“We can be Heroes, just for one day…” David Bowie’s anthem, it seems to me, is true of life and rugby Tests.

At Sydney, a wonderful Wallabies performance, one of their best Test displays in years, saw the team become national heroes. There were Australian expectations from the rugby public (and those of journalists like myself), raised to almost fever-pitch levels, for a successful 2015 Rugby World Cup tournament.

At Eden Park on Saturday, it was a case of another day another hero. This time all the applause and expectations of Rugby World Cup tournament glory were lavished on a rampant, vengeful All Blacks side that thumped the Wallabies 41-13.

In Sydney the All Blacks looked like a side whose best and most experienced players looked well past their glory days. Their listless, uninspired performances reminded of Disraeli’s harsh description of Gladstone’s old ministry as a “range of extinct volcanoes.”

Unfortunately for the Wallabies, Tony Woodcock, Owen Franks, Kieran Read, Dan Carter, and Conrad Smith exploded into some of their best play in years.

Faced with the possibility that his champions might have played the last of Test quality rugby, Steve Hansen kept his nerve. He coould have replaced Carter, who played like a cart-horse at Sydney, with, say, Colin Slade or Lima Sopoaga. But Carter was retained.

Smith, so uninspired in Sydney, was also retained. The props Woodcock and Franks, who were out-scrummed at Sydney were retained.

Victor Vito was brought in to give some needed pace to the loose forward trio.

Hansen announced his side a day before the Wallabies announcement, as if challenging Michael Cheika to repeat the two fetchers selection of Michael Hooper and David Pocock.

Cheika, in a series of changes that were seen as possible “masterstrokes”, dropped Pocock to the reserves and replaced him with Wycliff Palu, dropped Dean Mumm to the reserves and replaced him with Will Skelton and dropped Bernard Foley and replaced him with Quade Cooper.

The justification for these radical changes, according to Cheika, was that he wanted a squad that could provide interchangeable groupings of players.

There is an old theory that you don’t change a winning team. The changes from the winning Sydney side to the defeated team at Eden Park showed how the Wallaby coach virtually Cheika-mated this truism.

The issue now for him is whether he actually knows what his best team is. And if he does know what the best side is, whether he can resist changing it for the sake of just making a change.

The point here is that the Rugby World Cup tournament is invariably won by settled sides, in terms of selection. Graham Henry learnt this hard lesson in Rugby World Cup 2007 when he played a different side in every match of the tournament, right through to the losing quarter-final against France.

A well coached and selected Springboks side in the same tournament won the Webb Ellis trophy by playing the virtually the same players in all the matches.

We can get to specifics now for Cheika to ponder.

The hard truth number one is that Will Skelton is a “finisher” not a starter. I had argued earlier in the year that Skelton is the primary impact player the Wallabies and that, according to the former All Black and selector Earle Kirton, the best time to play your impact players is that the beginning of the Test.

But this Test exploded that theory, as far as Skelton starting.

Skelton is such a poor lineout exponent that he puts his side at a disadvantage earlier on in the Test. The Wallabies lost three lineouts while Skelton was on the field. This is not good enough. As well, the All Blacks were able to nullify the lineouts won by the Wallabies by double-teaming the two main jumpers.

Cheika was unrepentant about his selection of Skelton was a starter. This is dangerous, in my opinion. He told reporters: “I thought Skelton improved on his performance from last week.” Well, he did run a bit more purposefully.

But the key job of a tight forward is to ensure his pack wins possession of the ball. The Wallabies were beaten 55 per cent to 45 per cent in the possession contest by the All Blacks.

Given this amount of ball, although they kicked a lot (31 to 27), the All Blacks gained 588 metres with their running to the 250 metres by the Wallabies.

If Cheika wants a really big man in the second row, he might look at Kane Douglas. At least Douglas is a better lineout option than Skelton. The problem with him, though, is that his form in Ireland has been unconvincing and nowhere near the form he showed for the Waratahs in 2014.

It may well be that Cheika’s best second row is the Sydney combination of Dean Mumm and James Horwill.

Hard truth number two is that Wycliff Palu is finished as a starter for the Wallabies. Cheika conceded that “Cliff probably needs another run.” But the fact of the matter is that Pocock, at number 8, provides as much power with his running, much more finesse with his lineout plays, is far more combative and effective with his tackling and wins turnovers at the rucks, something that Palu rarely does.

A statistic from the Eden Park Test that completely reversed what happened at Sydney is that the All Blacks won six turnovers and the Wallabies only two. Those two turnovers came when Pocock was on the field.

Hard truth number three is that Nic White is not a starter. His core game is not good enough for sustained play at Test match levels. He was a large part of the Wallabies problem of not being able to get the ball across the advantage line with his extremely slow delivery. White spent an eternity bending down to get his hands near the ball.

He seemed to want to draw penalties from over-eager defenders rushing up offside. In effect, he allowed the All Blacks defensive line to set itself and sort out what type of play the Wallabies were thinking of launching and then get their systems ready to thwart.

This obsession of White for encouraging the forwards to hold the ball forever at the back led him to query referee Nigel Owens about his call for the Wallabies scrum to release the ball. White, like some of the commentators, did not seem to know that when the ball was at the back of the scrum and hookable that teams had five seconds to use-it or lose-it.

White also missed two tackles that led directly to two tries by the All Blacks. For all his faults, Nick Phipps is a much better defender than White. He also is quicker to get rid of the ball at the breakdown, although this judgment must be tempered with the truth that sometimes Phipps can pass the ball to no one in particular in his haste to get rid of it.

