Ella-like Beale can lift the Wallabies
KURTLEY Beale has been lauded as the equal of any football athlete in Australia and ending two years of misery against the All Blacks tonight will be his spotlight with the fired-up Wallabies.
Former Wallabies coach Alan Jones said Beale and co were the last-stand crew to rescue rugby from a tortured season of subservience to the Kiwis and administrative blundering.
Jones believes the 13-point underdogs can topple Kieran Read’s world champions at Suncorp Stadium and end a seven-Test “Blackout” in Bledisloe Cup clashes.
Few moments in Beale’s 66-Test career have meant as much as running out in the first indigenous jersey worn by an Australian national team but that is only igniting the spark he must give this Test.
Jones scoffed at Bledisloe scars from thrashings and near-miss heartbreakers like Dunedin in August.
“The only scar is wrongly thinking that history has to
be honoured,” Jones said. “History is there to be stood on its head. Why can’t our team do that to an All Blacks XV ... we don’t have to honour the dictates of history that they always beat us.
“We can play with a certain freedom because the Bledisloe Cup stuff is over (2-0) and the pressure is on the Kiwis.”
Beale’s late diving try to put the Wallabies ahead in Dunedin would have entered folklore for the first Test win on Kiwi soil in 16 years but for the All Blacks’ mighty five-pass try at the death.
Jones feels the pall over this season has obscured a proper appreciation of Beale’s on-field maturity, his quicksilver darts, playmaking and sheer resilience to stall Sonny Bill Williams in the best Wallabies moments.
“He’s a freak, the modernday Mark Ella who can do everything,” Jones said of the centre.
“The public have thought they are better off watching Cam Smith and the beautiful rugby league of the Melbourne Storm, AFL or Timmy Cahill but the Wallabies are as good.
“This Test can be a proper appreciation.
“Beale is as good as any football athlete in the country bar none.”