The Wallabies will take some valuable time off over the next few days to reassess and recharge, with Harry Wilson and Joe Schmidt not hiding their disappointment to their 28-26 loss to the Pumas in Sydney.
The result sees the Wallabies slip down the World Rankings, and despite the late comeback was a match dominated by the visitors off the back of a 14-7 penalty count.
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It is an issue that Schmidt and Wilson want to nip in the bud come two weeks' time in Eden Park.
“[The feeling is] dominated by disappointment,” Schmidt candidly told reporters after the match.
“I felt that we had enough of the game to get the result. A lot of it was our own errors.
“The Argentinians, they're a really good team, but we're making 11 line breaks to three and scoring four tries to one and we don't get a result.
“It's incredibly frustrating, but disappointing at the same time… we would stack some good work together and then cough the ball up or give it away too easily.”
“[The final 20 minutes] was probably the first time we got a little bit of momentum where we didn't shoot ourselves in the foot there,” Wilson added.
“We held on to the ball, we didn't try to push the offload, and we started playing some really good footy.
“There's a lot of belief there we could get the job done and 'Rabs' [James O’Connor] was a real calm voice there in the end, telling us what to do and everyone just listened to him and did that.
“We got obviously pretty close there in the end, that first 60 [minutes] is quite disappointing.”
The penalty count is something the Wallabies will be looking to review quickly, especially after the side had enjoyed such strong discipline across the South Africa tour.
Wilson struggled to get his points across to referee Christophe Ridley, but Schmidt believes the issues are within the Wallabies’ control.
“It was a little bit [frustrating],” Wilson said when asked about the communications with the referee.
“We gave away too many penalties and some I wanted to have another look at, but [we] didn't really get too much opportunity there and we've got to be better.”
“I'm frustrated with what we didn't get right,” Schmidt said.
“I think as soon as you start getting distracted by things you don't control, I think there's a risk.
“We'll go through the channels, there's decisions that, right toward the end there when we almost get ourselves back into the game with a little bit more time to spare where we're frustrated.
“But it's our fault, we're in that position in the game to a large degree.”
Schmidt will be focusing on ensuring balance is maintained in the squad, with James O’Connor potentially in line to head to his new club, Leicester Tigers.
The head coach believes Tane Edmed will take a lot from the match, despite a few mistakes and charge down which lead to Argentina’s only try.
“[It will be] a big learning curve for a young man who I thought worked his socks off tonight,” Schmidt added.
[O’Connor] was great value again today. We don't have any experience at 10. We've got three very inexperienced 10s and they are part of that hub of your team.
“But how do you get experience?
“That's part of the short-term focus, long-term vision and we've tried to balance it by having maybe some inexperience, but having some experience to bring off the bench and to help players during the week.
“We thought we'd try to build our continuity on Tuesday and Thursday and I'll take responsibility for that. We didn't get quite to where we needed to be.”
The Wallabies will need to regather for the Bledisloe Cup, but Schmidt and Wilson will aim to take their lessons from the result - with the 41,912 sellout crowd, the largest ever at the rebuilt venue, showing the side they are heading in the right direction.
“The support was phenomenal today, you could hear it coming into the coach's box and it has to be loud for that,” Schmidt said.
“It does lift the players without a doubt - but we've got to keep earning that. We've got to keep people enthused about the game as we did in Townsville and community events and trying to really grow the game and the best way to do it is not to come second.
“We obviously wanted to improve on last week there and we didn't,” Wilson added.
“We're only as good as what we train. When we prepare well we play some pretty decent footy.
“We can't keep doing that because we're giving teams a leg up and at international quality it makes it very hard for yourself.”
