Toothless Wallabies barely fired a shot in un-Australian performance

The sound here in Brisbane was not of rage or rancour, merely one of bleak, sullen resignation. On a galling evening for the Wallabies, this stadium, traditionally such a cauldron for the hosts, felt more like a mausoleum, with home fans’ despair at their team’s inadequacies so all-engulfing that the hype man had to plead with them to “make some noise”. After a 12-year wait for their players to collide with the British and Irish Lions once more, they had dared to expect some snarl and defiance befitting the occasion. But instead they witnessed a glaring mismatch, with the lack of cohesion on the pitch so painful that rare incursions into the tourists’ 22 were greeted with bitterly ironic cheers.

All told, the shift in atmosphere had taken just 42 minutes, with Dan Sheehan punishing an errant Australian line-out to put the Lions out of sight. At kick-off the scene on Caxton Street, on the approach to Suncorp Stadium, had been magnificent, with the seething convergence of red shirts an encapsulation of everything a Lions Test should be.

 The series opener would soon curdle, though, into a grisly reckoning for Australia, whose status as the sixth best team in the world looked flattering in the face of the Lions’ bombardment. While their deficiencies had been well-documented, surely they would channel some snarl, some quintessential Queensland defiance, in a city that demanded it?

In all honesty, the fight materialised far too late. Australia were tepid, toothless, their only highlight coming courtesy of an inspired individual flourish from Max Jorgensen, stripping the ball from Hugo Keenan for a try against the run of play. Even Joseph Suaalii, whose prodigious athleticism had been heralded as a game-changing factor, was anonymous for long periods. Save for an improbable late riposte, they were inferior in all departments, so traumatised by early brilliance from the Lions’ all-Scottish midfield of Finn Russell, Sione Tuipolutu and Huw Jones that they could not conjure any decisive response. Their salvaging of some respectability in the scoreline, with a late try for Tate McDermott limiting the Lions’ margin of victory to eight points, painted a misleading picture of this Test, in which there was not so much a gulf in class as a chasm.

Tate McDermott with a late try for the Wallabies! 🇦🇺 The hosts are finishing strongly in Brisbane 💪 pic.twitter.com/wkz7kOYBLJ

— Sky Sports Rugby Union (@SkySportsRugby) July 19, 2025

For all that captain Harry Wilson had been galvanised by a pep talk from one of his predecessors, the World Cup-winning John Eales, Australia were a pale imitation of the great Wallabies sides. Where Eales is celebrated as the mastermind of that memorable series triumph in 2001, Joe Schmidt’s side will require a miracle to achieve anything comparable. For large swathes of this game their performance was, quite simply, un-Australian, bereft of ferocity or any apparent belief they could win. It was not just their lack of ingenuity or tendency to kick far too often in an abject first half, but their actions at the end, when they booted the ball out of play as if congratulating themselves on a bonus-point loss. How odd, too, to see them mingling happily with the Lions at the final whistle, simply relieved that they had not suffered a humiliation. So much for the notion of a defeat, any defeat, eating away at the true Australian’s soul.

Part of the problem was that the Wallabies were undercooked. You wondered how this was even possible, given how long rugby union in Australia had waited to savour this level of exposure. With the game struggling even to hold its position as the country’s third code behind rugby league and Australian Rules, it should have been a moment to seize. After all, Suaalii has signed a deal worth £2.6 million over three years with this very showpiece in mind. And yet the team delivered no noticeable surge in intensity, with the backs reduced to crowding around Tom Lynagh with no idea of what to do next. Remarkably, their only warm-up had been a perfunctory run-out against Fiji, and it showed.

Schmidt has some serious questions to answer. Why did he not release his young players to compete in the provincial games, so that they could form an appreciation of what the Lions represented, of the challenge that would await them in the first Test? Why did he send them into this ultimate examination so cold? Only when it was too late, when the game had long since been lost, did they reclaim a certain self-respect. Neutrals can only hope that Will Skelton and Rob Valetini recover in time to inject some jeopardy. For the inescapable sense here was that the Lions could and should have scored more. Where normally a first Test win would be toasted with jubilation, there was audible frustration among the red hordes that they had not gone for the jugular.

In the end, Andy Farrell was denied a statement victory, on a par with the 31-0 thrashing to which the Lions subjected Australia at Brisbane’s Lang Park in 1966. These Wallabies were, quite simply, ripe for slaughter. Sheehan’s try early in the second half killed it as a contest, with only his team-mates’ error and indiscipline in the final quarter ensuring the result was not more emphatic. Shape and structure suffered once Russell and Tuipolotu were withdrawn, in a surprisingly early raft of replacements. As a confrontation it was far from the blood-and-thunder epic that had been promised, back when the Wallabies were still threatening to show up the Lions as “cocky” for Henry Pollock’s talk of a 3-0 series whitewash. Unfortunately, that prediction now appears all too prescient.