When the Wallabies arrived in Italy three years ago, little did they know the course of Australian rugby was about to be changed forever.
Already 2022 had been a roller coaster year. Having beaten England in the first Test of the year, Australia would ultimately go on to lose the series to Eddie Jones’ side 2-1. The Wallabies then split two Tests against the world champion Springboks one apiece, having already done so against Argentina.
Who then could forget the Bledisloe Cup time-wasting debacle, which robbed the Wallabies of a drought-breaking win over the All Blacks? Bernard Foley certainly hasn’t, nor have any of the 50-odd thousand fans that poured into Melbourne’s Marvel Stadium to see French referee Mathieu Raynal create rugby history.
So when the Wallabies lobbed into Florence, that gorgeous renaissance city on the Arno River once home to Michaelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci, they were still trying to paint a picture of a team heading in the right direction.
Cue a Picasso-esque scramble of a Wallabies starting XV, a first-half 17-8 deficit and an eventual 28-27 defeat, a first ever loss to Italy proving to be one of the final nails in the coaching coffin of Dave Rennie.
But not before replacement fly-half Ben Donaldson, on his Test debut, stroked a match-winning conversion wide of the posts in one of the most brutal international bows any rugby player has ever endured. Donaldson had been on the field for just five minutes when asked to win in for Australia.
“That first game, obviously not the end you want in your debut game,” Donaldson, who bounced back to help fire Australia past Wales later on that spring tour, reflected to ESPN the following year.
“But I’ve taken a lot of learnings from that game, mentally I’ve just grown as a person on and off the field, just learning a lot about how you can move on from things like that.”
The defeat was in no way Donaldson’s fault, the Wallabies had been largely awful that day. They gave up 16 penalties, had Jake Gordon sin-binned, and found a comeback from first 17-8 and then 25-15 one step too far.
But in an alternate universe, had Donaldson stroked his penalty between the Stadio Artemio Franchi sticks, then Australian rugby might not have undergone the same dramatic shift that followed.
While then Rugby Australia chairman Hamish McLennan might still have moved to recruit Eddie Jones, which turned out to be an unmitigated disaster on and off the field, Rennie’s goose would have been that little bit harder to cook had his gamble to rest 13 players against the Azzurri paid off.
Instead, he was sacked via Zoom in early January 2023.
Nearly three years on, the rugby world continues to wait patiently for Rennie’s version of events and just what he has to say about McLennan and the state of chaos in which Australia nearly always seem to exist.
But in the measure of the man, Rennie attended the Wallabies Test with Japan, now ironically once again being coached by Jones, and later spoke with Joe Schmidt, shedding some light on just went wrong in 2022.
“We are mindful of last time we went to Italy. Well I am, because I looked back at that game and I caught up with Dave Rennie in Japan, and we discussed it briefly,” Schmidt said after Australia’s listless 25-7 loss to England last weekend.
“But all we can affect now is how we prepare and go into that game and give a performance that is more accurate than what we put out tonight [against England].”
It’s unlikely that Schmidt will make similar gambles to Rennie this weekend in Udina, where the Wallabies will face Italy at the home of Serie A football club, Udinese.
He has a decision to make at fly-half, either sticking with Tane Edmed for the fourth-straight Test or turning to the returned Carter Gordon, who is fit again after overcoming a quad strain the Queenslander suffered on his reintroduction to life with the Wallabies.
But when it was likely Schmidt was preparing to set Len Ikitau and Tom Hooper for Ireland a week later, the Kiwi is under mounting pressure to bring the Exeter duo straight back into the matchday 23, so lacking was the Wallabies’ ability to win the gainline in London.
It is however Schmidt’s decision at No. 10 that will garner the greatest attention in Udina this week. There won’t be 13 changes as there was in 2022, but the chance that either Gordon or three-Test scrum-half Ryan Lonergan are asked to come off the bench and stroke a match-winning conversion or penalty is not beyond the realms of possibility.
The shivers such an eventuality might send down the spine of Donaldson, who is currently holidaying in Vietnam, and that of every Australian rugby fan are not worth contemplating.
Thankfully, a repeat of the 12-month period of carnage that followed that result, with Rugby Australia’s coaching succession plan already in place, is next to no chance of unfolding should history repeat against the Azzurri.
Rest assured, though, that a second straight defeat to the Italians will near wipe away completely the progress the Wallabies were seen to have made earlier this year.
