{"id":253638,"date":"2025-10-31T17:14:08","date_gmt":"2025-10-31T17:14:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/253638\/"},"modified":"2025-10-31T17:14:08","modified_gmt":"2025-10-31T17:14:08","slug":"wallabies-firing-again-in-time-for-england-clash-after-return-to-free-running-dna-australia-rugby-union-team","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/253638\/","title":{"rendered":"Wallabies firing again in time for England clash after return to free-running DNA | Australia rugby union team"},"content":{"rendered":"

If only Henry Slade had managed to stop Ben Donaldson getting that offload away, if only Ollie Sleightholme had been able to make that wrap-up tackle on Len Ikitau, if only Marcus Smith was able to catch Max Jorgensen. But Slade didn\u2019t, Sleightholme couldn\u2019t, Smith wasn\u2019t, and Jorgensen scored in the corner. This time last year the Wallabies beat England 42-37<\/a>, their first victory against them at Twickenham in nine years, and it was, the players will tell you themselves, the moment when everything changed. \u201cThis game last year was a big turning point for us as a group,\u201d says the Australia captain, Harry Wilson, \u201cit really made us believe that on our day we can beat anybody in the world.\u201d<\/p>\n

Twelve months ago England weren\u2019t worried about the Wallabies so much as they were worried for the Wallabies. The one thing an Australian team doesn\u2019t want is pity, but that\u2019s what they got. They had won two Tests out of nine in 2023, when they embarrassed themselves at the World Cup<\/a>, and, after a few months during which he seemed to spend most of his time bowling around in a cork hat and shouting at everyone about how rubbish Australian rugby was, their head coach Eddie Jones had defected to Japan<\/a>. A couple of their better players had hopped codes to play in the NRL and they had dropped to ninth in the world rankings. It was all getting a bit existential.<\/p>\n

It is one of the great truths of English sport that you should never give an Aussie side an even break. A week after Jorgensen scored to beat England they put 50 points past Wales<\/a>, and two weeks after that came within three of beating Ireland<\/a>. They took one Test off the British & Irish Lions<\/a>, and were one more score away from making it two, then they beat the Springboks at Ellis Park<\/a> in the opening round of this year\u2019s Rugby Championship. \u201cBefore that win James Slipper was the only one of us who had won at Twickenham,\u201d says Fraser McReight. \u201cSo it meant a lot for this group, and when you look at what\u2019s happened since, the way it sort of slingshot us into the matches against the Lions and South Africa, it\u2019s been massive.\u201d<\/p>\n

All of a sudden, the Kangaroos are 1-0 up in one Ashes series<\/a> and \u201cshould wrap that up this weekend\u201d, says Wilson; the English cricket team are, he insists, \u201cgoing to find it hard to get a win\u201d during the other Ashes series, and the Wallabies, well, they\u2019re pretty confident too, even if they are missing a handful of their best players because Australia were unable to negotiate their release<\/a> from their English clubs to play this weekend because the Test falls outside the international match window. How confident are they? \u201cVery confident,\u201d says their English-born winger Harry Potter.<\/p>\n

Australia head coach Joe Schmidt says Saturday\u2019s game will be his last Test at Twickenham. Photograph: Harry Murphy\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve got 35 players here on tour who are ready to do the job, and we\u2019ve got 23 people this weekend to go out and do the job,\u201d says Wilson. \u201cWe\u2019ve been building really strong depth this year. It\u2019s been one of our biggest areas of improvement. So even when we\u2019re missing a few big players we\u2019re at a point where we believe in everyone who has been selected. It was the same situation last year, and we did the job then too.\u201d Ten of the XV playing today started last year\u2019s game too.<\/p>\n

Head coach Joe Schmidt says the difference between this Wallabies team and that one is in the way they play. A lot of his work over the last 18 months has been in building up the team\u2019s sense of identity, and how it shows up in their fast, free-running style of play. \u201cI think that\u2019s part of the Australian rugby DNA,\u201d Schmidt said. \u201cThey like to use the ball. Now, we know that defences can be very dense, so there are times when you\u2019ve got to be able to be a bit more strategic. But it\u2019s not very often that the Wallabies have made more line breaks than the All Blacks in the Rugby Championship, for example, and while we didn\u2019t get the results we were looking for against them, I still felt that we used the ball pretty well.\u201d<\/p>\n

Same goes in the Lions series. \u201cWe scored some outstanding tries and we\u2019ll be looking to do something similar now,\u201d says Wilson. \u201cI feel like we\u2019ve got that respect back and I know our fans are enjoying the footy we are playing.\u201d<\/p>\n

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It will be Schmidt\u2019s last series with the team, and, he says, his last Test at Twickenham. He has a lot of happy memories of the place. He won the Heineken Cup there with Leinster in 2012, and the grand slam with Ireland in 2018. \u201cYeah, I\u2019m a little bit relieved, and a little bit sad,\u201d Schmidt says. \u201cI don\u2019t know how many Test matches I\u2019ve been involved in, but I know how special they are. As a kid growing up in a small town, you don\u2019t ever expect it. You watch these games on black-and-white TV, that\u2019s how old I am, and I think about how special it is. It\u2019s been a massive privilege. There\u2019ll be moments probably I won\u2019t miss, where things haven\u2019t gone according to plan, but there have been moments I will miss, for sure.\u201d His team are hoping to give him one more yet.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"If only Henry Slade had managed to stop Ben Donaldson getting that offload away, if only Ollie Sleightholme…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":253639,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[567],"tags":[64,63,760,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-253638","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-rugby","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-rugby","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/253638","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=253638"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/253638\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/253639"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=253638"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=253638"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=253638"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}