'It's not good enough': Wallabies digest loss as Suaalii and Jorgensen come under spotlight

JAS does seem to be a bit of a problem.

He’s arguably the best athelte in the backline, but in pretty much every position there are better rugby players.

It feels like yet another case where his potential to be a great player will be undermined by the fact that he’s on a salary that demands he’s world class immediately, and he’ll shuffle back to league at the end of his contract if not before.

And can we please not set these insane expectations on players who excelled at schoolboy level but have spent their whole career in a different sport

It will be very interesting to see how the players take this on the chin and find the resilience to lift themselves back up.

It's hard to dig so deep only to find no reward despite giving your best efforts. That's where having intensity at the right times is crucial and over the last two weeks they just haven't.

At no point across the whole of the 80 minutes the previous week or the first 45-ish yesterday did the ABs fail to stop trying and put in those extra efforts.

Their intensity and work rate was highlighted by Jordie’s take in the skies over JAS’ head last week and Roigard’s try saver on Meredith this week as well as in every single bone-crunching hit and turnover the Kiwis pulled off.

That’s the level of effort that the Wallabies are lacking. Jorgo fails to pick off that pass to Reiko whilst Beaudan picks off his pass later in the half because he's kind of just expecting to get there whereas the Kiwi is making sure he gets it.

It's a difference in being able to judge the moment and the Wallabies are most decidedly still off on that front. It's shown in all those little moments where they made mistakes whilst the All Blacks were clinical.

Which is very disappointing because it shouldn't be that hard. But apparently they just can't seem to figure it out. And that becomes a death sentence when your opponent is giving you nothing and you can't do anything on your own ball.

People are blaming the defence erroneously when the inability to hold the line was a casualty of the pace with which the All Blacks were able to play due to their command of the breakdown.

If Australia was preventing that quick ball from coming out to Roigard and DMac then suddenly their attack falters because they're getting the ball out behind the gain line instead of at or near it, meaning the carriers don't get those extra 2-3 seconds of acceleration before hitting contact.

And it means the defensive line is therefore coming forward to the gain line instead of being caught behind it leading to dominant tackles instead of passive ones.

Since Australia were constantly on the back foot due to their lack of pressure at the breakdown, they were never able to get forward meaning that line breaks were inevitable.

Add to that the high tempo, then even when the Wallabies made the stop the next play would come out just as fast eventually resulting in localized mismatches and overlaps.

Bobby V should never have been one on one with Moorby in space but because of how quickly the ABs were able to get up the field and then get wide, Bobby V was stuck out instead of being at the breakdown and was able to get caught flatfooted.

The same thing happened last week when he had to try and make the goal line stop on Carter. He failed and unfortunately the contact resulted in a bad injury to the Kiwi winger.

But those are the exact examples of why Australia needed a greater breakdown presence and their inability to generate that left them hopelessly exposed when defending, giving the All Blacks freedom to run it from everywhere and have everyone streaming forward without fear of a turnover.

The Wallabies were outworked and out thought and they have a lot of work to do to get their project back on track. If the players have enough belief, just maybe they can get close to something.

England and Scotland suddenly become absolute must-win encounters and Wales appears as a potential banana skin given their recent resurgence. So it's far from a given that the Wallabies will even earn an extra test this year after the second round of NC matches are completed next month.

All the burgeoning positivity counts for nothing if you can't deliver on the field. And that delivery means that when you create as much opportunity as Australia does that you make the most of those chances and turn them into maximum points.

The repeated failures to do this and then get choked out of the contest two weeks in a row with no apparent solutions in sight suggests that there's still not enough hard graft being done.

Few players are consistently fighting for every single metre, for every single possession, for every single hit and for every single turnover. Until this changes, any time they get out enthused or out thought they will lose and lose big.

Keep Suallii away from 13. Keep Suallii away from 13 . Keep Suallii away from 13.

Is three times enough Kisses ?

For goodness sake Kisses stop sucking up to Joe Schmidt !

He’s not doing you any favours you t……..