The Wallabies must be their own hardest markers as they edge closer to the knockout stages of the Rugby World Cup, flyhalf Christian Lealiifano says.
Australia enjoyed a 45-10 win over Uruguay in Oita on Saturday, a margin that would have given the Wallabies a confidence boost after a heartbreaking loss to Wales, scoring seven tries against the South Americans.
However, any victories like Saturday’s come with a warning - Australia is a professional rugby nation playing against a team of largely amateurs from a country with just 6000 registered rugby participants.
Australia have one more pool opponent to come - they play Georgia this Friday night - before a quarter-final most likely to be against England, a match for which they will need to be at their best.
Lealiifano said they respected a much-improved Uruguay as a team but ultimately had to judge themselves harshly when it came to reviewing the match this week.
“I think it's just about seeing our markers and if we hit what we wanted to hit in terms of our game style,” he said.
“We look at that and Uruguay put us under a lot of pressure as well - we were coughing up the ball and you can't do that in big games.
“If you want to be at the business end, the back end of the tournament, we really need to be hard on ourselves there and looking after the footy and then our discipline as well.”
Wallabies coach Michael Cheika lamented an ill-disciplined start to the match against Uruguay, speaking post-match, and Lealiifano said Australia needed to tighten that part of their game up in games.
“I think these incidents or tackles are just happening when we're just (using) poor technique,” he said.
“We don't need to assess it as a whole (group), I think the boys are doing quite well, working every day at their tackle tech, doing all their bits as they normally do.
“We've just got to execute better in games.”
Slow starts have become a trend for the Wallabies, particularly in this Rugby World Cup and with a quarter-final showdown against England looming, Australia will have to address that sooner rather than later.
The Wallabies trailed by nine and 18 points against Fiji and Wales, respectively, and were just four points ahead of Uruguay for much of the first half before blowing the Teros away in the second.
“I think we're probably putting a lot of pressure on us to really, really start well and it's probably just creating a little bit of stress maybe I don't know?,” he said.
“It's just little mistakes that swing momentum and let teams back in early in the game and then our discipline lets us down,” he said.
“You can't really start a game well when you're getting penalised so really need to fix that up as well and just be smart with what we're doing early and if we're clear with what we're doing and we're executing well, I think the team gets some really nice rhythm and we'll continue to work on that.”
One area that was a positive for Lealiifano was in his goal kicking, with a return of five from seven for the night, an improvement on some patchy kicking across the board by the Wallabies in recent weeks.
Lealiifano said he had been working closely with skills coach Mick Byrne to work on his consistency in front of the sticks.
"He's been helping me a lot with more the mental space and the process with kicking, just having the conversations with him and the pictures that I'm seeing," he said.
"I reckon that helps a lot with getting comfortable so when you get out there in the game it's just, let it just happen and you're familiar with what you're seeing and it's definitely been helping.
"He's been putting a lot of hard work into me and I've been trying to kick as much as I can just because we know how important accurate kicking is in this tournament. we've just got to keep working on it, all the kickers are and we'll find hopefully we get some success again.
"I missed a couple yesterday, wasn't happy with that, but when you're up by that much it doesn't really matter too much."
The Wallabies take on Georgia on Friday October 11 in Shizuoka, kicking off at 7:15pm local, 9:15pm AEDT, LIVE on Foxtel, Network Ten and via RUGBY.com.au RADIO, Rugby Xplorer and Amazon Alexa.
