Joe Schmidt’s brutally honest take on Wallabies’ chances of ‘bowling over’ the B&I Lions
Wallabies hooker Dave Porecki and head coach Joe Schmidt.
Joe Schmidt has given a brutal response to the Wallabies’ chances of knocking over the British and Irish Lions ahead of the Test Series, which kick-offs in Brisbane.
Australia needed a late Harry Wilson try to defeat Fiji in their only warm-up match before tackling the famous touring outfit, with the captain’s score sealing the 21-18 victory.
Schmidt was understandably frustrated by the performance of his side, who wasted several opportunities with two tries notably chalked off for forward passes.
The head coach admits that he is not one for confidence but rather a quiet resolve and will use that to better prepare the team to tackle the daunting task that awaits them.
Wallabies need to improve
It was the Wallabies’ first game of the year and first time the players played on the same team since the end-of-year tour, meaning that Schmidt was not expecting a perfect performance but he was left frustrated after the match.
“We haven’t been together for six months, and to have five trainings and to be seamless would be an expectation I’d hope for rather than believe would immediately happen,” he admitted.
“Now we have another short run to improve on what we saw today.”
But where are those improvement areas and what will be keeping him up a night as the Wallabies build towards the series?
“There are probably a myriad of things,” he explained to reporters in Newcastle.
“I don’t think we quite got rewarded for our scrum – I thought it was really good. We didn’t get reward for our lineout, but they are things that we are working hard on. We got pulled back for two forward passes, that’s a skill execution thing that I think we need to take responsibility for and be more accurate with.
“If you put those four things together, you are already in a much stronger position to at least control the result.”
No confidence
When asked about how confident he was feeling that the Wallabies could turn things around for the three-Test series, Schmidt replied: “I’m not really a confidence sort of person, there’s no real confidence, but there is a quiet resolve.
“Hopefully, that quiet resolve over the course of the three matches can build to something that will earn us the support of a very interested group. It’s a great opportunity for us to bring the game back to the focus point that we’d love it to be in Australia… We will work away with that quiet resolve to try to be better as we work our way through the series.”
Wrapping up the press conference, the Wallabies boss was asked whether he and his charges would be embracing the underdog tag, considering how well the Lions have gone since their arrival in Australia.
“It’s not really a mindset that we have had time to consider,” he said.
“Externally, it will look like that, we didn’t play well enough today for people to have the expectation that we are going to go bowling into Brisbane and knock the Lions over.
“But I’m not sure that expectation was there before today either. We are going to have to build that quiet resolve inch by inch.”
