Some pessimistic thoughts, RH.
Since we'll have an even better 22 on Saturday, I'll reserve judgment until watching the game. The only value in predicting catastrophe is feeling gratified when it happens.
Haha. Where is the 'pessimism' in my post? It's just a recounting of some obviously relevant past data. 5 years in with Robbie, we now have history, there are patterns, like them or not. My point was: there are 2010 to 2012 analogies here, will they repeat themselves this time? Note the open question. And I closed with: '...hope lives on...'.
I have no problem with posters who long for a romantic notion of Wallaby greatness and thus where each win is a kind of stop at the refuelling station so the (somewhat unrequited) love goes on regardless. The only unfortunate by-product for me is that my different way of seeing Aus rugby always offends this group. But life for me here is much better now than in mid-2010, when the likes of Gnostic and me were copping it left, right and centre for our then radical view that Deans was an emperor unclothed and that the truth of this would, sadly, out. (Though when I said last year that the Tahs board made a major error by not cleaning out both itself and the entire coaching infrastructure, that too was greeted with howls of derision and barbs that I didn't know what I was talking about.)
And there was/is no 'predicting of catastrophe' from me, at least as of now. We could lose in Melbourne, then win in Sydney (where btw I predict that the ARU's decision to swap greed for fan intimacy in a much better stadium for rugby will likely pay Suncorp-like dividends for the Wallabies). There is no 'value' as you say in predicting catastrophe, but there is some value in attempting an accurate, objective analysis as to what is really happening.
All I have ever wanted is a Wallaby team well coached, selected and developed enough to win BCs and/or (genuine not ersatz) 3Ns (now 4Ns). Eccentrically calculated, abstract IRB rankings and waiting-on-forever RWCs matter much less to me and, I suspect, to most everyday Aus rugby fans. I see these two comps as the real tests of Australian rugby, and I remain convinced we are capable of winning them with the right system-wide decisions and management quality.