Wallabies’ wobbles worrying after a poor end to 2025

It was hoped that Eddie Jones’ disastrous second act as Wallabies coach in 2023 was the nadir for Australian rugby, but a woeful end to 2025 suggests the two-time world champions have yet to shake off the Wobblies tag.

The

48-33 loss to France

at the Stade de France on Nov 22 sealed Australia’s first winless European tour since 1958. It also is the first time the Wallabies have lost 10 Tests in a year.

Coach Joe Schmidt pleaded with the nation not to give up on his side, telling Stan Sport: “We’re disappointed we didn’t finish with the victory... But the players have made a heck of an effort.

“There’s 15 Tests in 22 weeks. With the amount of travel they’ve had, I just admire the way they have dusted themselves off and gone again.

“And it wasn’t for lack of effort tonight. With a little bit more execution, they will get better, so please don’t give up on them.”

Despite ending 2025 with a record of five wins against 10 losses (33 per cent), Schmidt’s men are statistically not the worst Wallabies in history. The classes of 2018 (31 per cent), 2020 (17 per cent) and 2023 (22 per cent) registered worse winning percentages.

But that is scant consolation with a Rugby World Cup on home soil in 2027.

At the previous edition in 2023, Jones’ Wallabies became the first Australian side to crash out in the pool phase.

New Zealander Schmidt, who previously led Ireland to three Six Nations crowns, the last of which was a Grand Slam in 2018, was tasked with engineering a similar upturn in fortunes Down Under.

There have been glimpses of that, particularly early in the 2025 Rugby Championship, but the year has ended with seven defeats in the last eight Tests, with a

narrow four-point win over Japan

in Tokyo the sole success.

It also ended with the realisation that Australia will not be among the top six seeds for their home World Cup – they needed to beat Les Bleus by 16 points or more to move out of the second band and get a more favourable draw.

The Autumn traverse through the Northern Hemisphere has been particularly torrid.

It began with a

25-7 humbling by England

at Twickenham in early November. On the BBC commentary, 2003 World Cup winner and former England captain Matt Dawson said it was the worst Wallabies performance he had ever seen, calling the visitors “dreadful” and “disjointed”.

Losing to an upwardly mobile England –

who beat Australia’s Tasman rivals New Zealand 33-19

two weeks later – could be excused if not for what followed a week later.

At Udine, seventh-ranked

Australia were upset by world No. 10 Italy

, with the hosts’ tries coming from Australian-born Monty Ioane and Louis Lynagh, the Treviso-born son of Wallabies great Michael Lynagh.

On Stan Sport’s Between Two Posts, former Australia centre Morgan Turinui dubbed it “the poorest performance of the Joe Schmidt coaching era at the Wallabies”.

Next up was Ireland, who handed Schmidt’s side their biggest margin of defeat of 2025 (27 points),

with a 46-19 win

at Lansdowne Road, as Canberra-born Mack Hansen scoring a first-half hat-trick of tries for the hosts in his first international start as fullback.

Said Schmidt: “Unfortunately, Mack was probably the standout ‘Australian’ player on the field.”

That left Australia needing a 16-point swing against Les Bleus, which never looked like materialising, despite France coach Fabien Galthie chiding his side over production and ill-discipline.

Schmidt, meanwhile, lamented: “We’ve been in every game at half-time. And we haven’t finished them off well enough.”

Australia went into the dressing room in Paris with the scores knotted at 19-19. They were 10-7 down in London, 12-9 up in Udine and 19-14 down in Dublin.

The 60-year-old is right to highlight that his side has never been more than a try behind at the break during the November internationals.

So what is behind the second-half capitulations?

After all, this is a side who in August came from 22-5 down at the break

to beat double world champions South Africa 38-22

for their first victory at Ellis Park since 1963.

A month later, they came back from 21-7 behind at half-time to pip Argentina 28-24 in Townsville.

