Week one of the northern tour was fun, I’m looking forward to week two.
Many articles have been written in the past week saying how poor the Wallabies were on the weekend and, while you are what your record says you are, let’s look at it with a little more nuance. From a little research, a rugby player can usually maintain true peak performance for about 8–12 weeks per year — roughly 2–3 months of sustained top form.
That’s the period when:
- Strength, speed, and aerobic fitness all align
- Recovery is optimal
- Fatigue hasn’t accumulated too heavily
- Injury risk is still under control
Beyond that, performance starts to dip if workload isn’t adjusted.
Following is a typical calendar
| Phase | Duration | Goal |
| Pre-season | 8–10 weeks | Build base fitness, strength, and power |
| Early season | 6–8 weeks | Maintain performance while reducing fatigue |
| Peak form | 8–12 weeks | Optimal match performance (finals, internationals) |
| Off-season | 4–6 weeks | Recovery, rehab, reset |
To put this into context, round one of Super Rugby was on 13 February which was 37 weeks ago. The first test, against Fiji, was 18 weeks ago, 3/4 weeks after the last Super game played by both the Reds and the Brumbies.
Let’s discount the Super season for the purpose of the argument and focus on the performance of the Wallabies. Below is the list of fixtures I’ll give my view on the manner of the performance, regardless of outcome.
Games and performance level
v Fiji national rugby union team — Sunday 6 July, played poorly and looked rusty.
British & Irish Lions (three-match series):
1st Test: Saturday 19 July 2025 at Suncorp Stadium, Brisbane, played poorly but were competitive
2nd Test: Saturday 26 July 2025 at Melbourne Cricket Ground, played well
3rd Test: Saturday 2 August 2025 at Accor Stadium, Sydney, played well
2025 Rugby Championship matches:
v South Africa national rugby union team — Sunday 17 August, played well
v South Africa — Sunday 24 August, played well
v Argentina national rugby union team — Saturday 6 September, played well
v Argentina — Saturday 13 September, played well but slipping
v New Zealand— Saturday 27 September, played well but mostly on emotion
v New Zealand — Saturday 4 October, played poorly, slipped off the pace
· Autumn Tour (northern hemisphere) – matches toward end of year:
v Japan— Saturday 25 October, played poorly
v England— Sunday 2 November, played poorly
v Italy— Sunday 2 November
v Ireland national rugby union team — Sunday 16 November
v France national rugby union team — Sunday 23 November
Injuries
Every team suffers injuries, it’s the nature of contact sport. My view is teams truly suffer when they have a cluster of injuries in the same position, usually the second string is capable of doing a job. Australia has suffered from injury clusters in what are 4 of the 5 most important positions: hooker, halfback, flyhalf and fullback. We’ve been fortunate in the most important position, tighthead.
At the start of the year the Australian hookers were Matt Faessler, Dave Porecki and BPA.
Halfback at the start of the year was probably Jake Gordon, Nic White and Tate McDermott.
Flyhalf, Noah Lolesio, Tom Lynagh, James O’Connor, Ben Donaldson.
Fullback, Tom Wright.
6 of the starting 15 who played Fiji are either unavailable through retirement or injury.
Conclusion
In my view we can see a clear path of improvement and decline, the peak performance was over a course of 8 weeks from the second BIL game to New Zealand in Perth. Injury probably had a hand in the shorter window. Injuries have played their part for the shorter than hoped for peak level of performance.
I believe the Wallabies are on a downward trajectory after a long and arduous season and as fans we cannot expect the truly amazing performance they’ve shown glimpses of this year, they haven’t had long enough to reset both physically and mentally. Consider this: up until Argentina game two they had at worst drawn the penalty count and were consistently giving less than 10 penalties away per game. This slip in discipline is as much mental as physical.
The lowest ranked team they’ve played this year is Japan at #12. By contrast, the team in probably the best form is South Africa who played the murderers’ row of Italy and Georgia before the Rugby Championship and are now in peak performance phase.
All of this will be of little concern to the 10th ranked Italians this weekend who will sense blood in the water. One of my favourite quotes is from the book Hannibal Rising by Thomas Harris, “If you want sympathy look in the dictionary, it’s between ‘shit’ and ‘syphilis’.”
Hoss back tomorrow
