The Wallabies’ victory over the British and Irish Lions was just on the right side of violence as they inhabited that elusive space between where all big Tests are won.

It’s been a while since they’ve been there - right on the edge, sometimes over it and always in the Lions faces - but Saturday night was the statement performance of the Joe Schmidt era.

It also felt like a message to the Lions committee, to those of us in the media whose default position with Australian rugby can sometimes be doom and gloom, to the teams currently ranked above the Wallabies, and to those casual Wallabies supporters who might have fallen off the bandwagon.

The message was: never turn your back on Australian rugby. Yes, there will be bumps on the road ahead - two Tests in South Africa are next - but the Wallabies won four halves out of the six in this series.

The particulars of Will Skelton’s contract with La Rochelle in France have always seemed to be - how can we put........

© The Sydney Morning Herald