Battered, bruised and largely embarrassed in the opening round of the Rugby Championship, the Wallabies and Pumas have precious little time to lick their wounds as they back up after a tough week of travel and lock horns in Sydney this weekend.
CommBank Stadium will play host to the first clash between Eddie Jones and Michael Cheika as Australian and Argentina coaches respectively, just eight months after the duo went head-to-head when Jones was coach of England.
It certainly has been a crazy old time in international rugby.
Read on as we break down some of the key talking points for Saturday night's Test.
WHAT EXACTLY IS THE WALLABY WAY?
When Jones returned as Wallabies coach in January in place of the sacked Dave Rennie, he made it clear he wanted Australia to play the "Australian way", describing it as smart rugby that utilised brains more than brawn.
When the Wallabies were at their best they were moving bigger teams, such as South Africa, about, Jones said, so too when they created space and attracted defenders as it allowed Australia to manipulate defensive lines rather than just power their way through them.
Against South Africa last week, Australia tried the kicking approach, a game plan that yielded few results after the opening quarter, as much because of its poor execution as anything. The Springboks made Australia pay as a result, turning field position they were often handed into scoreboard pressure and points.
Jones was always going to be racing the clock to create a style that suited the Wallabies playing cohort, and with the kicking approach missing the mark in Pretoria, Australian fans are right to ponder just what the "Australian way" might therefore be.
"We want to play each game on its merit, we want to find a Wallaby way of playing, which is finding a way to win," Jones explained on Thursday. "And for each game we'll try to work that out during the course of the game."
Under Rennie, the Wallabies were a team that showed they were capable of playing in a variety of fashions, and last year managed to maintain continuity despite a whopping injury list that was barely believable.
Previously under Cheika, the Wallabies wouldn't be shifted from an "attack at all costs" mindset that blew up spectacularly in a 2019 quarterfinal against England, ironically when Jones had his now former team humming.
That was the culmination of four years hard work with England and while they fell short of the ultimate prize two weeks later against South Africa, their semifinal win over the All Blacks remains one of the most complete performances against New Zealand the game has ever seen.
And so the Wallabies must quickly work out how it is they wish to play, or at least what Jones' version of the "Wallaby way" actually is, as there were certainly few rugby "smarts" displayed in Pretoria.
"I think there is a bit of both," replacement lock Matt Philip said when asked whether the players understood Jones' idea of what the "Wallaby way" entailed or if it was still to reveal itself.
"We're trying to go back to that Australian brand of running rugby, which is really exciting for us because that's what we grew up watching; it's a little bit like how they used to play in the early 2000s, I feel. So, we do know what it looks like but it's also learning how to do that on the run, so a bit of both I reckon."
As well as honing his side's game plan, Jones also knows how badly the Wallabies need a win this weekend.
"We want to fire up on Saturday, there's no excuse, we're trying to create a squad that's capable of winning the World Cup and that wins on Saturday," he said
SCRUM REDEMPTION A GOAL FOR BOTH TEAMS
The scoreboard was ugly enough for both the Wallabies and Pumas last week, but their respective forward packs will have felt greater embarrassment following their efforts at scrum time.
Argentina certainly did it tougher up front, the Pumas routinely marched backwards or forced into conceding a penalty, but the Wallabies were also outgunned by a Springboks pack that has just as much firepower on the bench as it does its run-on side.
Wallabies prop Allan Alaalatoa, who hadn't played since the penultimate round of Super Rugby, was put under huge pressure at tighthead, the Brumbies front-rower "pancaking" and penalised as a result on multiple occasions.
"I think consistency is probably the biggest one," Wallabies co-captain James Slipper said when asked what Australia needed to fix at scrum time. "If you look back at the game, there were scrums there that we did really well, so it's about doing that each scrum, each moment, we compete for every moment in the game.
"And the set-piece is such a big area of the game that you've got to get right, and it's going to be no different against the Argentinians, they've got a good scrum, a good set-piece, so we've just been working on being consistent, making sure each scrum is our best."
While the Wallabies have named the same starting front-row, they will have a new locking partnership behind it after Richie Arnold was brought in alongside Will Skelton.
With Arnold weighing in roughly nine kilos heavier than Nick Frost, who started in Pretoria in the No. 4 jersey, the Wallabies will field one of their heavier second-row combinations in recent times given Skelton tips the scales anywhere from 135-140kgs depending on the week.
