Following a 43-21 victory for New Zealand over Australia at Accor Stadium, here are our five takeaways from the second Bledisloe Cup Test.
The top line
Anyone who switched off at half-time in Sydney went back to bed thinking they’d watched a side being taken apart, and they weren’t far wrong; New Zealand led 36-7 after a first 40 in which Australia had thrown everything they had at them and six All Black tries had come from what felt like six visits to the Wallaby half. The 73,399 who stuck around saw Australia win the second period 14-7 once the job was done, and they also saw one of the most entertaining Test matches anyone will watch this year.
The opening six minutes told you what was coming, end-to-end stuff, two glorious Australian attacks met by two equally glorious New Zealand defensive sets, until Damian McKenzie finally sought the sanctuary of touch, and from there the ball hardly went dead at all. Josh Moorby went over on 11 minutes off a Tupou Vaa’i carry to the edge, a Cam Roigard pass back inside and a lovely McKenzie delivery; Beauden Barrett followed after Peter Lakai had broken through the first wave of gold and bounced off three tackles; Lakai himself crashed over in the corner, and then Rieko Ioane finished a surgical Will Jordan incision into the 13 channel after Codie Taylor had plucked an overthrown Australian lineout out of midfield. Twenty-five minutes gone, 22-0, and about the only thing New Zealand had got wrong was the goalkicking.
Australia had a reply in them, Jeremy Williams finishing a move he’d driven himself with three massive carries, but the big lock was in the bin a minute later for cynically running back offside with New Zealand camped on his line, and Wallace Sititi went down the short side off the scrum to make him pay. Then, with the Wallabies hammering at the All Black 22 and a half-time try there for the taking, Max Jorgensen threw a basketball pass over the top, Barrett read it from a mile off and 80 metres later it was 36-7.
It was rather like watching a young contender throw every punch he’s got in the first couple of rounds, only for the champion to wake up and land three or four that rock him to his boots. The contender took the second half, mind. Moorby’s second, sold with a schoolboy over-the-head dummy that Matt Dawson would have recognised from Cape Town in 1997, was New Zealand’s last score of the day, whilst Tom Wright and Filipo Daugunu gave the home crowd two tries built on nothing but Australian hands and Australian ambition. Barrett, player of the match with two tries and that intercept, now has more tries against Australia than anyone in Test history, a week after his 150th All Black appearance.
Both camps paid for it. Shannon Frizell walked off holding his knee, Chay Fihaki’s debut ended in the bin for a head-on-head with Joseph-Aukuso Suaalii, and with all eight replacements used and Samisoni Taukei’aho off for an HIA, New Zealand saw the game out with 13 men. Meredith limped off on 73, and for Australia that’s the injury that matters, as we’ll come to.
Precision, defined
Put bluntly, this is the bit that will keep Les Kiss awake. Australia had more ball (52 per cent), more carries (97 to 87), more metres (673 to 589), more rucks (130 to 102, and they won 99 per cent of them), the better lineout (90 per cent to 73) and a shade more territory. On the spreadsheet, the first man is having the better afternoon, but on the scoreboard he’s lost by 22, and that gap tells us just how clinical the All Blacks were in terms of their red zone efficiency.
New Zealand went into the Australian 22 eight times in the first 51 minutes and came away with 5.4 points a visit; Australia went there five times for 1.4 points a visit, and they’d spent longer in the zone (3:40 to 2:51) doing it. By the time Moorby scored his second, the All Blacks had made eight entries and scored seven tries, and that with McKenzie landing four of seven from the tee. Sure, Australia were far from poor with ball in hand, but New Zealand were winning the collision at speed and then shifting the ball before the gold line could reset, and once you can do that the red zone looks after itself.
Here’s how it worked. Australia’s defence is built on line speed and push, which is fine when you can reload and get two men into a power tackle, but the tempo New Zealand played at off the ruck, Roigard’s 85 passes and McKenzie’s 39 all delivered at a sprint, meant the Wallabies were arriving at the tackle one at a time, and a one-on-one is exactly what the All Blacks were after, as it allows pops, offloads, fast rucks and speedy retention. Moorby beat seven defenders, Timoci Tavatavanawai, Lakai and Sititi six apiece; Australia missed 35 tackles at a 74 per cent success rate, and every miss got punished because the next pass was already on its way.
The other side of it matters every bit as much. New Zealand made 214 tackles to Australia’s 154, 60 more, at 80 per cent, and the two locks did the donkey work: Fabian Holland 25 tackles with one miss, Scott Barrett 24 with one miss, 49 between them and two blemishes all afternoon.
