Ireland Mug Australia 33-31 at the Death as a Prop Named Clarkson Delivers Sydney's Cruellest Plot Twist

Somewhere in the record books it will say, simply, Australia 31, Ireland 33. What it will not say is that Ireland — missing roughly an entire hospital ward of first-choice players — pulled off one of the great smash-and-grabs of the decade, in a sold-out Sydney stadium, with the winning try scored in the final three minutes by a PROP. Tom Clarkson, tighthead, scholar, gentleman, now permanent resident of Wallaby nightmares.

For an hour this was Australia's night, and gloriously so. Four first-half tries — Pietsch, Campbell, Canham, Lonergan — had the Wallabies five points up at the break and playing like a team that had finally found the instruction manual after a decade of assembling the furniture by feel. Jock Campbell, back after 1,316 days in exile, scored a try in his comeback Test, which is the kind of storybook nonsense that usually only happens to Australians when the plot requires maximum eventual pain.

Because maximum eventual pain is what arrived. Ireland's comeback was pure green machinery: van der Flier burrowing, Gibson-Park scheming, Keenan gliding, the scoreboard tightening like a slowly closed fist. And then, with the clock bleeding out, Andy Farrell's men marched downfield and sent the big man over. A front-rower scoring a Test winner in Sydney in the 78th minute — there are operas with less drama and considerably worse casting.

Still Australia had one bullet left: a penalty, 50 metres out, at the absolute death, Ben Donaldson lining it up with 45,000 people making the collective noise of a country holding its car keys over a storm drain. He struck it well. It drifted wide. The stadium deflated like a bouncy castle at closing time, and Joe Schmidt's farewell series began with the most Schmidt-flavoured torture imaginable: beaten by the very Irish system he built, by two points, at home, at the buzzer.

Ireland keep finding ways to win with whoever's left standing, which at this point is less a squad and more a philosophy with jerseys. As for the Wallabies — genuinely improved, genuinely dangerous, genuinely capable of losing a match in ways science cannot model. The Nations Championship asked for drama in round one. Sydney said hold my schooner.