They won two of the first four Rugby World Cups but they head into the final week of the pool phase of the 2023 looking very much like their race is already done. For the Wallabies to play again in France, it will require Portugal to knock over Fiji and deny them a bonus point.

There is only a slim chance of that happening, but the Australian discomfort will have to be prolonged just in case. Discomfort in the sense that ever since they were thumped by Wales, their exit has been inevitable, and they are just going through the motions. They will be training this week knowing that it is unlikely that there’s any immediate purpose to it. The Aussies go into their off-season after the World Cup, and they won’t play again until March.

How the Australian rugby bosses deal with the off-season, and the changes they make between now and the start of the next Super Rugby, will be of interest not only to Wallaby fans but also to World Rugby. The next World Cup will be played Down Under in 2027 and the hosts will need to be strong and in with a shout at winning it, as was the case when they first hosted in 2003, or the event could be a disaster.

PANTOMIME VILLAIN

Disaster is probably the word that quickest springs to mind when you think of the Wallaby coach Eddie Jones, who has very much become the pantomime villain of this World Cup, and has proved a particularly easy target for a rugby media that is perhaps struggling for angles given how many mismatches there have been in the group phase.

The 63-year-old Jones of course doesn’t help himself, although those who have watched him for a long time and are less passionate in their bias against him, will probably agree that a lot of it is by design for the wily old fox. An example was the way he subverted social media discussion about his team’s performance in their big loss in the opening game of the World Cup year to South Africa in Pretoria to his spat with a local journalist at the post match press conference.

He is still doing it. After his side beat Portugal by 20 points this past Sunday, he shrugged off questions about fans booing him by saying they weren’t booing him, they were booing the inordinate amount of time it takes for TMOs to make decisions and the many stoppages in the modern game.

Actually, he might not have been saying that to deflect from himself, Jones does have a genuine love for rugby and if you speak to him he is concerned about where the sport is going. I hosted him at a function at a Cape Town rugby club in 2018 and when I brought up the subject of how rugby is being ruined by a myriad of factors including the reliance on technology, he behaved like he was a little kid and I’d just opened a box of chocolates.

Rugby, with the plethora of cards that detract from matches and the inordinate amount of time that the officials take to make decisions, with the repeated replays of videos, is in trouble. There’s no denying that and the upswing in the young people following the Ryder Cup on television, as reported in the UK media, should be a warning to the sport. You need a product vibrant and sexy, and competitive, if you want to retain eyes. There’s a lot of competition for those eyes.

HARD TO BELIEVE HE TAKES HIMSELF SERIOUSLY

There’s nothing young and vibrant about Jones circa 2023 but he is arguably good for the game in the sense that he is that rare fish that speaks his mind and thus provides talking points. But he’s also a clever man so it is hard to believe he was taking himself seriously when ahead of this World Cup he threw out all his experienced players and selected a young team and then pronounced that they would win the competition.

What Jones was doing was obvious - he was looking ahead to 2027. He must have known he was going to take a hit now, but he was determined to blood the players who might benefit from the experience of being part of this World Cup in four years time.

The outcome has been embarrassing for Australian rugby followers, and doubtless it has been embarrassing for Jones too. Watching the Wallabies play Portugal on Sunday, it was hard to escape the feeling that they were nearer to their tier two opponents in ability than they are to the top nations right now like South Africa, France or New Zealand.

SARCASM HAS A SHELF LIFE

Jones will find it hard to survive even if something miraculous happens at the weekend and his team is granted a stay of execution. Forget about the rugby results, his determination to fight with the rugby journalists in his home country doesn’t help him either. His dripping sarcasm also has a shelf life with many people.

But even if he is not there next year, and someone else takes over, Australian rugby and, by extension, World Rugby, may end up with a debt of gratitude for Mister Jones, who my money says will be coaching Japan in the next World Cup cycle. For blooding the young players now, and putting them through the experience they have been through, might achieve exactly what Jones wanted it to.

Jones, lest it be forgotten, did get a World Cup winners medal as an assistant coach to the Springboks in 2007. That was four years after South African rugby had been the laughing stock of the 2003 World Cup, an event that from this country’s viewpoint will be remembered as much for what happened off the field, such as the infamous Staaldraad training camp that preceded it, than what happened on it.

Rudolf Straeuli was the coach and like Jones will probably do now, he had to make way after that World Cup, with Jake White coming in and doing the rescue job that was needed. White though was helped, as Jones’ probable successor will be, by the fact that Straeuli had blooded so many players during his two year stint - yes, it was only two years - that went on to front the challenge in the next World Cup cycle. Say whatever you want about Straeuli, he wasn’t a bad identifier of talent.

The Boks didn’t take long to correct once the new coach took over. They won the Tri-Nations the year after they had bombed so spectacularly at the 2003 RWC. Neither was that the first time something like that happened. The Boks were a disaster under the coaching of Carel du Plessis, losing a series against the Lions and coming last in the Tri-Nations, but Du Plessis did blood several of the players, such as Percy Montgomery, Pieter Rossouw and Rassie Erasmus, that excelled when Nick Mallett took over and took them on a 17 match unbeaten run.

YOUNG AUSSIES MIGHT BE TOUGHENED BY THE EXPERIENCE

The previous year had been a tough one but you wouldn’t have thought so when Mallett’s team dominated world rugby in 1998. Sometimes going through hell can be helpful to a player’s development by making them tougher, more determined and resilient, and the young Aussies who have seen action but also been ridiculed in France now have it in their hands to use the experience as a motivation for what is to come next - a series against the British and Irish Lions in 2025 and the World Cup two years after that.

Leaving out so many experienced players who made up the core of the leadership wasn’t great rugby logic on the part of Jones, but then were the Wallabies going to do any better at this World Cup had Dave Rennie continued as their coach? Australian rugby has been at a low ebb for a long time now. Something radical was needed to change the ship’s course.

In this instance the captain may have to leave the ship, but he could just have pointed it in a direction that Aussies and the global game will thank him for four years from now…