blacks will be fearing Australia in Saturday’s match.
That’s at least partly true. The All Blacks always are wary of the Wallabies and know the history of matches between well enough to know Australia can be most dangerous when it’s least expected to perform.
But evidence of the two rounds of the Rugby Championship so far aren’t kind to Jones’ thesis. The All Blacks went to Mendoza, Argentina and beat the Pumas 41-12, came home and beat the w orld champion Springboks 35-20 less than a week later.
They looked polished and confident in both matches, making strong starts and holding out any threatening rallies.
Australia lost 43-12 to the Boks in Johannesburg and suffered a morale-sapping 34-31 loss to Argentina at home two weeks ago.
Jones’ professed confidence the Wallabies will beat the All Blacks on Saturday cannot be said to be founded on solid evidence. It is not in his nature to admit his teams are deficient in any area but their first two performances have suggested they have a long way to go to test the leading teams at the World Cup later this year in France.
The fact he has made seven changes to his lineup for Saturday and thrown 22-year-old flyhalf Carter Gordon into the fray in his first test and as part of a new halves pairing suggests Jones is still searching for a way.
In the meantime, he has done his best to transfer as much as possible of the pressure currently on the Wallabies on to the All Blacks.
“There’s nothing better than winning against New Zealand because you’re feeling the country sinking,” Jones said.
“It’s not just rugby that sinks, the country sinks. The whole economy goes down. The prime minister is there with his fingers crossed hoping the All Blacks win because he knows the economy will drop if they lose. So we can have that effect and at the some time Australian kids want to play rugby again. At the moment too many want to play AFL.”
As always, there’s a nugget of truth in what Jones says. It has long been rumored that a significant All Blacks loss impacts the New Zealand economy. There was also a belief that the All Blacks’ failure to win a World Cup in the 1990s resulted in the fall of the government in an election the same year.
This is an election year in New Zealand and Jones might wittingly or unwittingly have tapped into that belief.
He remains adamant the All Blacks as favorites carry greater pressure into this match than the Wallabies. New Zealand needs only one win to put the Bledisloe Cup safely away for another year. The teams play the second Bledisloe Cup match next Saturday in Dunedin, New Zealand.
“Can we put the Kiwis under pressure on Saturday? Yes, under a lot of pressure, and maybe they’re going to get a bit of a surprise,” Jones said. ”(I) can see the way you’re sitting here thinking ‘what is this bloke talking about? How can that Australian team take on New Zealand?
"We’ve been fantastic the first two games.’ And you have been mate, you’ve been really fantastic, so you haven’t changed, you’re still fans with keyboards, so nothing’s changed.”
Jones has long called New Zealand rugby media “fans with keyboards.”
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