Wallabies team to play France in second Test announced

54?

Good call Rob. I've always liked Phipps' hustle n bustle game and I'm glad he got the call up on merit. I believe the Tah's have Andrew Mehrtens mentoring their back line. He is amongst the rugby world's great fly halves of all time, and he played a lot of rugby outside the worst passing half back in world rugby for lots of years for Canterbury, the Crusaders and the All Blacks. That guy like Phipps drew lots of criticism from all quarters of Kiwi fans, the worst passing half back since Sid Going, they said, but he went on to set record appearances at all levels. Not quite as great a player as Super Sid of old in my eyes, but Phipps has two great needling running All Blacks scrum halves to mould his game around. He draws the samr criticism as them, so he's in great company.

France have made ten changes to their starting XV for Saturday's second Test against Australia in Melbourne as skipper Thierry Dusautoir returns. France: 15 Brice Dulin, 14 Yoann Huget, 13 Mathieu Bastareaud, 12 Wesley Fofana, 11 Maxime Medard, 10 Rémi Talès , 9 Morgan Parra, 8 Damien Chouly, 7 Thierry Dusautoir, 6 Yannick Nyanga, 5 Yoann Maestri, 4 Alexandre Flanquart, 3 Rabah Slimani, 2 Guilhem Guirado, 1 Alexandre Menini. Replacements: 16 Brice Mach, 17 Thomas Domingo, 18 Nicolas Mas, 19 Bernard le Roux, 20 Louis Picamoles, 21 Antoine Burban, 22 Frédéric Michalak, 23 Remi Lamerat,

Surely an 8 is wide and loose (though not as much as a 7). For tight you have 6 and the locks..

I agree you need a jumper at 8 if Skelton is on the park. Being the large human Skelton is, he is not going to hit every ruck, or many rucks. I can see he brings allot of other attributes to the game and I think he will play well. My concern with Skelggin-botham is the pace of the game. Higginbotham is hardly a ruck monkey and neither is Skelton, this will weaken our breakdown work significantly compared to a Palu-Jones or McCalman-Carter combo. Of course our running game will improve tremendously but this will place huge pressure on Fardy, Hooper and Simmons to really dominate the breakdown.

I second that. Some players are simply hated right from the get go. You can add Dean Mumm to the list. Not my favourite player, maybe not good enough to play for the Wallabies but the guy was absolutely hated and all he did wrong was try his best as a player.

Rocket Rod in for two dad's! Hell, just pick the whole Reds team and be done with it. If they don't, they may lose the whole lot to Europe and as a Wallabies fan, I couldn't live with that. Damn Sydney based conspiracy mumble mumble REDS something.

Would like to have seen Will Skelton play this game.

Haha nice RobC. Fully agree, without Higgers (and Fardy) you can't play Skelton.

Two words. Mathieu Bastareaud. Beale would be trampled, over and over again. Toomua will bring his usual (not like last week) top notch defense. Sure he doesn't have Beale's "x factor" but his passing (watch the inside ball to set up the Cummins try), tactical kicks and runs make him the 12 we need in attack, let alone in defense. When the big QC is back and he needs a clever and dependable 12 outside him who offers good attacking, kicking and defensive options. The Reds have been searching for a Toomua for quite a few yrs. Link has found him.

I would argue that the French team of that fronted up in 54 weren't as strong as the 1815 side, and they were playing away and on a tricky pitch and snowman,, technically, the team that Ceasar whipped weren't French, that side not really coming together til the 5th century, at best could only be described as a regional selection

I think he is counting Alby Matthewson, which obviously is spurious.

Absolutely Combesy. His distribution was promising at the rebels but at the Tahs (particularly when things weren't going right) his passes have been his weakness. Phipps has other strengths but his passes are sub par at best.

ranked fourth? feel free to rank burgess a player who sits behind stirzaker (a rookie)

bennalong, it would do you some good to actually watch Phipps' passing game. I thought Phipps had hugely improved last year at the rebels and deserved contention at the wallabies. But this year his passing has only been of sound quality. He out of the 3 half backs in this squad has the worst pass. A lot of his passes are either above head or below knee height.

yeah squirrel something around here does smell...

cockadoodle do

General Vo Nguyen Giap gave em a wooping in 54 at Dien Bien Phu too.

Kicking? Since when does Phipps kick? He has the best forward back in front of him in the Australian conference and he still delivers slow ball.

Wow... McKenzie is either not wanting to risk Genia and Skelton or he just doesn't rate them right now.