LONG READ Lessons the Wallabies must heed to turn Lions heartbreak into future success

For everyone out there in the rugby world trying to console Australians with well-meaning offerings like ‘you’ve got to go through something like that to get better’ or ‘you need the heartbreak to truly appreciate the success’, I have only one thing to say to you.

You better be bloody right.

The average Wallabies fan wants nothing more than a return to the glory years of the late 90s-early 2000s and has had to go through more heartbreak in the last decade alone than any fan should have to. Somehow, as if it even needed to be possible, Saturday’s Second Test result against the Lions seems to have trumped all the terrible, terrible feelings we’ve endured in that time.

To be fair, the playing group and coaches would have been, and might still be, in the same grumpy head space as the fans. They did all the preparations and training, developed and rehearsed the game plan, played it all out mentally to be ready for whatever the game threw at them. The heartbreak was very clear in Harry Wilson’s immediate on-pitch reaction to the result. He was – they all were – feeling the pain as well.

Which brings us onto this week’s Third Test, and how the Wallabies bounce back from the heartbreak. They have one last opportunity to salvage some degree of pride from this series, and the motivation of wanting to avoid a first Lions sweep of the professional era will be significant.

There are most certainly lessons to learn from Melbourne.

Tizzano’s picture wasn’t quite clear enough

Carlo Tizzano might still be wondering what more he had to do to win another important ruck penalty, but he would also know by now the picture he presented Italian referee Andrea Piardi just wasn’t good enough in that moment.

Whether he came in from the side is still debatable, and the still-shots and screen-grabs certainly show that he beat Jac Morgan to the ball – even if only by a fraction of a second – before the Welshman blasted him out with the cleanout that will be dissected right up until kick-off in Sydney this weekend.

But there were still two problems for Tizzano here, when all was said and done.

Maybe Tizzano was too quick for the human eye in that moment, but superpower or not, his actions hadn’t ticked all the boxes.

The first was that rightly or wrongly, Piardi was immediately, and remained, of the view that both players arrived simultaneously. Whether that was accurate or not is immaterial, but it was the base from which all decision-making of the incident was made.

The second was that Tizzano never really got a clear lift on the ball before Morgan arrived. His hands were on the ball, certainly, and you could definitely make the argument he’d won the rights to the pilfer. But Piardi never saw a clear lift – or a clear enough lift – which when combined with his belief the two players arrived at the same time, explains how he reached the conclusion that this now was just a rugby incident of the sort which happens all over the field in pretty much every game.

Maybe Tizzano was too quick for the human eye in that moment, but superpower or not, his actions hadn’t ticked all the boxes. If that lift is visible enough, then the two players can’t have arrived simultaneously, and the pilfer is probably rewarded.

Piardi – who I thought had a strong game – had rarely rewarded the on-ballers all night, so this non-decision for Tizzano was very much in line with the previous 79 minutes.

But here’s why I’ve kept oscillating on this decision in the days since.

We saw a high contact yellow card in the First Nations & Pasifika game a week ago that during the review process was walked back to “indirect contact” according to the match TMO – meaning it arguably shouldn’t have been a card at all.

Through that lens, are we really saying Morgan’s direct contact on Tizzano’s shoulder and neck area didn’t even warrant a penalty?

I’m still undecided on the whole thing as a result. Tizzano will have thought he’d done everything right. Morgan probably won’t care now, but would argue he produced what plenty of coaches would and did call a textbook cleanout.

Piardi would still be seeing the simultaneous arrival, and even Joe Schmidt’s point about contact above the line of the shoulders is valid. They can’t all be in the right, but somehow, quite incredibly, in this instance they are!

It just comes back to the picture presented. And unfortunately for the Wallabies and all the fans still processing that last play, the picture just wasn’t quite clear enough.

No lead was ever going to be safe

The Wallabies, having come back from 24-5 down in Brisbane just a week earlier themselves, would have known their own superbly crafted 23-5 lead in Melbourne was always going to be challenged. The two tries and 12 points they added while Tommy Freeman was off with his yellow card came on the back of 90% possession in that 10-minute period and simply had to even out.

The Lions were always coming back. So the defence in the five minutes before half-time – while leading by 18 – had to be rock solid, and it just wasn’t.

This was the first time in Australia that the Lions had trailed at half-time, the first time they were forced to chase a game the whole way, and the Wallabies simply were not good enough to hold them out.

Twice the Lions were able to advance deep into the Wallabies red zone in those five minutes, and twice they set themselves up to exploit weaknesses in the Australian defence.

This is where the counter-argument about where the Wallabies really lost the game has merit. If they’d been able to go into the sheds leading 23-5, or even only 23-10, the conversations and the messages are a whole lot different to when the score read 23-17.

This was the first time in Australia that the Lions had trailed at half-time, the first time they were forced to chase a game the whole way, and the Wallabies simply were not good enough to hold them out.

That’s a huge lesson with South Africa and New Zealand now less than a month away.

The defence remains too passive and confused

From a Tom Lynagh knock-on and resultant scrum win, the Lions were able to launch an attacking wave from well outside the Wallabies 22 that got all the way to the five-metre line, from where the Lions reset and got into their pick-and-drive to the right of the posts.

But instead of switching to the left, Jamison Gibson-Park went back to the right, where somehow Jack Conan and Tom Curry had managed to create an overlap despite being marked by Lynagh and Max Jorgensen. When the two young Wallabies bit in too hard, Jake Gordon’s cover was never going to stop Curry getting to the corner.

Australia then gave away a ruck penalty in the Lions half, which Finn Russell converted into a lineout no more than eight metres from the hosts’ try line. An uncontested lineout and four or five strong carries put them within reach earlier than expected, and from there, Huw Jones was able to get through two shoulders to score next to the right post.

The two shoulders belonged to Wallabies wingers Jorgensen and Tate McDermott, who even allowing for one winger to be well in-field in a compressed defensive set-up, shouldn’t have both been in that same two square metres of turf. Jones couldn’t believe his luck, and the Lions went into the sheds thinking, ‘well, that was easy’.

Those five minutes before half-time was the worst of the Wallabies defence for the night. Way too passive, ill-disciplined, and often caught a long way out of position. It can’t continue.

You can go to the bench too early

We’ve since learned that tighthead Allan Ala’alatoa has picked up a pectoral injury, and Rob Valetini’s troublesome calf had tightened to a point that both had to be replaced at half-time and remain in doubt for the Third Test.

But did James Slipper need to come off then as well? And Will Skelton only seven minutes into the second half?

The Wallabies scrum in the first half had been holding up but immediately went backwards, with the feeling of the bench being cleared unnecessarily early, and thus allowing the Lions’ starting pack to add set-piece ascendancy to their growing momentum.

By contrast, Andy Farrell waited until the 54^th minute to send on the first of his forward replacements and didn’t have an all-new front row until 10 minutes later, by which time the margin was just two points.

It was well thought out, deliberately strategic, and perfectly timed finishing.

So what now?

How the Wallabies react to the MCG loss will be illustrative of this playing group, and potentially, can set them up for the rest of the 2025 international season.

There may be no better preparation for The Rugby Championship featuring the top two teams in the world than to take on the best of whatever England, Ireland, Scotland and Jac Morgan can throw at them.

And there is no doubt this Wallabies side is much better than where the general expectations and bookies’ odds had them pegged. It’s up to them now to determine how they translate this current pain into longer term success.

Because I sure know that we fans can’t handle too much more heartbreak like Saturday.