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Lack of lead-up games and no teams in Super Rugby semis leaves Wallabies underdone for Bledisloe Cup
By Jamie Pandaram
The Wallabies will not have played top-flight rugby for at least a month before confronting the toughest task in rugby - winning back the Bledisloe Cup for the first time in a decade.
It is the longest gap between provincial/Test rugby and an opening Bledisloe Cup encounter in the professional era for Wallabies players.
The anomaly has transpired after a woeful Super Rugby season for Australia's teams - which finished when defending champions Queensland Reds were knocked out by the Sharks last weekend - along with injuries and the new schedule which sees inbound Tests played in between Super Rugby rather than directly afterwards.
New Zealand, meanwhile, have two teams in the Super Rugby semi-final and will have one in the grand final, two weeks before the Bledisloe.
Many of the inactive Wallabies will play club rugby to keep up fitness but that is hardly comparable to Super Rugby or Test matches.
Injured stars David Pocock and Kurtley Beale - who each will not have played a top-flight game in seven weeks leading up to the Bledisloe showdown - are unlikely to play club rugby due to their already heavy workloads and injury struggles.
Key prop Sekope Kepu will not have played top-flight rugby for two months, with his last game the third Test against Wales before he injured his calf and missed New South Wales Waratahs' final two matches.
Wallabies skipper James Horwill will not play again this year while star playmaker James O'Connor is unavailable for the first two Bledisloe Tests, by which time the contest could already be decided.
With no warm-up Test before the Bledisloe encounter the Wallabies must click into gear immediately against the world's No.1 team, who they have managed to beat just four times in their past 22 encounters.
And given the best-of-three battle favours the holders, Australia probably need to win the first Test given the second is at Eden Park - where the Wallabies have not beaten the New Zealand in 26 years, and where the All Blacks are undefeated in 28 successive Tests from 1994, culminating in last year's Rugby World Cup victory against France.
When the Wallabies last held the Bledisloe Cup in 2002, the stacked Brumbies and Waratahs featured in the Super Rugby semi-finals - the Brumbies lost to the Crusaders in the final - before Australia played NZ Maori and two Tests against France.
A fortnight later they lost the first Bledisloe Test to the All Blacks but won the remaining two to hold the trophy for the fifth straight year. Last year the Wallabies had several players involved in the Reds' successful grand final victory.
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