An ugly win it was … but get that into you, Eddie

Some rugby Tests produce poetry, romance, chivalry, death-defying derring-do, displays of scintillating skills that sheer take the breath away – and stories that will be told and retold for decades to come.

Other Tests are like this ’un.

On a wet pitch in Tokyo, the seventh-ranked team in the world, the Wallabies, had a good hit-out against the 13th-ranked team, the Japanese. Both teams were valiant and gave it everything they had. And the match indeed had its . . . moments.

But when the days grow cold and we grow old, this is not the match that will be endlessly talked about.

The closest thing to romance, occurred shortly after kick-off when the newly installed skipper, the wonderfully named Nick Champion de Crespigny – whose debut as a Wallaby was only three Tests ago – made his timely debut try, crashing over to the left of the posts after a weaving run that went for at least seven centimetres. (When he grows old, he can be forgiven for turning that into seventy metres, under the circumstances).

Wallabies stand-in caption Nick Champion de Crespigny leads the charge against Japan.Credit: AP

New centre Josh Flook scored his own debut try 20 minutes later, after great work by five-eighth Tane Edmed and fullback Andrew Kellaway “chiming into the back line”, as we say in the classics.

The rest of the half, however, was pretty much a case of the clinical meets the clunk-ical, as the Wallabies constantly threatened to run away with the whole shebang, just about to score try after try after try, only to be thwarted nearly as many times by clinical, technically excellent and very brave Japanese defence which caused clunky mishaps on our part. The biggest victim was loose forward Carlo Tizzano who appeared to cross three – count ’em, THREE – times, only for the try to be called back on technicalities and clunky mishaps.

Still, with the score 14-3 to the Wallabies at half-time, it felt like the match was well in hand.

But Japanese men on Japanese soil is a particularly potent combination to overcome, and they were never going to be taken easily. When Japan scored after clever play from a lineout 13 minutes into the second half to see the Cherry Blossoms close to 14-8, tension returned to the match. Could a particularly upsetting upset be on the cards? Eddie Jones had pulled such things off before with Japan, most particularly when his side beat the Springboks in the 2015 World Cup.

Happily, Tizzano – who else but? – restored order shortly afterwards to go over himself and after Edmed iced the conversion, the goodies were up 19-8. Surely our blokes were going to go with it now?

Alas, no.

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When Japan scored a great try of their own almost immediately afterwards to close the score to 19-15, the unthinkable beckoned. A real threat emerged that Japan might score their first win over the Wallabies. And that would be against a Japanese side coached by Eddie Jones, who was last seen in Australian circles as Wallaby coach in 2023, resolutely denying he was going to coach Japan – shortly before he did exactly that!

It would be an unthinkable horror to lose to him.

The very spectre stiffened the sinew and hardened resolve still further. It was time to go from clunk-ical to clinical ourselves, and in the final minutes the Wallabies were exactly that, keeping possession tight in the forwards to run down the clock - providing a dull finish to what will go down as a useful if ugly win, 19-15.

A little disappointing, yes, but there are three upsides.

The first is that, whatever else, the match saw a big (W) against the Wallaby name to push them up in the world rankings at the very time that is most important. In December the seedings for the next World Cup will be locked in, and it is singularly important that the host nation, Australia, gets into the top six, as it will put us at the top of one of the six pools. This win will help secure that position. A loss would have seen it drift away.

The second is it prevented an Eddie braying that we would NEVER have heard the end of!

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And the final upside is the whole match gave our blokes a good hit-out the week before they take on England at Twickenham next Saturday. After all, it was at that match last year, won by the Wallabies in extraordinary circumstances after the bell, as Max Jorgensen went over in the corner, when this team announced themselves as serious contenders to be among the game’s elite.

In the time since, they have had simply wonderful performances which have included coming very close to beating the Lions in that series, smashing the Springboks at Ellis Park, and briefly threatening the All Blacks.

Nothing we saw in this Test compared to any of that. But at least it will give them a lot to work with in the coming week, as they work out their glitches and carve away the whole chunks of clunks that blighted this game – ideally to reveal the champion team that lines beneath, ready to beat the Poms! Their performance will certainly be helped by having front-line Wallabies like Joseph Aukuso Sualii, Max Jorgensen and Nick Frost coming back into the side after being rested this week.

Can’t wait.

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