mens
international
Tom Wright reflected on the Wallabies’ disappointment after their 50-19 defeat All black people at Eden Park, with Australians gathering to “face the music” before turning their attention to another Bledisloe Cup clash.
Wright has played 52 Tests for the Wallabies but has only tasted victory against the All Blacks once, on his debut in November 2020. The outside back scored with his first touch as the Wallabies went on to a thrilling win at Suncorp Stadium in Brisbane.
But the Wallabies are now on a 12-match losing streak against the All Blacks, which has seen the New Zealanders retain the Bledisloe Cup time and time again. The All Blacks locked up Bled for 24th year in a row with a 31-point win at the Garden last Saturday.
Ben Donaldson and Max Jorgensen helped set up Wright for the start and the full-back broke through the All Blacks defense to score. That rounded off a dominant start for the visitors, who had around 90 percent of the possession in the first 10 minutes.
It was a three-point game at half-time, but the All Blacks ran away with a convincing win in the second half. But Wright said the Wallabies knew they had to “pick up the pieces pretty quickly” ahead of another Bledisloe Cup Test, to be played at Accor Stadium in Sydney this weekend.
“Scoreboard music. Nobody wants to concede 50 points. Nobody wants to be on the losing end,” Wright told reporters.
“At 17-14, we’re right in the contest. The game was there to take … when the opportunity was there before the game we were all so excited. We knew the opportunity was there for us to have.”
“We felt like all the guns were loaded and we had the ammunition to fire the hits to win the game. We didn’t. That’s the music I was talking about. That’s the music I was talking about.”
“You can be so internally driven to win, when you don’t it’s a disappointment you have to deal with. The next opportunity is around the corner for us on Saturday but we know the Bledisloe Cup is over the ditch for another 12 months or whatever.
“Disappointing but we can’t carry that disappointment into the rest of the week because it won’t help us on Saturday.”
Cam Roigard kicked the decisive score early in the second half, before captain Codie Taylor added another five points for the All Blacks soon after. The Wallabies ended up making more than 200 tackles on the night as the All Blacks took control in attack.
The Wallabies conceded 10 penalties over the course of 80 minutes and the All Blacks managed to capitalize on some opportunities. Leroy Carter, Josh Moorby and Will Jordan also got on the scoresheet, as the All Blacks kept Bled with a clinical performance.
It saw the All Blacks extend their remarkable unbeaten run at the Garden to 54 Tests, unbeaten since the 1990s. They also returned to the winner’s circle after losing three in a row to the Springboks during Rugby’s Greatest Rivalry series.
“They’re not a bad team. They’re probably number one, two in the world and have been for a few seasons now. It’s not like we’re coming up against a team that a lot of teams in world rugby aren’t fighting to win,” explained Wright.
“The narrative will always be like that, we haven’t won the Bledisloe Cup for a while.
“If I had the answer to the golden egg, it would be pretty handy to have. But I certainly don’t think there are any mental scars.”
“The difficulty of playing that team is just that – they were there to take us on before the game, until half-time you could make a valid argument that we were right. They probably just applied a lot more pressure in the second half than we could have applied to them and the chocolates fell their way.”