Gregor Paul: Give us reason to believe the Wallabies are worth taking seriously

OPINION:

It has reached the stage where half of New Zealand must be backing the Wallabies to make a hit in this Bledisloe Cup series.

The game in this part of the world desperately
you need to see the All Blacks with bloody noses, even if it’s just for a change.

Rivalries tend not to be considered rivalries when a team wins for 18 years in a row and football codes are rarely taken seriously in Australia when there is endless soul searching caused by endless defeat.

For a brief moment last month, it looked like the Bledisloe Cup was going to reignite into something close to what it was before.

The Wallabies arrived in Wellington and spread out across the field, apparently aware of all the probable moves of the All Blacks. They were all quick hands and graceful feet in the capital with nasty enough to go further than the All Blacks.

If that last Reece Hodge penalty had held their line for a fraction of a second longer, the Wallabies would have won and with the victory could have come the self-confidence and conviction within this young Australian team that they can regularly beat the All Blacks.

But fate pushed that ball toward the post, and while that sparked a frenzied and brilliant nine extra minutes of rugby, it also apparently killed the growing wave of optimism that was brewing within the Wallabies.

In their two subsequent tests they have regressed. His defense has collapsed. His lineout has disappeared. His scrum has doubled and his imagination has been empty.

Their collapse has largely been inflicted by the resurgent All Blacks, but the Wallabies know they have been complicit in their own demise.

So here we are now, with one test remaining in the series and one last chance for the Wallabies to push forward a different narrative and rekindle that fleeting feeling we all had a few weeks ago that it was really going to be at stake this year.

The sense of excitement and possibility after Wellington far outweighed any sense of contentment after Sydney when the All Blacks had inflicted a record loss on the Wallabies.

The draw felt like it was opening a new door to Bledisloe’s rivalry, one that everyone wanted to go through and experience a sense of uncertainty and suspense.

In Sydney, however, we were all taken to the same room: the one where the All Blacks appear, they say boo and the Wallabies jump out of their skin. Which may have been fitting given it was Halloween, but it’s a tiring affair to watch the Wallabies falter and flap and, for the fourth consecutive Test in Sydney, the game was nearly over at halftime.

It wouldn’t be quite true to say that the Wallabies will never have a better chance of winning than this weekend, but everything is in their favor.

There’s the bigger picture, which is that stakeholders, particularly potential broadcasters and backers, are clamoring for righteous heroes and a story that doesn’t involve the upside-down Wallabies and the lunch money pulled out of their pockets by the All Blacks. . .

There’s a broadcast deal in the pipeline and who knows how these things work, but a few extra bucks could be thrown in if the Wallabies can get a win this weekend.

Then there is the Brisbane factor. The All Blacks haven’t had much joy there as of late, losing in 2017, winning by a hair in 2014, drawing in 2012 and losing in 2011.

To make matters more difficult, Covid-19 travel restrictions mean the All Blacks will fly to Brisbane from Sydney on game day, a near-unique demand that assistant coach John Plumtree says will put players to the test.

They are creatures of habit and routine and such variations may be insignificant in the real world, but they are enough to qualify as great drama in high performance circles.

The All Blacks have finished the series and are entering the game with a great performance. The Wallabies need to patch up their Sydney horror show and win some kind of fan approval.

And perhaps most significant of all, Plumtree confirmed that the All Blacks are going to make personnel changes, give Super Rugby givers a career in black, which can see Akira Ioane, Will Jordan and Asafo Aumua appear on on the 23rd of the game.

The Wallabies have the perfect storm behind them and even New Zealanders are willing to take advantage of it and find the fight to give us every reason to believe they are still worth taking seriously.