No excuses: Why Georgia Test isn’t like previous Wallabies shocks
By Paul Cully
The rising tide of anxiety about the Wallabies’ Test against Georgia has been unmistakable this week.
The ghosts of previous losses to Samoa, Scotland and Italy have been keeping fans up at night, and Georgia’s excellent win in Japan last weekend certainly hasn’t soothed the nerves.
Joe Schmidt’s much-changed team also contains an element of risk, and we appear to have a perfect storm brewing that will inevitably lead to Wallabies fans drowning their familiar sorrows by Saturday evening.
That’s still a possibility – Georgia are a good side – but there are significant contextual differences to the shock losses above and factors that point to the bigger picture and place Schmidt’s selections in the acceptable risk category.
For a start, those Samoa and Scotland Tests were scheduling nightmares, and then-coach Robbie Deans didn’t want at least one of them (a Tuesday night in Newcastle, anyone?).
The Samoa Test happened shortly after the Reds’ victorious Super Rugby final, and most of the Reds were in no state to be considered for selection. Samoa, by the way, almost beat the Springboks at the subsequent World Cup – losing 13-5 – and had a number of players who would now be considered greats of Pasifika rugby.
The Italy loss was sandwiched between Tests in Dublin and Paris, and part of that moronic five-Test schedule in late 2022 that almost looked like it was setting Dave Rennie to fail. Despite the apparent outrage that followed, anyone with even a basic grasp of northern hemisphere rugby could see that Test had red flags all over it.
Fraser McReight is part of a core of players Joe Schmidt can build a team around.Credit: Getty Images
There is no comparison between that trio of losses and the Georgia fixture; in fact, Georgia have been more inconvenienced in their preparation, courtesy of that game in Japan last week.
The Wallabies’ selections this week also point to the emergence of a core of players that signal who Schmidt is going to base his team around. That’s Tom Wright, Hunter Paisami, Filipo Daugunu, Fraser McReight, Rob Valetini, Allan Ala’alatoa, Matt Faessler, Andrew Kellaway, Taniela Tupou, Jake Gordon and James Slipper.
That’s not set in stone – players such as Len Ikitau could quickly be added – and Noah Lolesio isn’t definitively included because the injury to Tom Lynagh has clouded the picture a bit in terms of that pecking order at No.10.
Eight of that core are included against Georgia, so it’s a far less experimental team than it looks at first glance, and as this column pointed out during Super Rugby, the gap in quality between players in lots of positions in Australia is so small that changes in selections do not automatically equate to a downgrade.
The third point about this Wallabies’ 23 is that it is a bit Bomb Squad-ish. Certainly it doesn’t go full noise on a 6-2 split like the Springboks, but it has two second-rowers on the bench: Jeremy Williams and Tom Hooper (even though both can cover the back row).
It’s a nod to Georgia’s expected strengths, but it’s also a recognition of what’s just over the horizon, where Test coaches must always be looking.
Three weeks after Georgia, the Wallabies host the Springboks in Brisbane, and everyone knows what they will bring. Therefore, I have zero issue with Schmidt changing it up this week, and by starting Isaac Kailea, Billy Pollard and Angus Blyth, he is giving them an opportunity to put themselves into the 23 against the Springboks in the knowledge that the Wallabies forwards may be needed for 30 minutes against the original Bomb Squad.
This is the acceptable level of risk referred to earlier, the alternative being picking a veteran such as Slipper to start, limiting Kailea’s minutes, and then telling him, “good luck son” when he is needed for the last 20-30 minutes against South Africa.
These subtleties will, of course, be lost if the Wallabies crash and burn against Georgia, a fiercely proud side with some genuine pace on the edge.
But if the core of Wallabies players noted above – complemented by players like Tate McDermott, who has now played a ton of Super Rugby and Tests – get the job done, and the younger players bank some experience in the process, it’ll be a bigger step forward than the scratchy win against Wales in Melbourne.
Watch Wallabies v Georgia and New Zealand v Fiji this weekend streaming ad free, live and on demand on the Home of Rugby, Stan Sport.