Rugby-No excuses for Rennie as he admits Wallabies were not good enough

Australia coach Dave Rennie did not mince his words when he described Saturday’s 48-17 Rugby Championship loss to Argentina in San Juan as simply “not good enough”. The home side ran in seven tries for their biggest ever victory over the Wallabies, who have been depleted by injury and player absences for personal reasons.

Rennie will have learnt a lot from seeing his ‘next best’ in action, but with the future of regular skipper Michael Hooper uncertain after he pulled out of the tour saying he was not in the right frame of mind to play, there will be concern a year out from the Rugby World Cup in France. “Massive disappointment. Not good enough,” Rennie told reporters. “You could see there were four tries that were kicks in behind us. We certainly got dominated in the collision area.

“We created plenty of opportunities but we have to be patient. Rucks not a disaster, we just weren’t clinical enough. “We lacked cohesion with a few changes. We’ll look at the footage but we’re better than that. It’s a massive disappointment. We want to earn the respect of the country and you don’t do it with performances like that.”

Rennie played down the number of players missing from his selection as the cause of the defeat and felt the team he put on the pitch had enough in them to get a win. “We had a good enough side on the paddock tonight to do the job. We gave them a few soft points early on, clawed our way back into it,” he said.

“We’ve got to be better. While we know we’ll get a few guys back, whoever puts the jersey on has to front (up). We weren’t good enough today.” Australia return home to take on South Africa in two more Rugby Championship clashes, the first of which is on Aug. 27 in Adelaide.

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