Joe Schmidt’s candid assessment of Wallabies’ Spring Tour struggles

The Wallabies mounted a genuine challenge to France in last weekend’s Quilter Nations Series clash, taking a 19-all score into half-time – but the second term felt fairly familiar, with records tumbling in a fourth consecutive defeat.

This is the first time since 1958 that the Wallabies have failed to win a single Test during a four-match European tour. They’re also the first Wallabies team in 126 years to lose 10 Tests in a calendar year, finishing the campaign with a 33 per cent winning record.

Harry Wilson told Stan Sport post-game that “it’s about results” at this level, but there’s a deeper narrative at play. ‘A game of two halves’ is a well-known rugby cliché, and it certainly seems to apply to the Wallabies’ Spring Tour.

After beating Japan by four points in Tokyo, Australia trailed England 10-7 at half-time before the hosts ran away with the win. They led Italy by three at the break before losing 26-19 in Udine and were down by just five points after the first 40 in Dublin.

The Wallabies finished the European leg of their Spring Tour with a -67 points differential, although it was anyone’s game in all four matches, as coach Joe Schmidt alluded to after the 15-point defeat at Stade de France.

“I think it is probably reflective of a lot of the games on the tour. We’re in the game against England, 10-7 at half-time. We’ve been in every game at half-time and we haven’t finished them off well enough,” Schmidt told reporters.

“There’s a lot of learning about trying to manage big moments, trying to manage ourselves when we start to just miss a couple of things. You didn’t have to miss much for some of the French athletes to get away from us tonight, that were very quick to do so.

“Then they muscled up probably in that second quarter with a couple driven mauls that we found difficult to stop.

“At the same time, I felt we caused them quite a few problems, scoring five tries is at least reflective of the effort that was made but we can’t afford to concede the number of points that we did.”

Schmidt urged fans to keep the faith yet again after this defeat, with the Wallabies finishing the season with five wins from 15. Their first win was a thriller against Fiji, before beating the British & Irish Lions in Sydney and Springboks in Johannesburg.

The Wallabies were in the fight against the Boks in Cape Town, before bouncing back with a dramatic triumph over Los Pumas. Australia trailed New Zealand by a couple of points with 10 to play at Eden Park too.

They will take on Italy, Ireland and France during the July internationals in 2026, who are the same three teams they’ve played in recent weeks, to start the inaugural Nations Championship which was recently announced.

“I feel like I’ve been around for a long time, I’m getting pretty old. I think this group of young men will continue to grow,” Schmidt said.

“They will get something out of this tour. They will learn from this tour and I think they’ll improve from the tour. They’ll improve when they’ve had the chance to digest it and recharge.

“One of the things is that next July the three teams that we’ve played over the last three weeks, at least the players will get to measure themselves again against the same three teams.”