A lot of discussion on individual errors as the key take away on this game. If we had some way peeked a point over France we'd all be talking differently.
As a team a couple of things still frustrate:-
x we still finish out each half (not just to the final whistle) no way switched on enough.
x the French set up this game in the first stanza by taking 3 after 3 each time they were in our half, simply relying on the Wallabies to be penalised. We were much better with our discipline, but still need to do better.
There were some fabulous performances out there I'm going to hold on to them. That coast to coast try was a thing of rugby beauty. I thought our starting set piece seriously stepped up for this game. Scrum petered out once the bench was emptied though we were impacted by injuries. The line out had the predictable issues once we had Fainga'a and Skelton out there. There will be a way to solve this, but we didn't see it today. I thought our ruck work was much better though not much jackling. Maybe due to Peyper? Our maul is starting to be dominant at test level. Backs had some silky smooth moments. While I agree with the Wright concerns, on the whole I think the back three was OK. Better than many tests earlier in the year.
Skelton showed what he can bring, in patches largely when he was allowed to (when we backed off the kicking duel and looked to pack go forward). It's a huge call I think to continue with a bloke in such a key role, that has such impact on team selections, when he is not available other than at his and his club's convenience. But we've seen enough to keep working with it. The French were always going to be stronger in the kicking/territory game, though we held onto it better than I thought we would. At the end though we could have transitioned more consistently to "up the guts and at 'em" with Skelton, Fainga'a, Samu etc. When it happened the gain line line was impressive.
I'm not agreeing with fans suggesting that the team has shown no growth under Rennie. Whether that improvement is enough to satisfy is a bit different but I thought the Wallabies were a much better team than earlier in the season.
OK boys, let's not fall off the wagon, the Azurri must be defeated.