LONG READ Can Schmidt revisit history and revive Wallabies for ‘worst type of All Blacks'?

If there’s one thing to cling to for Wallabies fans this week after the record loss to Argentina in Santa Fe – and goodness knows we need something – it’s that Joe Schmidt now finds himself in a position he has kind of experienced before.

The 67-27 thumping at the wonderful hands and quick feet of Los Pumas has given Schmidt confirmation that the distance between Wallabies’ highs and lows are about as extreme as it gets in international rugby. And what’s more, he’s found them just only seven days apart.

The second-half capitulation has sent the coaching team back to the drawing board. Heads are likely still being scratched as to how a 20-3 lead could be squandered so meekly. The opposition, to that point being well contained and even well beaten, flipped a switch and scored 64 points to seven over the next 50 minutes or so – 26 of them in the last eight minutes.

Sitting in the back of minds amidst all the head-scratching and wondering how on earth it all went wrong is the worst familiar feeling in Australian rugby: knowing that the All Blacks are arriving next week.

And it’s the worst type of All Blacks, too. The wounded-and-humbled-on-tour All Blacks. The really-needing-a-response All Blacks. The All Blacks which turned round a humiliating loss to Argentina in Wellington into a 32-point win in Auckland. Those All Blacks.

But this is also where the history books provide some degree of assistance.

Back in 2012, Ireland were humbled 60-0 in New Zealand – still a record loss now, 12 years later. The 2013 Six Nations wasn’t much better, where they won just one game in the tournament, suffered a first ever defeat to Italy, and finished fifth overall.

Along the way, they slumped to a worst-ever world ranking of ninth and Declan Kidney was removed from his post. A horrible injury toll meant Ireland were often fielding vastly inexperienced sides.

Current Queensland coach Les Kiss took the Irish squad to North America for the mid-year Tests, with Schmidt not taking the reins until after Leinster won the European Challenge Cup and the Pro12 double.

Schmidt’s first Ireland team beat Samoa 40-9 at the Aviva Stadium in Dublin, running in five tries to none.

The following week, however, the Irish were beaten by an Australian side coached by Ewen McKenzie and on something of a rebuild themselves after losing a Test series to the British and Irish Lions mid-year. The Wallabies won 32-15 but played nearly a quarter of the game down a player, after a Michael Hooper yellow card late in the first half, and a Tevita Kuridrani red card for a tip tackle late in the second.

Champion Irish fly-half Johnny Sexton sat out the win over Samoa, and exited the Wallabies game at half-time with a hamstring injury.

Schmidt said of the loss to Australia, “We were no different to last week, and that’s unfortunate because you want to see improvement week on week. But there’s no more work to be done than I thought. We’re a work in progress.”

The following week Ireland hosted New Zealand in Dublin, and were a completely different side. They ripped the All Blacks apart and led 19-0 after 18 minutes, and 22-7 after half an hour.

But as was their wont at the time, the reigning World Cup champions launched a desperate late attack from a penalty in the last minute, mounting the phases patiently, before Dane Coles eventually put Ryan Crotty over in the corner to level the scores with 81 minutes and 24 seconds on the clock.

Aaron Cruden needed to convert the try to win but missed, only for referee Nigel Owens to rule Ireland charged off their line too early. Cruden didn’t miss with the second attempt, and the final moments were celebrated all over again in a 10th anniversary clip on the All Blacks YouTube channel just last year.

It all sounds eerily familiar for Wallabies fans, right?

After a 2023 most would rather forget, Australia has similarly fallen to ninth in the rankings. Injuries, post-RWC departures, and a need to build depth has seen Schmidt send out 16 Wallabies debutants in 2024, and with only the hefty tallies of a couple of senior players boosting the cap total in otherwise very inexperienced sides.

And now, a record loss has befallen them as well.

In having to revive a young side, coming off a record loss and with the Bledisloe Cup next on his agenda, Schmidt may be about to face the biggest test of his professional coaching career.

But the point in delving this far back into the history books is to back up the notion that Schmidt knows the size of the rebuild required, and what supporters are going through, because this was the same situation in which he started his Ireland rebuild project a decade ago.

None of this, of course, is any type of guarantee of Australian success, and certainly not next weekend. In having to revive a young side, coming off a record loss and with the Bledisloe Cup next on his agenda, Schmidt may be about to face the biggest test of his professional coaching career.

Asked to cast an eye forward to the annual trans-Tasman clash amid the post-match inquest in Santa Fe, Schmidt said: “I think that’s maybe one of the advantages of being quite pragmatic about it, getting the stuff that we did well, particularly in that first 30 minutes, looking to build a bit of confidence on that.

“And then making sure that we steel ourselves for what’s coming with some of the things we didn’t do well in that last 50. And I think the last 10 minutes, we were over-chasing the game with a young group, and there is always the risk that the score will blow out.

“But at 41-27, we’re only one score away from picking up a couple of bonus points at worst, and maybe chasing another chance at the game. But I think we just overreached at that back end and it didn’t look great in that last eight to 10 minutes.”

Schmidt admitted both his coaching staff and the playing group learned “a fair bit” in the 40-point loss to Los Pumas, but learning is only half the job after such a demoralising result.

The other, more urgent, half is to ensure it doesn’t happen again. That’s where Schmidt and his coaching brains trust of Mike Cron, Laurie Fisher and Geoff Parling have their work cut out.

Clearly, they’ll need to review why the bench had little to no impact over the last half an hour. They’ll also look at how their defensive system completely disintegrated in the face of stunning Argentine momentum.

But they should also take a closer look at the team’s decision-making under pressure in that period, and even whether they made the right calls with their substitutions.

The decisions that removed Angus Bell, Nick Frost and Rob Valetini – the Wallabies’ three best forwards through The Rugby Championship to date – from the contest in the second half are easy ones to look back on, because they collectively removed most of the Wallabies’ ball-carrying effectiveness in three steps.

Ultimately, if Schmidt says he could see some significant progress in how the Wallabies played and attacked so clinically in the first half an hour, then that’s what the fans need to see more of. Add to that the defensive and breakdown work from the win in La Plata the week before, and you have a strong foundation of a game to take on New Zealand.

Address some set-piece concerns as well, and Schmidt will have Australian citizenship rubber-stamped in weeks whether he wants it or not. But that’s the size of the job now ahead of him.

We wait to see if Schmidt’s history can repeat. And not just because the Wallabies need some results in 2024. Next year’s British & Irish Lions tour, and Australian rugby more broadly, is already sweating on it.

So how did Schmidt’s Ireland rebuild project work out in that first year?

Not even four full months on from those November 2013 results, Ireland beat France in Paris by two points to lift the 2014 Six Nations Championship title. They finished 2014 ranked third in the world

It all worked out pretty bloody well, and that’s the bigger-picture progression that Schmidt has been outlining since he took on the Wallabies job.

Now, we wait to see if Schmidt’s history can repeat. And not just because the Wallabies need some results in 2024.

Next year’s British & Irish Lions tour, and Australian rugby more broadly, is already sweating on it.