The record win over the All Blacks in Perth has restored the “hope” of Australian fans about the Wallabies’ chances at the Rugby World Cup.
That's the view of Rugby Australia boss Raelene Castle, whose name was near the top on a long list of people pleasantly stunned by the Wallabies’ dominant 47-26 victory over the All Blacks at Optus Stadium last month.
Beaten a week later 36-0 at Eden Park, Michael Cheika’s team couldn’t back it up and win the Bledisloe Cup but the Wallabies’ form in Perth gave their fans something valuable nonetheless - optimism.
After a very poor 2018 and mediocre form before the first Bledisloe Cup game, the Wallabies had been written off by bookies for the 2019 Rugby World Cup and by many Aussies as well.
But the result in Perth showed the Australian side has changed the conversation, according to Castle.
"Every Wallaby fan and every sports fan in Australia now believes the Wallabies can do really well at the World Cup,” Castle said.
"If we don’t have that win in Perth, people aren’t saying those things. So that showed - a complete performance, dominant win over the All Blacks - that they’re capable of doing it.
"The first job is getting out of your pool and then you get out of your pool and we’re into quarter-finals, and who knows with the crossover game and who knows who you’re going to end up with.
"There is hope now, people have seen for themselves and they’ve seen there is a chance that the Wallabies, if they get on a roll, there is no reason why they can’t do what they did four years ago.”
Castle was talking at the launch of the 2019 NRC season, which runs through the Rugby World Cup.
The Rugby Australia chief executive said they’d planned deliberately to schedule NRC games to be “complementary” with the World Cup, and not in competition.
NRC games on the same day are kicking off at lunchtime, ahead of the Wallabies’ mid-afternoon games from Japan.
"We have tried really hard to put the games when people can sit down on a Saturday afternoon and make a whole afternoon of it. So you should be able to go six or seven games in a row if you wanted to,” she said.
"So we are not making people choose between watch an international at the World Cup or watching the NRC. So we have worked hard at that, and a lot of the games are earlier than what the athletes are used to playing. We have tried to be complementary.”
