Rennie has a healthy selection headache
History, we are told, is just one damned thing after another. And by way of rubbing it in, eminent thinkers argue that the damnedest things come at us in cycles. Which means there’s no escaping them, no matter how hard we try.
This abstruse topic may not be at the forefront of Eddie Jones’ mind just now. The England coach has other priorities, like coming to terms with the fact that Manu Tuilagi’s international career has been a red herring the size of a blue whale – but it will grab the Australian’s attention sooner or later. Australia will make sure of it.
At next year’s World Cup, the two countries could easily meet at the start of the knock-out stage. They will certainly be squaring up in Wallaby country next month, with Tests in Perth, Brisbane and Sydney – important fixtures marking a shifting of the gears on the road to the global gathering.
Just in case the “cycle of history” theory turns out to be on the money, it is worth noting that the Australians are “due”. Look at their World Cup record and the evidence stares you in the face: they go two good, one bad. As the last bad one was in 2019, when England smithereened them all over the island of Kyushu on quarter-final day...well, you get the point.
We can take it as read that the Wallabies will be better next time, partly because their state teams are on an upward curve and partly because their current boss, Dave Rennie, isn’t their old boss, Michael Cheika. A high-grade strategist and an intelligent selector, Rennie can go a whole month without turning a minor disagreement into a major crisis, which is three weeks and six days longer than the period popularly associated with his predecessor.
Better, then, but by how much? The answer to that question depends on who Rennie gets to pick. There are so many Australians playing professional rugby off-shore – over there in
France and Japan, over here in the United Kingdom and Ireland – they might as well be South Africans. The only difference being that under the Springbok system, coaches are always in a position to field their best combination when crunch time comes around.
Last week, this paper highlighted Will Skelton, the mountainous lock whose form for La Rochelle helped drive the west-coasters to a first European Champions Cup title. Perhaps less eye-catchingly, there were some interesting words from the England second-rower George Kruis, who has just finished a successful stint with Saitama Panasonic Wild Knights (“give us an S…”) in the Land of the Rising Sums.
Kruis mentioned two Australians, the centre Dylan Riley and the flanker Jack Cornelsen, who are no longer Australian in the rugby sense, having
“There are so many players Australia can pick off-shore, they may as well be South Africa”
declared for Japan. “Unbelievable players,” said George. “Australia will be gutted they are not available to them.”
Gutted indeed. Cornelsen’s father Greg is a hall-of-fame No 8 who once put four tries past the All Blacks to win a Bledisloe Cup match for his country. In Auckland. At Eden Park. There aren’t too many of those genes in the union pool, that’s for sure.
But what of all those other Australians, some of them very prominent indeed, who are stuck in a halfway house of the Wallaby authorities’ own construction? Rennie can pick from abroad, but he does not have the free hand that allowed Rassie Erasmus to piece together a Springbok squad good enough to win the world title three years ago.
Recent changes to selection policy mean only three players contracted abroad can represent Australia at next year’s global gathering.
Rennie has named his trio for the England series – Marika Koroibete, Samu Kerevi, Quade Cooper – but there are a lot more than three who could make a case for inclusion: Jack Maddocks, Joe Tomane and Curtis Roma among the backs; Sean McMahon, Liam Gill and Isa Naisarani in the loose forward department; any number of locks – Skelton in La Rochelle, the Arnold brothers, Richie and Rory, in Toulouse, Adam Coleman and Rob Simmons at London Irish, Sam Carter at Ulster.
If Rennie wants Skelton or McMahon, two of his current three will have to be ditched. That means the Wallabies will go into the World
Cup shy of the optimum, unless, by some clever jiggery-pokery, they tweak their own rules once again.
You will have noticed, by the way, that there isn’t a front-row unit amongst the long list of ex-pats, but what’s new? Australia haven’t had one of those since Richard Harry, Michael Foley and Andrew Blades peaked at the 1999 World Cup – the last time, coincidentally, that the Wallabies laid hands on the Webb Ellis Trophy.
Judging by the way the Queenslandbased Reds lost their Super Rugby quarter-final against the Crusaders at the scrum a week ago, set-piece frailties may make fools of the Wallabies once again.
Rennie is too smart a coach not to address the issue, but can he find a way round a much more threatening selection problem?