After Australia took a 22-3 lead into half-time Robert Barbieri went over for the Azzurri and despite being perfect with his previous five kicks Luciano Orquera sent his 79^th-minute effort wide.

Orquera had a fabulous day’s work and punished Australia’s many ruck infringements by scoring a couple of penalties in the second half to give him a personal tally of 14 points – and Brunel refused to criticise the fly-half for his miss.

“We can’t blame Luciano Orquera  because he had a great game,” said Brunel, who led Italy to a win over Scotland in this year's RBS 6 Nations. 

“What pleased me is that we showed the ambition to take on this team. We dominated the second half, that’s the satisfaction from the game.

“We still can’t maintain that level for an entire match, we did it for 65 minutes against the All Blacks, 45 minutes in this one but we are on the right track.

“We need to be more rigorous, we know that at this level errors at the key moments are costly.

“We aren’t there yet, which is perfectly normal, but there is a good spirit. We need to keep working hard to find that balance.”