“WE’RE going to win.”

They were the bold words uttered three times in the aftermath of the Wallabies’ error riddled loss to the Springboks by vice-captain Will Genia.

And they drew a scathing response from former Wallabies captain Phil Kearns, who said the current team needed to stop the chat and let their actions do the talking.

“The thing that annoyed me pre-match was just going out and saying ‘we’re going to win’,” Kearns said on Fox Sports following the Wallabies’ incredible 45-34 win over Argentina on Sunday (AEDT).

“To start with, incredibly arrogant, but that is just ammunition for your opposition and Argentina showed how fired up they were when they came out.

“Shut up!

“Just get on and do your job and shut up.”

But Wallabies coach Michael Cheika disagreed, stating that the so called arrogance within the team had been misconstrued.

“I heard Kearnsy talk about that and he said ‘stay humble’,” Cheika told the Fox Rugby Podcast.

“We’ve got nothing to be humble about.

“If you’ve won the World Cup, Bledisloe Cup or Rugby Championship you can be humble — we haven’t won any of those things.

“We’ve got nothing to be humble about.

“We’ve got to be grounded and understand what we need to start to get some of those things so we can be humble.

“I think that’s been misconstrued as players wanting to put on a positive front and show positivity to the fans, and to their own team, as opposed to some form of arrogance because we’re nowhere near anything like that.

“I think that’s been totally misconstrued.”

Cheika’s interesting take on humility came after the Wallabies coach made the blunt admission that his players were struggling to maintain self belief and have been paralysed by a fear of failure throughout 2018.

“I’m not really up on social media or media, I don’t really read a lot of it, but players do, you know, they read all that stuff,” Cheika said.

“It gets in their head and it hasn’t been going great and so they don’t think they’re great and then as soon as something happens in the game, negative, which it did early on, you start to get a bit narrow in your view and you start to fear failing — as opposed to going out there to do what you need to do to perform.

“And then as a consequence, win.”

Cheika frankly stated that a lack of confidence had been an issue in Australian rugby since he returned to the Waratahs in 2013.

Australian teams lost 40 straight games in Super Rugby against New Zealand opposition before NSW snapped the horror streak this season while the Bledisloe Cup drought is at 16 years and counting.

“It’s about... making sure that physically you’re ready, you’ve done the work and you’re ready and — I know this sounds crazy — but you’re ready to fail,” Cheika said.

“You’ve prepared so well that if failure happens there’s nothing you can do about it.

“So you’re not worried about it, you’re not scared of it.”

Australia’s come from behind win over Argentina saw Cheika’s side avoid the Rugby Championship wooden spoon despite winning just two of their six Tests.

The tough campaign came after the Wallabies suffered a heartbreaking series loss to Ireland in June after taking a 1-0 lead in Brisbane.

Cheika said closing the gap between the Wallabies’ best and worst performances needed to be addressed if they were to climb back up the world rankings from their historic low of No 7.

“We’ve got to have real consistency in everything we do and doing everything at a consistently good level,” Cheika said.

“It hasn’t been a habit for us, whether it be at Super Rugby level, for the last few years, or international level as well.

“We’ve got to build that habit and habits aren’t always the easiest thing to do.”

Cheika added that changes needed to be made to improve the side’s consistency, but stopped short of putting his finger on what they would be.