Circumstance and an injection of new blood saw Australia improve as things got tougher in Argentina
has instilled hope, much of it drawn from the way it was won. Once again the Wallabies muffed the start and were punished on the scoresheet. But as they did against England in Perth, they kept their nerve. The tougher it got, the better they played. If the darkest hour is indeed before dawn, Sunday was a day character – and characters – shone through.
It seemed so when Australia again fumbled the start and through ill-discipline, over-eagerness and bone-headed decision-making, gifted the home side a 10-point lead after 15 minutes. Yet they found a way back, banishing early yips, shutting out the raucous crowd and building forward pressure, giving Cooper the time and space to sow doubt in the defensive line and unleash the gold rushers out wide.
Fraser McReight and Jed Holloway had taken radically different paths to their debut Tests on Sunday. Holloway, 29, is a country boy, a Yamba Buccaneer, and a journeyman who’d arrived in his gold jersey via stints in Japan, the US and a period of self-imposed exile. Fraser McReight, 23, is a wild-haired Sunshine Coast kid with a crazy-brave tenacity and work ethic that makes him Hooper’s natural heir.
The tide was turned by force of mateship and Australia scored the last 24 points of the Test. What made it special was Holloway’s childhood mate , Matt Gibbon, also made his debut on Sunday.With both his parents suffering mental disabilities, Gibbon, 27, had grown up wild on a cattle farm in Alstonville, NSW, until his grandfather took him in and channelled the boy’s feral streak into rugby, training Matt and his brother with an old stock whip cracking at their heels like they were brumbies.
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