Wallabies assistant coach Laurie Fisher is confident the side is heading in the right direction despite back-to-back defeats to South Africa.
Sporting his trademark bucket hat, Fisher was honest about where the team sat after the losses to the world champions as they headed to Argentina.
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“I don’t think there’s anything in our game that we can tick off and say that’s world-class at this point,” he said. “We’re still in the process of working on everything.
“Joe’s got an attacking plan in the way he wants to play the game...I don’t think we’re in a position to say, ‘Well, we’ll just work on that this week' but we’ve got a whole-of-game approach.
“We need to make sure that each coach has identified areas that are going to get us to where we need to go, and we work diligently on those over the rest of the year.”
Fisher was adamant they were making inroads into changing this under Schmidt as they familiarised themselves with his system.
“(Schmidt) is obviously building a game that he’s comfortable with and that he knows works," he believes.
“I know a lot of what worked in Ireland revolved around Johnny Sexton and numerous other good players. We’ve just got to build game understanding.
“Look, I think we’re on the track. I think it’s important that you lay down a base first before you put the frills on.
“He’s driving the work around ball retention, carrying our breakdown, our ability to be live so that all options are on, and we’ll see what grows from there, I think.”
Fisher stressed the importance of starting fast against Argentina, knowing the lift they will get from a passionate home crowd in Buenos Aires.
"It’ll be a mad atmosphere,” he said. “They’ll be incredibly pumped up, and that’s the starting point.
“I recall seeing video of the Jaguares coming out of the changerooms last time, and the hype and the noise around that was unbelievable.
“If we can keep a clean sheet for the first 15 minutes, maybe keep things a little bit quiet amongst the crowd, then we give ourselves a chance. If we loosen up early, then it’s a long day.”
