Harry Potter scored a first-half try but there was little else magical around Murrayfield as Scotland and Australia slogged it out in an attritional, low-scoring affair.
Four Nations Championship points eventually went the way of Gregor Townsend’s side who bounced back from their defeat to New Zealand last weekend with a 15-12 win – but it all felt very uninspiring.
Compare that with the joyous scenes in Cardiff the day before as Wales ended their 73-year wait for a victory over those same All Blacks.
Few nations have been put through the rugby mill more than the Welsh in recent years but the scenes at full-time in the Principality – grown men weeping with joy, grandparents celebrating with delighted grandkids in the stands – showed how much it meant to them all.
Cynics will say it wasn’t a full-strength All Blacks side but try telling that to the delirious home fans as they celebrated long into the night. That could have been Scotland a week earlier but big moments like that for this squad now seem like something from the past.
For a while Townsend and his players were chalking off historic milestones of their own, including ending decades-long waits for wins at Twickenham and in Cardiff and Paris. Now they seem to be treading water, never really looking like shaking things up the way Wales managed this weekend but also doing just enough to avert any possibility of sinking to crisis levels.
The Murrayfield crowd was sparse when the full-time whistle put them out of their misery
Max Jorgensen’s late try almost enabled the Wallabies to sneak a win at the death
Jack Dempsey (obscured) scores Scotland’s second try in a scrappy game at Murrayfield
At full-time, after a desperate Darcy Graham tackle had stopped the Wallabies from sneaking a win right at the death, the stadium announcer bellowed with typical over-the-top enthusiasm as stand-in captain Rory Darge lifted the Hopetoun Cup.
It was just more confected excitement, however, in front of a crowd that had been 2,000 short of capacity at kick-off and looked a lot sparser by the time the final whistle had sounded to put everyone out of their misery. At least on this occasion there was a win to celebrate but the whole thing felt very flat, the temperance of a Sunday crowd making the occasion a lot quieter than the usual booze-filled Saturday Tests.
The autumn scheduling hasn’t done Scotland any favours either with the appeal of the matches diminishing with every passing weekend. A Japan team with little star quality beyond their maverick head coach, Eddie Jones, and who shipped 78 points to England at the weekend, are next in line at Murrayfield, hardly a box office encounter.
Townsend will likely rest many of his regulars for that one and it will be intriguing to see how much of an appetite the Scottish rugby-watching public has for watching the fringe players going at it against a struggling Japan side.
From there the Nations Championship roadshow rolls on to the finals weekend in London. Having failed to secure a bonus point here, there is every chance Scotland will find themselves facing off versus these Wallabies once again. It will surely have to be more entertaining than we witnessed here.
Scotland’s cause wasn’t helped by Sione Tuipulotu withdrawing with a knee injury before kick-off and their other playmaker, Finn Russell, also enduring another off day. Russell had been quiet against the All Blacks and was again unable to produce much to break down an obdurate Australian defence.
The fly-half looks out of sorts and didn’t help his cause by failing to tackle Potter as he burst down the line for his try and slicing a number of kicks, one of which could have been returned for a drop goal only for Ryan Lonergan to miss the target. Russell also turned over the ball three times in a disjointed display.
He will likely be rested for the Japan match but, less than a year out from the World Cup, it must be a concern if his powers are waning just when his country needs him most. He wasn’t the only one to struggle, with the team as a whole managing just one line break throughout a soporific 80 minutes. Huw Jones, Graham and Kyle Steyn barely got the ball in their hands.
There were a few positives, too. Jack Dempsey looked lively in a try-scoring performance against his former team, while the defence looked a lot tighter until they coughed up a late try to Max Jorgensen and threatened to ship another until Graham saved the day.
Townsend will learn little from what will likely be a walkover win against Japan or a Twickenham test against one of the bottom three from the Nations Championship southern hemisphere group.
The bigger challenges, then, lie next year when the nation waits to see if Scotland can finally take a step forward in the Six Nations and then in the World Cup beyond that. To do so, however, they will need to produce a lot more magic than they showed here.
