The Bledisloe Cup.  Held by the Kiwis for over a decade, there were many that thought this was Australia’s best chance to snatch it back.  A new coach, a fly half on debut, a team stacked with players from the best union in the country, together with the withdrawals of Daniel Carter and Liam Messam through injury and a potentially “lacking match fitness” Richie McCaw returning from sabbatical and the home ground advantage of Sydney… yes, this was as good an opportunity as any.

The day started off with some worrying signs, when the official Wallabies account came out with this:

Now, I don’t mean to be picky here, but telling the crowd to get to a game 24 hours after the event probably wasn’t the ideal way to encourage support.  Or maybe they knew something we didn’t.

Some of us were hopeful:

It quickly went pear shaped when James O’Connor was obviously struggling on the wing…

Put so eloquently here:

The comeback wasn’t all amazing for the All Blacks captain personally…

Even the South Africans were feeling a *little* sorry for Australia:

The gold was saved by some Will Genia magic…

And we began to regain a little confidence; after all, not everything was bad!  Half time rolled around and even though the Channel Ten network was confused, Wallabies fans were hopeful:

In fact, we even got a little sassy…

And then the All Blacks that we all know appeared; and it started…

It got painful…

… and Australians decided to forget about the Bledisloe Cup again for a while.

The Wallabies account posed the question…

… and despite the bleedingly obvious response being “what do you think we should actually KEEP?” some had their own reflections of what went wrong…

… or, to put it simply…

But we’re Australians. We can find a positive in EVERYTHING!

Ahhhh. Bless test rugby.  Bring on this weekend – hopefully not as painfully though.