The Wallabies may have snapped a three-game skid with a drought-breaking win in Edinburgh, but they are kidding themselves if they think a performance of that quality will be good enough to get within striking distance of France next week and Ireland later in the tour.
There is no hiding from the fact that Australia’s 16-15 win was hugely fortunate. Had Blair Kinghorn not pulled his match-winning penalty attempt – which was from a very kickable position — to the left of the posts, Australia’s pursuit of their tour “pass mark” of three wins would have blown out to 100/1.
Instead, they received the ultimate reprieve, with a clever Nic White restart ensuring they wouldn’t have to face a final Scottish assault. And the Wallabies will now return to France with a spring in their step, but more importantly must be the knowledge that what they delivered at Murrayfield was a performance that shows how far off the pace of the game’s elite nations they really are.
“We’re happy to hang on,” Wallabies coach Dave Rennie said after the match.
“I’m proud of the effort because at 15-6 we’d given up a soft try straight after half-time, but we fought our way back in and put our nose in front.
“We can be a lot better. We had a lot of possession inside their 22, we didn’t convert and we knew Scotland were very good post-tackle and got their hand on the ball so we know we have to better against France
“There’s been a hell of a lot of hard work from people so it’s pleasing to get a result.”
Rennie is right to hail the character of his team, with one key defensive shift before halftime vital in ensuring they would go into halftime up 6-5, when potentially they could have trailed 12-3.
They then also slipped to a 15-6 deficit before the sin-binning for Glen Young for a dangerous cleanout – more on that later – 16 minutes into the second-half opened up the opportunity for Australia to mount their comeback and, led by skipper James Slipper and a career-marker performance from Nick Frost, the Wallabies worked their way back into the contest.
But, with the familiar sound of a broken record, Rennie also bemoaned his side’s inability to be “clinical”.
Too often, in the first half in particular, the Australians were beaten to the punch at the breakdown, Scotland’s speed and combativeness over the ball forcing Wallabies players into errors at the tackle as they attempted to pop the ball up to an under-pressure Tate McDermott.
One such occasion came late in the first half when Rob Valetini looked to offload from the floor, the ball ricocheting off McDermott’s legs and into the arms of a waiting Scottish defender. When Bernard Foley kicked out on the full from outside his 22 a few moments later the Wallabies found themselves deep inside their own half when they should have been applying huge pressure to the Scottish tryline.
The Wallabies also gifted Kinghorn a try immediately after halftime with a dreadful sequence of passing that started with McDermott’s service from the back of a scrum. With a solid scrum platform, there was no excuse for McDermott’s poor pass out in front of Hunter Paisami, which put the inside centre under pressure and created the lag that would eventually see Foley grass the ball into the waiting path of Kinghorn, who showed tremendous football skills to toe through and beat a covering Andrew Kellaway to the tryline.
While McDermott is Australia’s most threatening running option at No. 9, a fact he demonstrated with a break only minutes into the match, the lack of accuracy and consistency of his pass will always mean his selection carries risk.
Certainly Scotland’s forwards deserve enormous praise for their work at the breakdown, with each of skipper Jamie Ritchie, Hamish Watson and Pierre Schoeman able to either secure a turnover or the penalty from referee Luke Pearce.
One of the best communicators in the game, Pearce largely had a fine game with the whistle, applying his interpretation of the breakdown with consistency. He also deservedly marched an increasingly anxious Wallabies team back 10 metres for backchat and encouraged both forward packs into a “quick reset” after a scrum collapse.
But his decision to only sin-bin Young rather than send him off completely was confusing, particularly given there is no delineation between “bicep” and “shoulder” when it comes to World Rugby’s sanction framework for contact with the head.
While the debate around the place of the jackal at the breakdown will go on, the clear facts of this case were that Young made direct contact with Wallabies scrum-half McDermott’s head, he had come from distance so there was significant force, and there was no mitigation.
Young should have seen red, and if the World Rugby citing process is doing its job then he should be sidelined for at least a couple of weeks.
Having not seriously threatened the Scottish line to that point, the Wallabies finally built the momentum they had been searching for as the forwards rolled into the heart of the hosts’ defence to get them backpedaling in front of their own posts.
The defensive line stretched, locks Cadeyrn Neville and Frost proved the Australian forwards do have the ability to pass accuracy, the latter’s final short ball to skipper James Slipper a reflection of the towering Brumbies second-rower’s skills and why Rennie was so keen to have him backflip on a Japanese deal earlier this year.
But more importantly Frost also nailed the core responsibilities of a starting second-rower. The 23-year-old lock was dominant at lineout time, pressuring the Scottish ball and winning his own; he topped the Wallabies tackle count with a perfect 18 from 18, and he emptied the tank in a performance that probably should have won him man-of-the-match honours.
They instead went to skipper Slipper, who admitted it was likely because of just his second Test try from 126 games: “I don’t get many,” the veteran prop quipped.
But it would have been Kinghorn had he not pulled the 80th minute penalty and likely match-winner.
So while the Wallabies raise a beer to their victory back at their World Cup base in France, the knowledge that a similar performance to the one they produced in Edinburgh will be nowhere near good enough to worry Les Bleus must be front of mind.
And it will be up to Rennie, Slipper and the returned Michael Hooper to ram that message home at the start of the week.
The veteran No. 7 was typically busy on his return, though at times seemed to think he was still the captain. In fact, Pearce at one stage told Slipper he “had a lot of captains” out there.
Such chat is a reflection of a team that knew how badly it needed a win, that was feeling the pressure of three successive defeats close in around them.
It’s obvious the Wallabies were fortunate to see off an under-strength Scotland. The fact they now have the opportunity to genuinely achieve their tour pass mark of three wins from five in Europe is putting a positive spin on their one-point win in Edinburgh.
But the search for their clinical edge and consistent accuracy in their skill sets goes on. Without it, the Wallabies will continue to flounder in the bottom few places in World Rugby’s top 10 — and they’ll be playing for second in a two-horse race at Stade de France next week.