LYON, France -- For the second year in a row, injuries are killing the Wallabies' Test season.
A new coach, an entirely new coaching team, and even Super Rugby Pacific load management has done little to halt what is becoming a frustrating theme for Australian rugby -- even more so in 2023 given the ongoing Rugby World Cup.
In the space of eight days, Australia have seen powerhouse prop Taniela Tupou, skipper Will Skelton and boom youngster Max Jorgensen all pull up lame at training in France; the loss of the key forwards dealing the Wallabies a hammer blow for their World Cup pool game to Fiji, which they lost 22-15 in Saint-Etienne.
That result has left the Wallabies' World Cup hopes not on life support, but certainly on route to emergency ahead of this Sunday's clash with Wales - one they must win to keep alive their unblemished record of reaching the quarterfinals at the game's global showpiece.
So what is the issue, then? Why on earth can Australia not keep its players on the paddock, and why are they continually suffering injuries at training?
"It's a balance. The challenge in a competition like this is really figuring out early in the week what's important and what we're going to focus on, because we obviously can't do everything," assistant coach Dan Palmer replied when asked what exactly the training philosophy was under Jones.
"But it's important to train at game intensity and under game pressure, so I think if we can be really clear on the areas that we're looking to improve and the areas that we're looking to work on, to narrow that down and just really train that at game intensity. We can't do everything, as there's a risk of wearing people out."
Rugby Australia completed a review of the team's strength and conditioning processes at the end of 2022, after players seemingly succumbed to injury almost weekly in a run that could scarcely be believed.
That list included but was not limited to; Angus Bell, Jed Holloway, Dave Porecki, Rob Leota, Matt Philip, Taniela Tupou, Quade Cooper, Izaia Perese, Jordan Petaia, James Slipper, Michael Hooper, Andrew Kellaway, Len Ikitau and Pete Samu.
Injuries are a part of the game, no doubt, as both Allan Alaalatoa and Len Ikitau's respective Achilles and scapula issues from this year's Rugby Championship can attest.
But when they are happening so frequently at training, and a number of them are soft tissue, then it is hard not to think that something more than "bad luck" is at play, and that a shift in mindset is required so that Australia does not again end up in the situation it finds itself in right now.
One source with deep knowledge of the Australian setup, and its lack of connection with the Super Rugby franchises, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, told ESPN that constant changes within the Wallabies setup had certainly not helped the situation in recent years.
"Starting in 2021 and 2022, there was no real fulltime S&C staff in the Wallaby setup, to the point in 2022 where they were using different S&C guys for each tour or series," the source said. "With that brings a change in training methods and changes in philosophy; some guys will push their own philosophies and methods and ignore what the player has been doing at Super level."
There has long been a belief in Australian rugby that the Super franchises do not train their players hard enough, resulting in them getting "flogged" when they come into Wallabies camp ahead of the Test season.
The switch then to Jones, who replaced Dave Rennie as Wallabies coach, was only going to change the landscape further, with only a fraction of Rennie's former backroom staff retained.
The source said he was in favour of some of the changes Jones was making, but that it needed to be done 12 months ago and that the short window in the run to the World Cup was always going to create problems.
One of the big changes Jones has made is reorganising the Wallabies' training days. Under Rennie, the Wallabies would typically have been given Wednesday off or at least undertaken their key training days in blocks of two. But Jones has Australia training for three days at a time, and that is potentially one reason why the Wallabies saw Tupou and Skelton go down last week, particularly when you factor in the unseasonably warm conditions that have engulfed the team's first few weeks in France.
Australia, too, seemed to take questions about the heat -- it was above 30 degrees Celsius when they played Georgia -- as a badge of honour, routinely harping back to their pre-World Cup camp in Darwin as evidence that they were ready for whatever France's weather might throw up at them.
"Skelton and Nela [Tupou] obviously played big minutes against Georgia in very hot conditions, which may have been the plan to get them game fitness, but you then have to respect that and give them time to recover post-game and tailor their training, and from what I heard they just ripped in straight away," the source told ESPN.
When quizzed about how hard Jones and the rest of the coaching staff had been working the Wallabies, Palmer was quick to defend the Australian setup, saying that when Jorgensen went down the team was "just training".
