Australia hail Twickenham victory as one for the ages

SYDNEY : Former players and media pundits lined up on Sunday to heap praise on the Wallabies for Saturday’s surprise victory over England, hailing the last-gasp win as a turning point for Australian rugby under coach Joe Schmidt.
Since Australia’s last triumph at Twickenham in 2015, the Wallabies have endured a dismal period which reached its nadir when they were dumped out of the World Cup in the pool stage for the first time last year.
“From the depths of despair, hope has sprung in an Australian spring after the Wallabies produced one of their finest victories in a decade to bury England at the home of rugby at Twickenham,” Christy Doran wrote in The Roar.
Sydney Morning Herald’s Iain Payten was prepared to go even further back and thought the best comparison was to the win over the All Blacks in Hong Kong in 2010, when a young James O’Connor slotted a match-winning conversion from the touchline.
The headlines reflected Schmidt’s satisfaction in the payoff from his gamble of starting rugby league convert Joseph Suaalii in the centres in his first professional rugby union match.
Suaalii rewarded the New Zealander with a fine performance highlighted by his athleticism in the air and in a draw and pass to create space for fullback Tom Wright to score a try.
“This is the X factor that you just can’t train,” former Wallabies captain turned media pundit Michael Hooper said on Stan Sports.
“Just that sheer talent. The ability to score a try out of absolutely nothing. And we’re liking what we’re seeing.”
Although Suaalii was named Man of the Match, Payten thought a fairer assessment would have been a shared award for loose forwards Rob Valetini, Fraser McReight and Harry Wilson as well as prop Angus Bell.
It was their physicality at the breakdown that got Australia back into the contest after a poor start when it looked like front-foot ball would ensure a comfortable England win.
“The performance, comfortably the best under Schmidt, was a mile away from the doldrums of last year, and was a huge confidence-booster for the Wallabies team, their long-suffering fans and certainly the vast machinery around British and Irish Lions tour,” Payten wrote.
Fears that the Wallabies would not be competitive when the Lions tour next year, and possibly at the home World Cup in 2027, might not have been completely buried, but there was optimism that the tide had turned.
“This comeback from last year’s catastrophic World Cup campaign is extraordinary. If the Wallabies can beat England at Twickenham, what can’t they do?” former Wallaby Peter FitzSimons wrote in the Herald.
“The Wallabies are not yet at the beginning of a golden era. It’s way too early to call that. But at least the lustre of dawn after a long dark night that has gone the better part of two decades is now apparent, and it looks just a little golden.”