Eddie Jones remains "one hundred percent" confident the Wallabies can win the Rugby World Cup despite suffering a fourth straight defeat in his return to the head coaching role.
Australia produced comfortably their best performance of Jones' second stint in charge in Dunedin on Saturday, leading the All Blacks 17-3 at halftime before falling behind in the dying minutes of a 23-20 defeat.
Having kept faith with most of the young players who were swept aside 38-7 by New Zealand a week earlier in Melbourne, Jones was delighted to see a more "in their face" defensive display and more quality across all parts of their game.
Asked if he felt his eighth-ranked side could be champions for a third time at the World Cup starting in France in five weeks, a typically bullish Jones replied: "one hundred percent, in fact I think we will mate".
He was more pragmatic in his assessment of Australia's performance, which highlighted shortcomings.
"There's the good parts and there's the bad parts and there's the ugly parts. In the second half our scrum got ugly, didn't it?" he said.
"I couldn't say I'm happy. Four losses are four losses but ... sometimes the result sheet doesn't reflect what you're actually doing and that's hard for people to understand.
"I think we're definitely moving in the right direction but we've got to win games."
Jones heaped praise on the leadership of scrum-half Tate McDermott, who skippered the Wallabies for the first time.
Jones said McDermott would be considered to retain the captaincy at the World Cup, having originally named Michael Hooper and James Slipper as the squad's co-captains.
"Certainly he's one of the strong candidates," Jones said.
McDermott said his team are desperate for their endeavours to be rewarded with a win and he hoped that would come in a warmup Test against France in Paris on August 27.
"You look in that dressing room and the boys are gutted," he said.
"We're working bloody hard and we're not seeing much for it at the moment. But what we are seeing is small areas of our game growing and growing quickly too."
dgi/mca
