High-risk decisions backfire as Australia slump out of World Cup

PARIS : Australians are among the most enthusiastic gamblers on the planet so it is perhaps no surprise the country's worst ever Rugby World Cup campaign was built on two high-stakes decisions.

The first in January by Rugby Australia supremo Hamish McLennan to sack Dave Rennie and bring back Eddie Jones as coach may yet, he hopes, pay dividends in the future.

The second by Jones to dump the experienced core of the squad and roll the dice on youth was an abject failure as the Wallabies, now ranked 10th in the world, bowed out of the World Cup in the pool stage for the first time.

"It didn't have to be like this," Bernard Foley, one of the experienced playmakers left out of the squad, posted on social media platform X after the devastating 40-6 loss to Wales which put the campaign on life support.

Fiji's bonus point in their loss to Portugal on Sunday night drove the final nail into the coffin and the Wallabies, who had stuck around for a week in France preparing for a quarter-final they were never likely to play, can now head home.

Jones has committed to seeing out his contract until the 2027 World Cup on home soil, if he is not sacked in the wake of a November review into the tournament by Rugby Australia. His reputation has been severely damaged over the last month, though, and it was Australian as well as French and Portuguese fans booing him every time his face was shown on the big screen in the final pool match, a win over Portugal.

That was in part by design as the 63-year-old clearly sought to hog the limelight with his public utterances and protect his young players from the flak over the implosion of the campaign.

Getting rugby some space on the back pages of Australian newspapers was the goal from the moment Jones