Wallabies hooker wants bragging rights
RUGBY UNION: Toppling England is niggling away at in-form Wallaby Tatafu Polota-Nau as “unfinished business” before he stops butting heads with prop Dan Cole and calls him a teammate.
Hooker Polota-Nau’s recent signing with powerful English club Leicester has inadvertently thrust him into Saturday’s Test battle at Twickenham against four of his clubmates-to-be.
Nowhere will the conflict be more intense than at scrum time where the Wallaby will be thumping into every clinch against Cole, the scarred 75-Test prop who was accused of illegal scrummaging a year ago by Australian coach Michael Cheika.
When the dust settles on a classic Test, Polota-Nau (pictured) will only be another week away from packing up his gold jersey and joining Cole, George Ford, Ben Youngs and Ellis Genge at Leicester for the rest of the English Premiership season.
“Definitely, there’ll be a lot of banter there,” he said.
“It’s a good Test coming up and I think we’ve got some unfinished business against them.”
Polota-Nau played in the ragged 3-0 series defeat sustained against Eddie Jones and his English team in Australia last year and was injured when more pain was inflicted in the 37-21 loss on the Wallabies’ last visit to Twickenham a year ago.
The English always fancy bullying the Wallabies pack and standing up to that ambition has not changed since Jones, as Australian coach, blooded Polota-Nau as a raw rookie off the bench at Twickenham in 2005.
“There is (that English mentality) but, to be honest, we don’t really take that into consideration because we’ve got our own standards to uphold,” Polota-Nau said.
“Obviously, last year we didn’t get the results we were after so hopefully we put the front-foot dominance instead of receiving it this time.
“More or less, it’s just having to put history in the past and making sure we continue the form we’re on.”
It’s not just four straight Test wins that has the veteran excited but “fond memories of our defence effort in the (2015) World Cup” when 14 Wallabies repelled the Welsh with great character for the 29-21 win in Cardiff last weekend.