Sydney's rollout was definitely not smooth! NSW spent a decade (late 90s - late 00s) trying to launch the "Tcard", after which time they had absolutely nothing to show except wasted $$ millions. Unlike Melbourne, Sydney still had ancient paper tickets well into the 2010s, which weren't even consistent across modes of transport (destination specific "one way / return from x to y" single use tickets for trains, zoned "travel ten" tickets for buses, etc), and which often had to be paid for with exact change in coins (and which often couldn't be purchased in advance). Opal only soft launched in 2012, it wasn't actually available on all modes of transport, for all ticket types, etc, until end of 2014.