There are two things hitting home with Billy Vunipola as he approaches the third Test in Sydney on Saturday. He is finally getting in tune with coach Eddie Jones's notion that he can be the best No. 8 in the world and he knows he must not repeat the sort of clanger he made on the stroke of half-time last weekend that led to one of the most astonishing rearguard defensive performances ever produced by an England side.
Vunipola is a player transformed under Jones: more dynamic, more assured, more at ease with himself and who he is, a Tongan, Sydney-born, Wales and England-shaped personality, who is beginning to realise his potential on the world stage. It would help that development if the 23-year-old could avoid another momentary lapse of concentration like the one when he hoofed the ball into touch in the belief that the clock had run down on the first half. Instead there were two seconds left and the Wallabies went for the jugular, subjecting England to a 22-phase attack that lasted almost three minutes.
It will go down as a defining moment in the growing history of this Jones team, a goal-line stand that ranks alongside that of the 13 men who held out for victory against the All Blacks in Wellington in 2003. That sort of lung-rasping resistance becomes something to draw on in hard times, a reference point. And it all came from a cock-up.
"There was no one else to blame but myself," Vunipola said. "I thought the time was up but obviously it wasn't. It was never my intention to make the boys work like that, but it did give us a lot of confidence going into half-time that we could hold our line. The only thing going through my head was the thought of getting up and tackling someone, to not let them score.
"Once you've made a decision it is important that you move on quickly. We have that mindset as a team. We back each other up. The boys certainly backed me up from that decision. It was my error. We had packed down for a scrum and I saw that there were 20 seconds left. I thought to myself that a scrum doesn't last 20 seconds, so I held the ball in but I didn't actually look up at the clock It wasn't a smart decision.
