Wow. Just wow. Reduced to 11 men, the Wallabies pulled off a victory of pure grit and resilience

September 28, 2026 — 2:58am

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The hell with the match report, let’s just go straight to the exultation.

This, friends, was a Test match for the ages, one for the Wallabies to put in a bottle and place on the very top shelf - one for us all to take down when the days grow cold and we grow old, to take out the cork and say: this, this was how good Australian rugby could be at its very best!

And it wasn’t just the extraordinary result, a spanking 42-38 victory in Perth over the incumbent back-to-back world champion Springboks, the No.1 ranked team in the world for no less than 52 of the last 53 weeks. It was the manner in which they did it, the chutzpah, verve and swerve they showed for the first 68 minutes of the match to completely dominate in all aspects of play. And then what took the breath away was how they managed to overcome the unprecedented challenges thrown at them in the last 10 minutes to win anyway, the resilience they displayed to triumph against all odds, just when they had every reason to lose.

Going into this match, we of rugby could legitimately ask ourselves: on this extraordinary footballing weekend in Australia, just what could the Code-of-XV, deliver in the way of drama that could compare to what we had just seen in the other codes?

It was not........

© Brisbane Times