In fact, before the European tour, Australia had lost just one international in 2025 by a double-digit margin – the second Bledisloe Cup Test against the All Blacks in Perth (28-14) on Oct 4 – and beaten both the Boks and the British & Irish Lions by more than 10 points in August.

Schmidt said in mid-October: “The one thing that does worry me is a bit of fatigue at the end of the tour.”

The Wallabies’ most-capped player James Slipper feels they have played too many matches in 2025. The team average between 12 and 15 Tests per year.

“There’s certain reasons why we have 15 Tests a year: financially, give the fans what they want. Is 15 too many? Probably. But I’ll always play 15, I’m happy to play them. It’s just a matter of are we going to get our best players playing each game, and that’s probably the question to ask?” he said on Stan Sport.

Two-time World Cup winner Tim Horan, however, said: “I actually disagree. I actually think 15 or more Test matches should be played because the marketplace where we’re in at the moment in Australia, with the other codes, we need more Test matches for the Wallabies.”

“There’s 14 Test matches next year, 15 this year, that’s probably the right number,” he added.

Squad depth is key with that many Tests and Schmidt has handed out 22 new caps during his two-year tenure.

However, former Wallabies lock Justin Harrison, who is now chief executive of Australia’s Rugby Union Players’​ Association, said players are “terrified” of poor results and slammed Schmidt’s “Russian roulette” selection policy.

“Schmidt talks about building depth and building positional longevity, and going deep in that,” he said on Stan Sport’s Inside Line.

“But there’s a point where... stability’s got to be formed at some stage through a year. And so when you start to change teams significantly, all of the time, for no real apparent reason, depth is not a good enough reason to take someone out of a Wallabies jersey and put someone else in that’s terrified of the result.”

Wallabies captain Harry Wilson seemed to hint at that pressure, saying after the France loss: “If there’s a lot of criticism back home, I’ve been trying not to look at that sort of stuff because it’s quite crippling if you keep looking at that.”

Schmidt has also been criticised for not unlocking the talent of Joseph-Aukuso Suaalii, a freak athlete who has represented New South Wales in rugby league, Australian Rules football, rugby union and basketball and was shortlisted for World Rugby’s Breakthrough Player of Year gong.

Describing the 22-year-old, Horan said: “Joseph tackles like a league, leaps like a basketballer and marks like an AFL player.”

Angus Fontaine wrote in The Guardian: “He should be the Australian archetype: a warrior who can soar, seize and create havoc. Instead, he just tackles, the rugby equivalent of flagging down a Ferrari to drag your bullock cart out of the mud. It’s why Schmidt’s Wallabies are stuck, wheels spinning and sinking fast.”

In a column for the News Corp publications, former Wallabies utility back Quade Cooper called Suaalii a “generational talent, and the challenge for playmakers is to unlock him and his abilities”.

But one major issue for Schmidt is he has not been able to settle on a fly-half, with James O’Connor, Carter Gordon, Tom Lynagh, Tane Edmed and Noah Lolesio all having stints in the No. 10 jersey during the season.

But that is only a Schmidt problem until July, after which he will hand the reins over to Les Kiss, who will have just over a year before the World Cup.

Former Wallaby Michael Hooper told Stan Sport: “What I’m hearing is Joe is going to stay involved but from afar. So he’s going to have oversight over it.”

“How is the team, how’s the coaching staff, and how is Rugby Australia going to manage this transition with the players going forward?” he added.

Of the last five Australia coaches since 2013, only Michael Cheika has overseen at least 50 Tests. The last three, including Schmidt, have had winning percentages of below 40 per cent. Only one coach before this period had a worse winning record.

Cooper summed up the situation in June, opining: “The core problem is coaches change every freaking two years. This isn’t just disruptive – it’s crippling.

“Australia has been unable to cultivate a distinct style of play because they’re trying to get the best coach that’s out there right now, rather than adhering to a foundational Australian identity. Australian play over the last 15 years has had no identity.”