"Everyone has been exposed to the same training program, and they certainly haven't been overtraining. We've been training hard because we have to, it's a new group that's come together and we're playing a World Cup, so we're training hard, there's no doubt about that.
"But I don't think we're overtraining, that's my opinion."
Another Wallabies staff member described Jorgensen's injury as a "freak occurrence", explaining that the former schoolboy prodigy was simply coming down from a high ball like he would do at any other time, but then fracturing his fibula on impact.
But the wisdom of selecting a 19-year-old, who had already seen his Super Rugby season curtailed by a separate knee injury, all while his body still has some growing to do, must also be questioned.
So too the decision not to better manage Tupou, who had gone from an Achilles injury at the end of 2022, one that ruled him out of the entirety of this year's Super Rugby Pacific season, to a rib cartilage injury he suffered in Bledisloe I, and onto a World Cup in oppressive conditions, all the while playing little more than 80 minutes in total.
And then there is the issue of players who ply their trade in Europe, like Skelton; or Japan, like Samu Kerevi. European and particularly French clubs are notorious for flogging their players through what is a gruelling season, routinely expecting them to play anywhere from 20-30 games across the domestic and European competitions; the current Super Rugby season is a maximum of 17 games in comparison, and that is only for the two teams who make the final.
The source made the point that while some of Argentina's European-based players were given extra time off after their long seasons, as revealed by coach Michael Cheika after the Pumas' win over the Wallabies in Sydney, Skelton was brought straight into an Australian camp and picked first up against the Springboks in Pretoria.
It's true the Wallabies skipper has never looked fitter, but after virtually 12 months of continuous training and playing is it really a surprise that his body might give out at some point, particularly when training under the duress that Australia has these past few weeks?
Having experienced Jones' regime at Suntory, where the Wallabies coach is director of rugby, Kerevi had an idea of the 63-year-old's methods. But the veteran midfielder said given the greater intensity of Test rugby, a higher level of intensity at training was required to adequately meet the demands of the international game.
"Yeah I think it would just be the intensity," Kerevi replied when asked to compare his club and Wallabies sessions. "Eddie was part of our club in Japan, so the training he has us doing here is similar to what we do in Japan, but in Japan [it's] real quick.
"But again the intensity and physicality of training here, we have to prepare for a Test match, and it's always hard to get that balance right; being fresh and getting the pictures that we'll see [in the game]."
As Kerevi points out, players have to be ready for the physical load that awaits them at Test level, and given who their opponents were the week that Skelton and Tupou were injured [Fiji], perhaps it's no surprise the Wallabies really went for it in the build-up to that game.
But such has been the Wallabies' run of training-ground injuries the past two years, that a total rethink of their approach also appears necessary. Jones, too, may already be trying to usher that through and, with time, the players may better adjust to the switch from two-day blocks, into one solid three-day block, during the Test season.
And then there is the move towards centralisation, for which Rugby Australia revealed it had signed an "in-principle agreement" with the Super Rugby franchises to pursue. While there is still significant detail to be ironed out, and some franchises/unions are reportedly keener than others, having one strength and conditioning program pulling in the same direction from Super to Test level would seemingly be a positive.
And Wallabies assistant Dan Palmer, who has also been a part of the Brumbies staff, agrees.
"I think so. I think the more we can get everyone on the same page in Australian rugby, the better," he told reporters on Thursday. "I can't talk to you about the details of that, but in theory getting the provinces on the same page, especially for something like S&C and potentially beyond that, I think that's a good thing."
The S&C source who spoke with ESPN was also in favour of getting the Super and Test programs singing from the same songbook.
"Centalisation makes sense. We will have to go through some pain and coaches, mainly, won't like it, but having a national approach and coaches and staff who are employed by Rugby Australia will help get everyone aligned.
"The guys who I know from New Zealand and Ireland [both centralised models] in that space and the stories they've told me, I like what I've heard."
In the meantime, the prospect of Tupou and Skelton returning to the paddock in France will come down to what their teammates produce against Wales in Lyon on Sunday. By winning, and denying their opponents a bonus point in the process, Australia will have one foot in another World Cup quarterfinal, ahead of their final pool clash with Portugal.
Lose, however, and it will be curtains. And the questions around their training regime and a wretched 18-month run with injury will only grow ever louder.