Brutal review leaves Slipper, Wallabies desperate for bounce back

Tue, Aug 13, 2024, 5:26 AM
Nathan Williamson
by Nathan Williamson
James Slipper and the Wallabies are hungry for a better performance in Perth. Photo: Getty Images
James Slipper and the Wallabies are hungry for a better performance in Perth. Photo: Getty Images

Wallabies centurion James Slipper is confident they can turn around last week's performance as they prepare to face the Springboks in Perth on Saturday.

The back-to-back world champions blew away the Wallabies in a 33-7 defeat to hand coach Joe Schmidt his first loss in charge.

Tickets to the Wallabies home 2024 Test fixtures are available here.

It left the side to endure a tough review after a poor start which saw them concede four penalties in the first eight minutes and miss 13 tackles in the first quarter.

“It’s been a pretty disappointing review on the players' behalf. We look at the game plan itself and it probably wasn’t executed well enough by the players going into the game,” prop James Slipper admits to reporters.

“We missed the jump there in the first half and we were under a lot of pressure going into half-time."

Slipper admits they went away from the game plan which forced them to chase the game in a much better second half performance.

"The gameplan was set, the accuracy around delivering that gameplan, our performance in that wasn’t great," he said.

“We don’t want to see kicks uncontested, we want to see it hit grass and it’s not just the kick game, it was the set piece as well, the way we were tackling, our inability to win the collision at times really hurt us as well.

“There’s plenty of areas to the game we just weren’t accurate in delivering so what we know is if we get certain go the areas right, we can create a lot of opportunities.”

Slipper remains confident they can turn around their performance within a week, with Argentina's win over New Zealand proof of this.

“One thing is Rugby is one week’s performance can easily be turned around," he added.

"We get to play the same team twice in a row in this competition so the ability for us to change the performance is easier in that circumstance but at the end of the day, you’ve just got to perform on the day when the pressure’s on."

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