Win or lose, Wallabies’ Christmas miracle means they’ll always have Paris

A community service announcement for sad Australian rugby fans: everything’s going to be all right.

Settle petal, stop wetting the bed, dry your eyes. Everything is going to be all right.

Set your clocks for October 15, for by then Australia will be one match away from the World Cup final. Eddie Jones will be hailed as the alchemist who turns base metals into gold. The Shore Old Boys running the game will be toasting their own genius. All the key performance indicators for the health of Australia rugby will have been met, because Australia will be one match from the World Cup final (italics brought to you courtesy of the ever-generous Peter Fitz). The bandwagon will be as jammed as the North Shore Line at 5pm. His Rabbitohs scarf in storage, Albo will be decked in green and gold and on a plane to Paris.

It seems far-fetched that the Wallabies, ten weeks from now, will be one of the top four teams in the world. But the magic of it is, they don’t have to be. They don’t have to get past New Zealand. They don’t have to get past world No.1 Ireland, or world champions South Africa, or hosts France, or even those plucky Scots. They don’t even have to be much better than their present ranking and still be 80 minutes from the World Cup final.

Depressed by recent losses to South Africa and Argentina, terrified of Saturday’s clash with the All Blacks in Melbourne, ritually self-loathing after another awful Unleaded Rugby season, Wallabies fans will always have Paris. The love is not far away.

The date to celebrate the rejuvenation of Australian rugby was December 9, 2020, when World Rugby decided in its wisdom to hold its draw three years before the event, when the rankings bore no relation to today’s; when Ireland and France, now ranked No.1 and 2, were outside the top four seeds and Wales were in. No doubt the draw had to be three years early so the supporters’ tours could be booked – it takes a while to turn the Queen Mary around, especially when it is the actual Queen Mary and it’s full of hyphenated Englishmen – so there must have been some logic to it (unless World Rugby, the company that brought us the pick-and-drive, the rolling maul, the collapsing scrum and the endless bull market in penalty goals, just stuffed up).

Eddie Jones watches over a Wallabies’ training session in Melbourne on Friday ahead of the Bledisloe Cup.Credit: Getty

Anyway, the result was a Christmas miracle for Australia. To make the World Cup quarter-finals, the Wallabies need only get past the might of Georgia, Portugal, Fiji and Wales. Not even that. If you’re worried about Fiji and Wales, Australia can lose to one and still make the quarter-finals. And you laughed at the Rugby League World Cup for lacking depth.

It gets better. Come the quarter-final, the Wallabies won’t have to worry about Ireland, France, New Zealand, South Africa or Scotland, who will be massacring themselves on the far side of the draw. On our side, assuming Australia can get through their pool without losing to both Wales and Fiji (I know, not an absolute certainty), in the quarter-final they will only have to get past England or Argentina. Maybe Japan. With all due respect to those nations, they’re pretty crap. OK, OK … England are ranked sixth after a woeful Six Nations campaign and Argentina have stumbled up to seventh after their clumsy over-muscled giants proved slightly less clumsy than ours. Australia came second in that game, but, as Eddie reminds us, don’t forget that Argentina came second-last. If Eddie can’t get the Wallabies to improve a tiny bit between now and October, then he’s not the Eddie you and I know and love: the Eddie who only takes a job knowing there is glory waiting for him around the corner.

So the Wallabies, having beaten world No.9 Wales and world No.6 England, are one game away from the final. Rugby fever consumes the nation. We won’t have beaten any top teams, but we won’t have to. Genius!

(If I seem to have come down with a case of temporary optimism, I checked the bookies and they are also pricing Australia to make the semi-final. The bookies pay my wages and have a financial incentive to be right, so I believe them.)

The person I feel sorry for is Dave Rennie, who, when Eddie the Maestro is posing for a photo shoot by the Seine, will be sipping a quiet Speight’s somewhere in a hut in New Zealand. Without electricity or internet. Eddie will be harvesting the grain sown by Rennie through 2021 and 2022, building the Wallabies up to the point where they can beat the world No.9 and the world No.6.

Rennie would have taken the Wallabies to the World Cup semis, but if Eddie is that guy who rides in and steals the glory, Rennie is that guy who doesn’t even report the theft. Getting the Wallabies to world No.6 doesn’t happen overnight! But Rennie won’t be claiming credit, and the Shore Old Boys who sacked him will sprain their wrists from patting themselves on the back. While everyone else was panicking, they had their eye over the horizon, on October 14, when we Make Australian Rugby Great Again.

The Rugby Championship is the perfect preparation, craftily lowering expectations and putting fans in a sweet spot of utter despair mixed with wild flashes of hope. That preparation takes its next step on Saturday night at the Melbourne Cricket Ground. Win or lose – lose honourably or lose badly - just remember, each day is one day closer to Paris.

Everything is going to be all right.

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