The Wallabies don't know how to beat the All Blacks
The pain etched into Berrick Barnes's face had nothing to do with the hip flexor injury Ma'a Nonu had inflicted on him in a shuddering tackle a little earlier.
This was 100 per cent pure emotional pain and nothing, not even the distinction of being Australia's lone try-scorer against the All Blacks on Saturday night, would assuage it.
He knew he had butchered the Wallabies' best chance of breaking the Eden Park hoodoo and, being the admirably honest bloke that he is, he fessed up long before anyone had thought of a tactful way of asking him the question.
"If I had my time again, I would have passed it, but you don't get that."
No, you don't. Not against the All Blacks. When you've charged down a Stephen Donald kick and suddenly find yourself with a five-on-two overlap inside the New Zealand 22, you either score under the posts and kick the conversion or you spend the next month kicking yourself.
But with George Smith immediately to the left of him, Stirling Mortlock cutting back to the right of him, James Horwill galloping up on the inside, Drew Mitchell screaming for the ball out wide and basically only Mils Muliaina and Sitiveni Sivivatu to beat, Barnes held on too long and then, perversely, didn't hold on long enough.
Having momentarily been taken unawares by Mortlock's sudden switchback, Barnes then got tangled up in Muliaina's grappling hook tackle.
Had he gone to ground and quickly laid the ball back, the Wallabies still would have scored before the All Blacks had time to scramble back, but he saw a flash of yellow on his inside and fired off a pass - straight into the forehead of Smith slipstreaming behind him.
What should have been a 17-3 scoreline remained instead 10-3. Donald and the All Blacks gave up a prayer of thanks.
They were dodging more bullets than Keanu Reeves in The Matrix but this had been a shotgun blast from point blank range and when everything fell deathly silent and they fearfully checked themselves over, they discovered that, astonishingly, they hadn't been nicked.
Matt Giteau, who had created the moment with his chargedown of Donald's intended sneaky chip kick and then followed it up with a marvellously acrobatic dive and pass, had spoken before the match of the need for the Wallabies to become more ruthless.
All Blacks captain Richie McCaw had predicted it would turn on one or two opportunities - take them and win, miss them and lose. Suddenly, everything they had warned of had come to pass. Or not come to pass, as the case may be.
Shakespeare, who was apt in most of his observations about life, came up with something particularly pertinent in Julius Caesar to cover moments such as these: "There is a tide in the affairs of men which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune."
That's usually as far as the quotation is taken, but let's not stop there when what follows is so poignant: "Omitted, all the voyage of their life is bound in shallows and in miseries. On such a full sea are we now afloat and we must take the current when it serves, or lose our ventures."
Australia hasn't lost its ventures yet. OK, maybe the Bledisloe Cup campaign is floundering miserably in the shallows but the Tri-Nations remains afloat.
Coach Robbie Deans knows enough about the psychology of winning to realise the only cure for what ails the Wallabies is to win - and it really doesn't matter how.
"We're definitely better than we were 12 months ago, which is good, but we want to get home," Deans said.
"It's a habit that we have to master, whether we get it by stumbling over the line in the first instance. That would be fine. We'd take that."
The trouble is they probably won't get a better chance to beat the All Blacks this year, not even in next month's Sydney Test.
The Wallabies weren't the only ones consoling themselves afterwards with the thought that they can only get better. According to Donald, that's precisely what the All Blacks also were telling themselves in their own dressing room.
No, the All Blacks were ring-rusty and sluggish right at the start and all the Wallabies needed to do was steady themselves to land the knockout punch.
But that moment has passed now. Heck, it had passed after barely half an hour. Then they started counter-punching and barely three minutes into the second half, they were level on points.
From that point onwards, it was Australia struggling to stay in the fight.
Yet rarely has New Zealand won a Tri-Nations Test playing so little rugby.
Maybe that was smart in the blustery and ultimately wet conditions at Eden Park where Jimmy Cowan's box kicks - coupled with some interesting manoeuvres to prevent the Wallabies catchers getting anywhere near the ball - were sure-fire ground-gainers. But on a dry day they will need a whole lot more.
Still, that's the New Zealanders' problem and on Saturday night, revelling in their hard-fought victory, they didn't seem overly concerned by it.
And really, it's not much of a problem at all, not compared to what the Australians are facing.
Theirs is a doozy to knock the socks off even a Yossarian. The Wallabies keep losing to the All Blacks because they don't know how to beat them. But in order to learn how to beat them, they've got to beat them.
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