'Watershed' moment for the Wallabies

Coach Michael Cheika said yesterday perseverance was the key to success for the Wallabies after their back-to-back losses to the All Blacks, adding that the defeats should serve as “watershed moments” to trigger changes.

Australia have now lost six of their past seven games, and ceded the Bledisloe Cup to New Zealand once again after the 40-12 defeat in Auckland Saturday and the 38-13 thrashing in Sydney last week.

“A few little tweaks but perseverance definitely, it’s not always instant gratification,” the Wallabies coach said.

“Sometimes you’ve got to use these ones, the harder times, as watershed moments to make some changes in a certain direction, because they were hard games to lose but we’ve been here before and we’ve bounced back and will again.”

In the Rugby Championships in the past two years, Australia lost the first two games but finished strongly.

Cheika said the Wallabies needed to perform better at key moments.

“It wasn’t like we just closed off for a half of footy — it was the key moments that we didn’t react to,” he said.