That’s why Australia, for all their brilliant handling, didn’t get the All Blacks into scramble until the final quarter; the shape held, the double teams arrived and the ball went slow, and Lakai’s jackal on his own line, which started the move for Moorby’s first try, was the same virtue in one man.
Six high-intensity Tests on the bounce, four of them against the Springboks, have left this side razor sharp, and the accuracy comes from playing. The scoreboard in South Africa wasn’t what they wanted, but as preparation for a World Cup year it couldn’t have gone better; Holland, George Bower, Moorby, Tavatavanawai and Fihaki were all in this 23 and all did a job, and there’s a style and a brand to this All Black side again, one that McKenzie, Roigard and that man Barrett carry out onto the pitch every week.
The referee who makes the players look better
There’s an old cliché about players who make everyone around them look better. Luke Pearce is the only referee we’ve ever seen do the same for the players, and Sydney was the proof of it. Neither side kicked much and both wanted to run, so Pearce let them get on with it; the first half alone had 34 and a half minutes of ball in play, which is about what an entire Test usually manages, and the match total finished just short of an hour, roughly double the going rate in this sport.
None of that meant he went soft. He binned Williams without a second thought for a cynical offside that a referee who loves keeping 15 on the pitch would dearly have liked to ignore; he got the Fihaki call right, and his handling of Roigard’s tackle on Meredith on 62 minutes was spot on; the scrum-half’s shin stopped the ball being grounded rather than kicking it from the fly-half’s hands, there’s nothing in law against using your foot like that, and it was the next defender who knocked it loose. No foul play, play on, correct.
The players were hanging by the hour mark and the fatigue errors in the last 15 minutes told you why. Rugby has spent years fretting about how much of an 80-minute match actually contains any rugby; Pearce, and two sides who turned up to play, answered that in one hot afternoon. An absolute masterclass of positivity and accuracy from the Englishman.
Beaten, but Believe
Australia will wake up to a scoreline that says they were thrashed, and in the first half they were, but the last 20 minutes were theirs and the three tries they scored were pure Kiss rugby, ball in hand, short offloads, direct running, players turning up for one another. Wright’s came from Jorgensen beating Ioane inside and out down the right, a switch across the pitch, Wright’s inside line, an offload back to Jorgensen and a pop for Wright in support; Daugunu’s began with Meredith breaking out of his own 22 and finished 80 metres later with Carlo Tizzano gathering a loose ball and the replacement wing going over.
Jorgensen was a threat all afternoon, 124 metres and seven clean breaks, more than anyone on the pitch, and he never quite got the platform.
Williams was Australia’s best forward, excellent in the carry and at the lineout, where he stole two, but the yellow card cost 14 points and that, rather than the try, is what he’ll remember; Harry Wilson led the carry with 14 and three offloads, Angus Bell made a dent off the bench, Josh Canham offloaded four times in 20 minutes, and Harry McLaughlin-Phillips ran promisingly on debut.
Kiss, in suit, baseball cap and moustache, is starting to look like an antipodean Ted Lasso, and with the fourth series just finished there’s every chance he’s noticed; his side certainly played like an early Lasso AFC Richmond, beaten, smiling and with plenty to take home.
Whether a handwritten Believe sign goes up in the Accor Stadium dressing room sadly remains unanswered, but Test rugby is about efficiency, not effort, and the harder truth is the one above: New Zealand scored seven tries from eight visits to the 22 and Australia managed 1.4 points a visit for most of the afternoon, and until that changes the gap between these two sides will stay exactly where it is.
The 10 question, answered
For two years Australia have been hunting for a fly-half to build a World Cup around, and Declan Meredith, in his first start of the series, may just have ended the hunt. He was the best Wallaby 10 we’ve seen in a long while: 104 metres, two clean breaks, two offloads, a turnover won, and a run on 62 minutes that took him 35 metres through the All Black line, in, out and round a dummy, only for Roigard’s miracle tackle to jolt the ball from his grasp on the line.
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Two minutes later, with New Zealand breaking from a turnover and Beauden Barrett clear 80 metres from where Meredith had started, it was the fly-half who ran him down and won the ball back. That’s the player, the breaks, the defence, the nerve to keep attacking the line when the game was gone, and the engine to be at both ends of the pitch inside three minutes; the Daugunu try was his from first touch to last pass.
He limped off on 73 and Australia will be sweating on the scan, because they have to stay with him now. Ben Donaldson’s leg injury opened the door and Meredith walked straight through it, and with the World Cup pool match against these same opponents at this same ground almost a year to the day away, Kiss has found the man to build it around; two of Australia’s three tries passed through his hands, and he’d not started a Test in this series before Saturday.