‘We’ve let Australia down’ – Wallabies’ honest assessment after All Blacks thrashing

Wallabies prop Angus Bell felt that they didn’t do themselves justice after they went down to a 38-7 home defeat to the All Blacks on Saturday.

In front of over 80,000 people at the Melbourne Cricket Ground, Australia were in the game in the first half and led 7-5 after half-an-hour.

Two quick-fire tries from New Zealand changed the complexion of the match, however, and the visitors would go on to touch down three more times in the second period.

Despite some improvements in their performance, it was ultimately a bitterly disappointing result for Eddie Jones’ men, who lost all three matches in the Rugby Championship.

Disappointment in front of big crowd

“It was a let down for the Melbourne people who came out to watch us. We trained pretty hard this week and tried to put out a good performance but we’ve let down Eddie, we’ve let down Australia,” Bell told Stan Sport.

“It’s hard because we work so hard and I guess we’ve just got to come back next week and tweak a few things. They’re a great side and to beat them you have to be brilliant.”

Those thoughts were echoed by scrum-half Tate McDermott, who said they were “gutted” by the result and performance.

He added: “Just disappointing as 83,000 people showed up tonight to support us and we didn’t give them much.”

Bell and McDermott also highlighted the key areas they need to improve on if they are to get closer to New Zealand in Dunedin next weekend.

“The general scramble (in defence),” the loosehead prop said. “Their back three and outside backs are quite nippy. There’s a lot of stuff at the set-pieces so in the all-round game there’s a lot we need to fix up.

“We’ll train harder, we’ll get better and we’ll go again harder.”

Being direct

Meanwhile, the scrum-half said: “When we’re direct we’re at our best, we just didn’t do that enough.

“Defensively we need to chop more. Too many times we were going high and they were getting over the advantage line, in behind us and we were not recovering. We’ll keep working on that.”

Bell has struggled with injury this season but made his return off the bench in Round Two of the Rugby Championship before he started in Melbourne.

“It’s been 12 months since I’ve been able to finish a couple of games back-to-back. It’s been a long journey for myself and I’m just glad I get to represent my country. It’s something I don’t take lightly, but I’m just really disappointed with tonight,” the prop added.

READ MORE: Wallabies player ratings: Two standouts in another poor performance