Wallabies start Test season against Ireland in Sydney

There’s a real sense of the unknown about the Wallabies tonight. The upside of the game is that Ireland will be too strong and too classy for an Australian team that hasn’t started their season all that convincingly.

Ireland’s calling card is ruthless consistency, both in physical contest and clever playmaking that exposes and exposes the opponent’s weakness.

Wallabies? Their most consistent characteristic is inconsistency. They showed last year that they have the ability to play outstanding football and took on and knocked out some giants in the Lions and South Africa.

But for the most part they did things the hard way, giving up the lead early and fighting back later. Sometimes this worked, sometimes it didn’t.

They appeared to have solved this problem in the Spring Tour, but went to the other extreme. They played well in the first 40, but fell apart in the second half.