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Don’t let the fact we’re only into the third week of Super Rugby fool you, this is a World Cup year and amateur selection is the name of the game. All. Year. Long.
And let’s be honest, we’re going to guess and speculate and overhype and go cold on players all year. One less than ideal game will see last week’s World Cup certainty dumped as easily and as ruthlessly as a primary school girlfriend.
Squads nominated with even just one player different to a squad you’ve named yourself will have been picked by people who ‘clearly don’t watch the game’, while squads favouring rookies will be the flavour one week, only to be replaced by ageing veterans the next. It’ll be Dad’s Army or boy bands and no grey areas in between.
And that’s without even mentioning the policy-shifters, who want to name players based overseas.
But if there’s one thing we like more than picking a squad, it’s naming a bolter. And being the first to name a certain left-field option carries a healthy degree of self-satisfaction with it, especially if he starts appearing more widely in other squads.
So let me name a few bolters myself, though I know I’m not the first to list these players. And in the event of form suddenly going south, I’ll obviously arrange the deletion of this article.
Lopeti Timani – Melbourne Rebels lock/backrower
I’m definitely not the first to name Timani, with several Roarers – Johnno, almost certainly – nominating him for ‘bolter’ status last week. At least I’ve waited until after he’d played a second game.
When I asked all those pre-season questions back in January, Timani was the last of eight players I named as having to fit into the Rebels backrow somewhere. It was an indication of how far down the pecking order I thought he was, despite having a quality National Rugby Championship season in 2014 for the Melbourne Rising.
And when he was named at lock for the opening round – the tighthead lock, no less – I assumed it had to be just a temporary thing and that someone, anyone would resume in the number five jersey the following week. I hadn’t seriously considered Timani as a genuine lock option.
But with his official figures of 193 centimetres and 123 kilograms – taller than Dave Dennis, shorter than Luke Jones and Rob Simmons, but heavier than all of them – Tony McGahan might just be onto something. He’s certainly playing tight enough and having the sort of impact you’d expect from your number five lock, but more importantly, he deserves to hold onto the spot on his current form.
With Scott Higginbotham fit and firing, the Rebels haven’t really lost anything with a slightly shorter lock in the tight five.
And though he might be a bit short to play lock at international level, his utility value becomes very handy if he can maintain the current form line. Certainly, his power carry game fits right in with the Michael Cheika blueprint, and already the Wallabies coach has said publicly that he wants to see more of Timani in 2015.
If the Rugby World Cup squad was being picked tomorrow, he’d have to be right in the mix.
Taqele Naiyaravoro – NSW Waratahs right winger
Big Taqele, what a beast. Softly spoken, but certainly not soft in traffic, Naiyaravoro has already shown enough in two games to know why Cheika was so keen on rushing him into the Waratahs set-up last season.
There’s something very enjoyable about playing large and fast humans on the wing. Indeed, most coaches at professional level will try it given the opportunity. And in Naiyaravoro, Australian rugby might have finally found the closest thing we’ve had to Nemani Nadolo or Julian Savea.
Though he’s still coming to grips with the nuances – he learnt the hard way that batting the ball dead in rugby has very different consequences than in league – he certainly knows his way to the try line, with two tries this season already.
The Wallabies coach certainly rates him, but the outcome of his rumoured move to Edinburgh for three years might perhaps determine whether he becomes a true Rugby World Cup bolter.
Scott Sio – ACT Brumbies loosehead prop
OK, so maybe not technically a bolter, given he’s already played five Tests, but Sio’s start to the season has been such that if a team was being picked tomorrow, it would be a hard task deciding who would start out of Sio and James Slipper.
Sio was superb in the scrum for his 62 minutes against the Chiefs, and he well and truly had Ben Tameifuna covered in the second half, despite giving up 15 kilograms. Around the ground, he was excellent as well.
There will be people wanting to switch him to tighthead, and yes, Ewen McKenzie did speak of ‘grooming’ him for the number three jersey last year, but he’ll absolutely stay at loosehead for the Brumbies, meaning there won’t be time to switch him over before the World Cup. And I don’t know that we should be looking at it anyway.
When all five Australian sides show significant issues once the bench props come on – as did the Wallabies in Europe last Spring – why wouldn’t we want to keep the best scrummaging looseheads on their strongest side? By all means, pull out all the stops in building the tighthead depth, but not at the cost of the loosehead stocks.
I just hope Sio can stay fit. He made his Test debut in the Sydney Bledisloe in 2013, played three more Tests that same year, and since has played only 28 minutes off the bench against France in Sydney last year when, rather surprisingly he wasn’t picked when fit and available. Hopefully that changes this year.