By any way you choose to frame it, last weekend was a good one for Australian rugby teams over New Zealand opponents.
Australian sides won three of the five games against New Zealand sides in Round 11, eclipsing in one weekend the entire haul of wins across the 25 games played in Super Rugby trans-Tasman last year. The Fijian Drua, playing their first ever Super Rugby match on Fijian soil were only three points off beating the Highlanders and making four losses for NZ in a single round.
You'd need to turn more than a few pages of the history books to find the last time that happened.
And then, the cherry on top, the Australian Women's Sevens side claimed the gold medal in the Langford, Canada leg of the Sevens World Series, beating the Black Ferns 21-17 in the Final and wrapping up the 2022 title with one round to play.
But on the Super Rugby front this coming weekend, we can be assured of one thing: the Kiwis will be back. And the Australian sides wouldn't be game to underestimate the bounce-back factor that is absolutely coming in Round 12 this weekend.
The Crusaders were surprisingly lacklustre in their 24-21 loss to the Waratahs at Leichhardt Oval in Sydney, with coach Scott Robertson promising post-match to review everything as they tried to work out why New South Wales were able to jump out to a completely dominant – and thoroughly deserved – 17-0 half-time lead.
"We're looking for the answers ourselves, to be fair," Robertson answered when asked what went wrong.
"A lot of simple stuff we pride ourselves on, we didn't get right.
"In the last 20, we got plenty of opportunities and still didn't finish."
Speaking from Christchurch this week, scrumhalf Bryn Hall spoke of a brutally honest review that highlighted unforced mistakes, poor discipline, a misfiring lineout, and 23 missed tackles for the match.
"They're fair comments. If you look at that first 20-30 minutes, you can't really question it," he said, asked if post-match comments about the Waratahs 'wanting it more' was accurate of their performance.
"Look, we're going to lose games, we've lost games in the past, but when you question around our start and were we really there, and having those kind of questions … it hurts as a player.
"I think for us, it's the kind of traits that we live by that we weren't living up to. That's probably the most thing that hurt."
It's a clear message for the Western Force, who host the Crusaders in Perth on Saturday night. They won't be fooled into taking Australian teams lightly again.
And it's fair to say the Australian teams know what's coming this weekend, too.
"I wouldn't say on the weekend, just because a few of the games were close, that all that ground's been made up and everything's hunky dory," NSW defence coach Jason Gilmore said in Sydney on Tuesday.
"I still think we're probably a step or two behind, but we are catching up and I think the next month of football will show whether the Aussie teams can turn those close losses into close victories.
"When you're getting consistency of wins then that's when you can say the Aussie teams are catching up, have caught up, and are doing well."
Wallabies coach Dave Rennie was of a similar view in Melbourne for this week's Bledisloe Cup announcement, that while the Round 11 results were good, the Australian sides need to follow it up this weekend.
"It gives us confidence, it gives our players confidence to know that playing against some of the best players in the world and they can stand up," Rennie said.
The test for the players, and the Australian teams in general, is going to be repeating those great showings from last weekend again this weekend.
All the doom and gloom being suddenly expressed in New Zealand this week will disappear in a flash with normal programming resumed if more wins aren't recorded in Round 12.
"I'm sure they are feeling a little bit of pressure, and if we can go over there and put a little but more pressure on them, that'd be great," Brumbies scrumhalf and stand-in captain Nic White told ABC Sport on Wednesday.
"But it's also a good chance for us to go over there and see how our systems cope, because there's no bigger test than playing a Kiwi team over there.
"There's no better feeling than going away and working hard for a win, so it's all there for us, and it'll be exciting to see how we do go under that sort of heat.
"I think we've got the right mentality at the moment to get that right."
