The New South Wales Waratahs finished their season with a 31-25 loss to the Force in Perth, and Jake Gordon was helped from the field after rupturing his right Achilles tendon late in the first half.
Gordon went down when he attempted a quick tap, a blow that is expected to keep the Wallabies captain out of Test rugby this year and leaves the Waratahs facing the end of an insipid campaign without their No. 9. Nic White, working on Stan Sport commentary, said he was gutted as the scrum-half left the ground.
The injury landed in a match the Waratahs badly needed to close out on their own terms. They had surged to a 20-7 lead after the opening 30 minutes in Perth, but could not hold it as the Force kept coming and eventually overran them. It was the kind of collapse that has followed them too often this season, and it cost them their ninth defeat of the year.
That pattern mattered because this was not a one-off slip. The Waratahs spent much of the season chasing games they had led, and Matt Philip said afterward that the same themes had resurfaced again. He pointed to repeated lapses and set-piece malfunctioning, saying the side had been up in a lot of previous games and let teams back in, and that there had been a bit of set-piece malfunctioning tonight, letting the Force get into their defensive zone.
The lineout told the same story. NSW lost seven of them, including five inside the Force 22, blunting scoring chances when the contest was there to be sealed. Joseph-Aukuso Suaalii returned from a hamstring injury for the match, but the comeback was not enough to change the result for a side that also finished the year under coach Dan McKellar, who is in the final year of his three-year contract.
The Force closed with seven wins, their most since 2014, while neither side reached the finals. For the Waratahs, the immediate concern is Gordon’s recovery and the longer-term question is whether a season defined by narrow failures, set-piece errors and a major injury forces a hard reset before next year begins.
