The Wallabies have limped into Dunedin on the back of three defeats, with the Bledisloe Cup out of reach and the Australian rugby public wondering if maybe it was a giant mistake to axe former coach Dave Rennie earlier this year.
Bookmakers in Australia have such little faith inthe Wallabies winning in New Zealand for the first time since 2001, they are paying $23 for such an outcome – ridiculously generous odds in a two-team contest.
New Zealand have enjoyed three convincing wins in 2023 – the last of which saw them dust off the Wallabies 38-7 – so the narrative of these two nations being on radically different World Cup trajectories is building.
What’s helped promote this is that, in the aftermath of Bledisloe one, the All Blacks are desperately trying to talk their World Cup chances down while the Wallabies are talking theirs up.
It’s typical for the All Blacks when they are feeling confident and settled that they revert to their default mode of dampening external expectations.
They have never been a team to indulge in self-promotion or fuel the fires of favouritism, and it’s typically been true that the better they are playing, the more they will talk about their weaknesses and list all the things they have to improve.
The Wallabies, on the other hand, have spent the days since their humbling defeat in Melbourne accentuating positives and suggesting there is something brewing.
Head coach Eddie Jones found all sorts of reasons to be optimistic about what he’d seen in Melbourne, citing the opening 20 minutes of each half as periods of domination where someone dropped in from Mars would deduce that the team wearing the garish orange was the better one.
But he’s a man under pressure who needs to sell a better story than the one that was produced on the field.
Also, it is Australia’s default mode to project confidence when they are underperforming, and typically, it’s a sign they are lacking in self-belief – almost trying to convince themselves that they are in better shape than they really are.
And yet, the mad, daft thing is that the Wallabies, regardless of what happens in Dunedin, will jet off to France in a couple of weeks as serious contenders to win the World Cup.
The All Blacks beat the Wallabies 38-7 in Melbourne last weekend. Photo / Getty Images
There might well be some smoke and mirrors playing out in the media arena, but that shouldn’t fool anyone into thinking the All Blacks are somehow better placed to win the World Cup than the Wallabies.
Australia may be projecting a firm sense of confidence about their future because Jones, having been around for as long as he has and having coached all over the planet, is aware that it is significantly harder to win the Bledisloe Cup than it is the World Cup.
That’s not an indictment on the overall quality within the international game, but it’s an undeniable truth, backed by endless statistical evidence, that winning a single test in New Zealand remains the toughest gig in rugby.
New Zealanders have to understand that the Bledisloe is not a good indicator of what may follow at the World Cup.
To have to beat the All Blacks in consecutive tests – even if the first is played in Australia – is almost impossibly hard, and while it may appear that New Zealand are the more likely of the Bledisloe rivals to succeed in France, the Wallabies are equally well-placed.
Jones was maybe spooning it a bit thick about how good the Wallabies were in those two respective 20-minute spells, but there was something there.
And give the Wallabies another six weeks, and there will be more there: greater ability to convert pressure into points and greater ability to hold their nerve when things don’t go their way.
Also, some of the reason to believe that Australia almost have a better chance to win in France is down to the way the draw has unfolded, pitting the top five teams in the world – including the All Blacks - in the same half, meaning that one of them won’t make it out of their pool, and another two will be eliminated in the quarter-finals.
The Wallabies are looking at an altogether gentler path, having been pooled with Wales and Fiji for the third World Cup in succession.
This won’t be a gentle run in the park, but no one goes into a match against Wales these days with any trepidation, and as the Wallabies have quite the contingent of Fijians, they should have enough firepower and flair to find a way out of their pool.
Their quarter-final opponent will come from the pool containing England, Japan, Argentina and Samoa. A place in the last four seems not only achievable, but probable and, right now, the Wallabies are the Bledisloe partner with the best chance of winning the World Cup.
For live commentary of All Blacks v Wallabies join Elliott Smith on Newstalk ZB, Gold Sport and iHeartRADIO; catch the Alternative Commentary Collective on iHeartRADIO, Hauraki and SKY Sport 9, or get live updates from nzherald.co.nz.