"Stating the obvious, probably weight - there's plenty of that," Slipper said when asked what the new locking partnership would bring.
"With any second-rowers you look for size but also power and the intent to scrum, you've got to want to scrum, you've got to want to maul, and both of those second-rowers bring that in spades."
IT'S NOT TIME FOR GORDON, YET
The rise of Melbourne Rebels playmaker Carter Gordon has been one of the big positives in Australian rugby this season.
While the Rebels again missed a Super Rugby playoff berth, Gordon was their most consistent performer as he steered the team around, demonstrating a raft of attacking skills in the process, never shirking his defensive work at the same time.
That form resulted in a short cameo off the bench for his Test debut in Pretoria, an occasion he marked with a superb five-pointer that he also started with a classy grubber kick for Marika Koroibete.
But it wasn't enough to earn Gordon as start against the Pumas, Jones instead taking a softly-softly approach with the youngster while also recognising the need to get more minutes into Quade Cooper.
"Well that's probably a good description [work in progress]. What I don't want to do is throw him in, I want him to be ready to go, and he's a great young player," Jones said of Gordon.
"But he's a young kid at the moment, he's finding his feet; would Quade have played like that in the last 10 minutes when there was plenty of space and there was a bit of quick ball? So you've got to be careful of that, he's like a batsman coming in in the second innings when there's no result on and gets a quick 50 and they say 's---, he should be playing next Test'.
"So Quade, again, is coming back from a serious Achilles injury, so we want to give him some time, and Carter's coming through beautifully, I couldn't be happier with him. He's one out, one back, we're just holding him back at the moment, then we'll let him go when we get over the rise, we're not at the rise yet."
Whether Gordon gets beyond "the rise" before the World Cup remains to be seen, while Bernard Foley is in action on Friday for Australia A against Tonga in Nuku'alofa.
IT'S JONES V CHEIKA - EPISODE 9
As mentioned above, the craziness of world rugby has delivered us yet another showdown between former Randwick forwards Jones and Cheika.
Cheika, in his five-year tenure as Wallabies coach, lost all seven Tests against Jones' England, the quarterfinal defeat proving to be the final straw in his time at the helm of Australia.
Then, three years later, a breakthrough. Having assumed the head coaching role at Argentina after previously serving as a consultant, Cheika finally found the answer against Jones and England at Twickenham last November, notching an historic victory that would ultimately help put the final nail in his fellow Randwick man's six-year stint in London.
"I wouldn't say on the overall ledger that that's the case. I'm still hungry for a few more, don't worry," Cheika said after making four changes to the Pumas team that lost in Mendoza.
"Eddie's a quality coach and I think that's why Australia wanted to have him back because he can add a lot to the team here, and I'm sure he will.
"They're just in construction like where we're starting our season too, so he's a high quality coach and you always want to go up against high quality coaches just to test yourself."
Jones, meanwhile, preferred to focus on the story that was two blokes from the same "minor" Sydney club coaching at Test level, and how that reinforced the importance of club rugby's place in the Australian ecosystem.
"I was just thinking about it, and [my media manager] reminded me about how fantastic it is for a coach of Argentina and a coach of Australia to come out of the Shute Shield, out of a fairly minor club, Randwick, I'm just saying that because Slips is here, I don't want to come across too arrogant," he said with a grin as wide as Manly Beach, where the Wallabies are based this week.
"But it's fantastic, isn't it? If you think in the international game and you've got two coaches coming out of the local competition in Sydney, and it shows you the real value of club rugby, and Australian rugby has been based on club rugby. And the more we can do to engender strong club rugby the better."
Asked what he was expecting from Cheika's Argentina on this occasion, Jones predicted a far different style to the one that derailed England in November.
"I'm sure he'll play differently. When we played them last year at Twickenham they kicked the leather off the ball, I think they kicked it 40 times in the game, they basically didn't play anything over one phase," Jones said.
"So that's not Cheika rugby, is it? Cheik, when he was with Australia, and the boys talk about it, he wanted to run the ball and he said it all the time, he wanted to play an Australian style of rugby.
"So I think he's finding his feet with the Argentinian team, and the team they've picked doesn't look like a team that is going to kick the ball 40 times this week, so they might be a bit different."