Chur.
And with one raise of an empty bottle, New Zealander Dave Rennie ticked off his maiden win in charge of the Wallabies. He celebrated knocking off the All Blacks 24-22 in Bledisloe IV – a match no-one saw coming, particularly after their record loss a week earlier – by throwing back a beer. How very Australian.
In his post-match interview with Fox Sports the well-respected coach had said the Wallabies would celebrate with a “couple of quiet ones”, and that he did.
The photo was posted by his new scrum coach Petrus du Plessis on Twitter and shows Rennie seated in the middle next to James Slipper, who was the inspiration behind the Wallabies’ famous win after running out for his 100th Test – a feat only 12 others in Australian history has accomplished.
The other person on Slipper’s shoulder, Wallabies defence coach Matt Taylor, who was the loose-head prop’s first defence coach at the Queensland Reds when he made his Super Rugby debut in 2010.
While Rennie and all of Australia will have hoped that the Wallabies were filling up the Bledisloe Cup with beer instead of drinking from their bottles, the man tasked with turning the nation into world beaters again said the win would help his side’s confidence immensely.
"We've got a long way to go, we're going to get a lot better, but it's good to get a result like this because it helps with a bit of belief," Rennie said.
At his post-match press conference, Rennie provided the perfect response too to whether he would have taken a win and a draw from his maiden four matches in charge.
“You don’t win the Bledisloe Cup by winning one and drawing one,” Rennie said.
“What it tells us is that if we work hard enough for each other we can get results against anyone. But it doesn’t count for much tonight unless we back it up against Argentina in a couple of weeks.
“We’re trying to grow our game. There’s a lot of stuff we haven’t had time to do because of the (COVID) situation, so (I’m) excited about where we can take this team. But we’re not going to get carried away with tonight. It was a great result, but we’ve got to keep building on that.”
He added: "Yeah, not a bad place to do it too, in a ground where there’s been a lot of success in the past. A special day with Slips hailing from this part of the world initially. Just rapt to win."
Wallabies coach Michael Hooper agreed and said that the win would help with the confidence of the many young players in the side, where a further three players made their Test debuts during the tense two-point win.
“It’s a good start for them and (we) expect that, we want to make that the norm,” said Hooper, following his 50th match in charge of the Wallabies.
“We make no bones about where we want to go as a team and those guys are going to be a big driving factor in that, so bottling that feeling and pushing each other and demanding more out of each other, which the young guys have brought and vice-versa from the top-down, is going to be important to go where want to go.”
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