I would make the point, however, that Sir Ian McGeechan, reckons that White had an “outstanding game.” He didn’t offer much evidence for this statement. This doesn’t surprise me because, in my opinion, there is very little evidence to support his assertion.

Hard truth number four – and possibly the most controversial of the Zavos Truths – is that Quade Cooper should be finished as a Wallaby starter, and even as a reserve.

Cooper’s most enduring supporter in the media is the veteran rugby writer Wayne Smith. He made out a somewhat persuasive case in Saturday’s The Australian for Cooper by pointing out that when he started for the Wallabies they won 68 per cent of their Tests becoming “the most successful Wallaby today.”

It was Robbie Deans, according to Smith, who destroyed Cooper or allowed him to be destroyed by not encouraging him to make an apology to Richie McCaw during the 2011 Rugby World Cup tournament. This apology would have charmed New Zealanders and got them off Cooper’s back, Smith argued. It was Cooper’s inability to handle the incessant attacks on him from the New Zealand that led to his poor display in the 2011 Rugby World Cup semi-final.

My information is that the Cooper was told or encouraged to do just that but he disregarded this advice and continued to act like a brat which further incensed an already aroused New Zealand public. If this is true, and I believe it is, then Cooper behaved stupidly, in public and in private.

Another point made by Smith is that “the best the Wallaby backline has played in recent years was on the 2013 spring tour when Ewen Mckenzie selected Cooper, Matt Toomua and Tevita Kuridrani as his 10-12-13 combination. There’s the rationale.”

Well, here is another rationale. Cooper has not been the same player in terms of running the ball since he injured his leg badly in 2014. He no longer makes those dazzling breaks from out of defence he used to do. In fact, the number 10 making the brilliant breaks at Eden Park was Dan Carter who seemed to relish the contest with Cooper.

You can say this about Cooper, though, he does not lack in self-belief and confidence. His performance at Eden Park was described by Jamie Pandaram in The Sunday Telegraph as “a horror night.” And the UK Telegraph conceded: “The gamble to play Quade Cooper … backfired spectacularly.”

But Cooper told journalists: “I feel that I did well controlling the team around the field while I was there.”

He did kick two out of the two penalties he attempted. And there was one excellent flat pass to Tevita Kuridrani. But he also missed the catch on three high kicks that Dan Carter cleverly directed his way.

His own kicking was poor. He played, as usual, far too deep allowing the All Blacks defence to drive the Wallabies back, more often than not.

He ran across the field, making the attack too sideways and too easily nullified.

Then he had his usual brain explosion, this time on a defensive play when he attacked Aaron Smith’s head as the nippy halfback was tearing towards the posts to score a try. “I needed to make that tackle,” he said after the Test. “We scrambled back and I was penalised.”

Of course he was penalised, and given a yellow card which was the definitive turning point of the Test.

Nigel Owens had no hesitation in awarding a penalty try and the All Blacks momentum became unstoppable.

The curious and dangerous aspect of Cheika’s mucking around with a team that won a splendid victory at Sydney is the damage that has been done by the Eden Park thumping to the combination that won the first Bledisloe Cup Test.

The Eden Park Test saw a half-time scoreline of 13-6 in favour of the All Blacks. The home side was well on top, admittedly, but the points differential was small enough to allow the Wallabies some hope of staging their now famous last-20-minute onslaughts to carry off another victory.

Cheika made this point when summing up the Test: “I thought that was where we were at our best, at the start of the game. We were right in there, we gave away a try where we had a driving maul, it got collapsed down near their try line and we got ourselves isolated, turnved over, that was the only try of that period.”

And referring to his starting side, with Skelton, Palu, White and Cooper as newcomers, Cheika went on to say “I didn’t mind that combination.”

Oh dear! This suggests to me that Cheika is still wedded to the side, essentially, that started at Eden Park.

The alarming aspect of all of this is that the Wallabies lost the second half 28-7. During this half most of the stars of Sydney were on the field, for greater or lesser periods of play. But the pressure they had built in the first 40 minutes at Sydney, especially by Hooper and Pocock in the contact area, was not created at Eden Park.

Once the All Blacks get the confidence to run the ball and a bit of space, not even Hooper and Pocock, could slow down the onslaught.

There is one proviso to this. In the last 20 minutes, when the All Blacks started bringing on their reserves and allowing the two champions Richie McCaw and Conrad Smith to leave the field to well-deserved standing ovations from the spectators, the score line was 7-7.

Cheika needs to make some very hard decisions about the 31 players he will take to England. Does he need Drew Mitchell? If he takes two halfbacks and use Matt Giteau as the supersub, who are his halfbacks? Does he take only two halfbacks? If so, who are those halfbacks?

How much value will be get from Wycliff Palu? Does he need Scott Higginbotham as back-up for Scott Fardy?

What is the point of having Quade Cooper and Kurtley Beale in the same squad? What about using Adam Ashley-Cooper (the best of the Wallabies backs at Eden Park) and Tevita Kuridrani in the centres?

What Cheika did after Sydney has confused his selections going into the Rugby World Cup tournament. In hindsight, a convenient vision for a journalist has admittedly, he has stopped a terrific momentum that was created at Sydney and allowed the All Blacks to regain their momentum.

He Cheika-mated himself and the Wallabies, unfortunately, by being a bit too cavalier with the challenge of trying to defeat the All Blacks at Eden Park, a graveyard for even the eventual Rugby World Cup-winning 1991 and 1999 Wallabies.

But the great thing about Test rugby, as Steve Hansen pointed out at the media conference after the Eden Park Test, is that there is always another chance “to be a hero.”