Dave Rennie says the Wallabies won’t use “inexperience” as an excuse for their Bledisloe nightmare, nor abandon Noah Lolesio, despite the All Blacks’ crushing 43-5 win at the Olympic Stadium in Sydney and the likely return to fitness of James O’Connor for next week’s final trans-Tasman Test of the year.
While the two nations will once again meet in Brisbane next Saturday, the Halloween result meant the All Blacks retained the Bledisloe Cup for the 18th straight year.
For Lolesio – one of four debutants for the Wallabies in the loss – the match went far from how the 20-year-old would have dreamt.
After being called into the side at fly-half for O’Connor, Lolesio and fellow debutant Irae Simone were guilty of kicking away possession early in the match when the game was firmly in the balance.
While the Brumbies playmaker rallied in the second-half to score his side’s only try of the match, the fixture showed the massive step up from Super Rugby to the Test arena.
In the end, Lolesio, who led the Brumbies to victory in the Super Rugby AU final last month in his return from a two-month lay-off because of a hamstring injury, was taken off midway through the second half.
Rennie revealed in his post-match press conference that was because of cramp, but the Wallabies coach was noncommittal about whether the rookie would once again wear the No.10 jersey when the two sides face each other at Suncorp Stadium on November 7.
“We’ll make a call and see how he bounces back,” Rennie said.
“We’ll assess things, we’re not looking to throw Noah under the bus. We battled all over the place tonight.”
Lolesio had been in-line to come off the bench for the do-or-die clash in Sydney, but was called in after James O’Connor failed to get through their ‘Test match Tuesday’ training session because of an MCL compliant, which he hurt during Bledisloe II at Eden Park.
But Rennie said he “expected” the experienced back to be fit for selection after running “reasonably confidently straight lined” on Saturday.
O’Connor’s return would certainly give the Wallabies some much needed experience in the playmaking channels.
Not only did they lose him, they lost fellow experienced inside back Matt To’omua because of a groin injury suffered in the first-half of the Eden Park defeat..
Their withdrawals meant the Wallabies went from having more than 100 caps in the inside playmaking channels to zero.
Nonetheless, the new Wallabies coach said he wasn’t “going to use that as an excuse” and that they simply needed to be more competitive for longer periods of time.
“We prepared well,” he said.
“You can’t turn over the ball as often as we did, we got caught pushing passes.
“What we talked about at half-time was just trying to build some pressure, go multi-phase and for 20 minutes we actually played pretty well. We had some pill and actually defended quite well and if you can go four-five phases defending, they’re actually going to kickback to us.
“But 20 minutes of competitive footy is nowhere near enough to cut it with the All Blacks."
