Wallabies prop James Slipper doesn’t have to look back hard for belief his team can turn around their fortunes after last week’s opening Test defeat to the British & Irish Lions.
The hosts need a win in Melbourne on Saturday to keep the series alive - the same fate Slipper's 2013 team found themselves in after a last-minute loss in Brisbane.
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On that occasion, Australia defied the odds with a late Adam Ashley-Cooper try and Christian Leali'ifano conversion levelling the series and setting up the decider in Sydney.
Slipper, who last week became the second Wallaby to pull on gold in back-to-back Lions series, believes they can replicate these heroics at the MCG after a promising second half performance.
“At the end of the day, you've just got to bank what's happened in the past ... and [it’s] no different to this year,” he told reporters.
“We've got to not necessarily start again, but we've got to build on what we've started and making sure that under pressure we deliver that in the 80 minutes on the weekend.
“We've got the belief there in the group. It's about diving into that and making sure we're prepared really well.
"There's plenty of messages you could pass on, but I think it really comes down to being composed and relying on your preparation, more of a process-driven week, making sure our preparation is on task from yesterday all the way through the kick-off on Saturday night."
The sudden-death nature of the game was something Slipper didn’t think needed to be hyped up any further.
“There's not much more pressure you can have with a Lions series like in general,” he said.
“It's a game that we're going to have to win…, I think realistically everyone knows it's a do or die, so whether you talk it or not, it's in the room, and we know what it is but it's 80 minutes that we're preparing for and it's a big occasion, big Test match and one we're very excited by.”
Slipper knows they need to fix their starts if they are to be competitive, with 17 of the 27 points conceded in the first ten minutes of both halves.
The Wallabies outscored the Lions 19-10 in the remaining 60 minutes.
“You've got to give credit to the Lions, they came out and they kicked off and put us under pressure and kicked three points right off the bat," Slipper said.
We lost momentum from the kick-off and that's not ideal.
“It wasn't our plan, probably just a little bit of looseness from our half but going forward, it's just about those little areas of the game that you need to nail at this level and that's what we're planning to do this weekend.”
