Monday press conferences after a Bledisloe Cup defeat would rank among the least appealing assignments for any Wallabies player, and this one followed the heaviest kind of humiliation. Speaking at a hotel across the road from Accor Stadium at Sydney Olympic Park, the venue for Saturday's dead-rubber Bledisloe clash, Wright said the group had gathered on Sunday morning to "face the music."
Asked whether that meant coaches or senior players laying down the law, Wright clarified: "The music of the scoreboard. No one wants to be on the receiving end of 50 points. No one wants to be on the receiving end of a loss."
At 17-14 in front, the Wallabies were right in the contest, Wright noted, and the game was there to be taken. "We felt like all the guns were loaded, and we had the ammunition to fire shots and win the game. We didn't. That's the music that we're talking about."
The defeat came after a six-game unbeaten streak, including a surprise win over the Springboks, but the broader Australian sporting public ultimately judges the Wallabies on one thing: whether they can beat the All Blacks. When it comes to New Zealand, the same old problems keep resurfacing.
Where some had expected a spirited second-half performance, they instead saw a botched Australian lineout deep in Kiwi territory become the catalyst for an All Blacks onslaught that turned a contest into another humiliating defeat. It was a familiar script, even if the Wallabies had spent much of the first half threatening to rewrite it.