A resurgent Wallabies earned their first three-game winning streak since 2021 on Saturday with a hard-fought 36-28 victory over Wales, who extended their horror run to nine straight defeats.
Filipo Daugunu scored twice with Jake Gordon and Allan Alaalatoa also crossing on a wet and cold Melbourne night to back up their 25-16 triumph in Sydney a week ago.
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They took a 23-14 lead into the break and withstood intense second-half pressure to seal the series 2-0 and give new coach Joe Schmidt the second win of his tenure.
"It was tough, bit of relief at the end there," said Wallabies skipper James Slipper.
"It was scrappy from us for sure, it wasn't our best game, but we got the result. There's plenty to work on though."
Schmidt agreed there were as many negatives as positives.
"I'm relieved, but, boy, are we going to have to be a lot better than that," he said.
"We made the most of a few chances, which was great ... there's some promising things we can anchor on and some things that are massive work-ons for us.
"We got out to 17-0, like we did last week when we got out to 13-0, then we let them back in. It is frustrating when you give teams access back into the game."
Defeat piled more pain on Warren Gatland's team who are now one loss away from equalling Wales's all-time record of 10 consecutive defeats, which came in 2002 and 2003 under another New Zealander, Steve Hansen.
They have slumped to 11th in the world rankings, below Fiji and Italy.
Despite clawing back from 17-0 down after 25 minutes, they paid the price for conceding too many penalties and again lost the breakdown battle, sorely missing injured workhorse No.8 Aaron Wainwright.
"We never gave up, we had a never-say-die attitude," said Wales captain Dewi Lake.
"But obviously we are a young team and we don't have enough experience really at Test level. What matters is results and we are not giving ourselves those at the moment."
