The last we saw of Australia at a World Cup, they were being eaten for breakfast by England. Michael Cheika, their coach, spent the entire tournament at boiling point – no surprise there – but his team had a softer centre than a 30- second egg. They were not even a shell of their former selves, having left the shell back in Sydney.
Humiliations on the scale of that 40-16 defeat on quarter-final day in Oita can have one of two effects: either they signal the start of a multicycle slump in international performance, or they result in a “ground zero” approach to building back better, to bo...