History was there for the taking… until Wallabies bombed under a high-ball blitz

October 10, 2026 — 6:37pm

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It was going to be such a clever opener.

“Let that be a lesson to world rugby,” I would exult, with echoes of Vitas Gerulaitis, “NO-ONE beats the Wallabies at the one ground 41 years in a row!

“Anyone can have a bad four decades, but that’s where the Wallabies really draw the line.”

It all turned, see, on the fact that our blokes had not won against the All Backs at Auckland’s Eden Park since 1986, and for the first part of this Bledisloe Cup Test match it really looked as if – hold my coat, Captain Cook – history was at hand.

The Wallabies swept all before them. They carved them up in the backs, and stopped the hosts’ attack cold. They picked them off in the lineouts. The green and gold so dominated territory and possession that when our fullback Tom Wright sliced the defence wide open just seven minutes in to score, I was morally certain that for the next 40 years, I’d be able to boast: “I was there the night it all turned around, the beginning of the Green and Golden Age, after decades of All........

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