Four uncapped players are included but there’s no room for Quade Cooper in the 32-man Wallabies squad for the spring tour of Japan and the United Kingdom.
Coach Michael Cheika offered little hope that 29-year Cooper can extend the international career that’s yielded 72 Test appearances and included two World Cup campaigns when he opted to tour without a specialist back up to five eighth Bernard Foley.
He will call on centre Kurtley Beale or equally versatile winger Reece Hodge to fill in there if needed.
“We’ve got Foley first up and then I’ve got Beale and Hodge,” said Cheika on Sunday.
“We’re feeling we’ve got enough coverage now.”
Uncapped locks Matt Philip (Western Force) and Blake Enever (Brumbies) received surprise tour call ups through strong NRC form after injuries bit deep, with Rory Arnold ruled out by a knee issue and Lukhan Tui (hamstring) not available for the first two Tests against Japan and Wales.
Starting blindside flanker Jack Dempsey, arguably find of the Wallabies’ season, is out and facing surgery after being injured in the win over the Barbarians in Sydney on Saturday.
“Jack has torn two tendons in his hamstring so he will have an operation to re-attach those and it’s a three to four month return so he will be back next year for Super Rugby,” said Cheika.
Prop Jerome Ainsley (ankle) was also ruled out.
Veteran Force backrower Ben McCalman, who missed almost all of the Super Rugby season with thumb and shoulder problems, was included after impressing in Saturday’s game.
The tour backline stocks include two uncapped players in Force centre Billy Meakes and Reds outside back Izaia Perese, who have both been with the Wallabies squad this year.
Travelling with the Wallabies as development players will be Melbourne Rebels’ back Jack Maddocks and Reds’ flanker Liam Wright.
Highly-regarded young Reds’ prop Taniela Tupou, who will shortly become qualified to play for Australia, will join the tour once his NRC commitments are finished.
The Wallabies depart for Yokohama on Tuesday night ahead of their first-ever Test match on Japanese soil.
The tour also includes Tests against Wales, England and Scotland.
“We’ll be looking to pick our best side for every Test of the tour. These are important matches and we want to be build a consistent, winning mindset and that’s something we want to pass onto next year’s team,” Cheika said.
Marto
Guest
Karl you have finally caught on. Chuckles Checka was biased towards his pets as soon as he took over the Wallabies.. He will go down as the most hated biased hopeless inept insipid Wallaby coach we have ever seen..
Karl Knuth
Guest
Your last paragraph hits the nail on the head. Cheika should not be the sole selector. Especially when he has shown such blind unbounding faith in his favourites. It is clear favouritism if not bias.
Train Without A Station
Guest
So anybody who is negative about the team that has lost more games than they've won since June 2016 is a disgrace?
Ken Catchpole's Other Leg
Guest
Agreed enough. I've also had enough of the 'proven failure' line. Cooper has not proved to be a 'failure' except to those that wish it for him. I am not bagging Bernard. Love his courage. Great utility player. Just not an all round 10. Cheika's carry on in the coaches box while Cooper's fate was in the balance was shameful partisanship from the national selector. He is no Rod MacQueen. Neither am I. But we need better behaviour from our sole national selector.
piru
Roar Rookie
I never used to be able to stand Cooper, but he seems to me to have matured a lot - he's easily Australia's best 10 at the moment. If he'd played in Dunedin and had the shots at goal that Foley had, they well might have won
KBG
Guest
well said! i know that this will largely divide opinions down predictable lines but imagine if cooper was from nsw and foley from qld. would foley have ever played a test? cooper's form may not be as thrilling as that magical season in 2011 but even the one game the other day showed he surely deserves a spot in the squad. remember, this is a squad where someone as incompetent as phibbs is a guaranteed selection. cooper's defence, so often criticised, was better than we have seen from foley. his kicking was infinitely superior. his vision is in another league. sure, he makes mistakes but he is trying things. foley just makes mistakes.
enoughisenough
Guest
I love the way someone always says "Cooper is a proven failure", and say it almost as if they believe it. Their man Foley is the proven failure, 50 tests, maybe 4 or 5 have been good performances, 30 odd have been very poor, and the rest a bare adequate. Even some of his "remembered performances" ie the Iceman winning the game against Scotland, only came down to the last kick because of Foleys errors. His win-loss is inferior to Coopers as a starter, and he's had many worse games than the worst Cooper has ever put in. So Foleys fans should be careful when they start throwing the "proven failure line" the truth might start to dawn on a few more people...
mtiger
Guest
Boom!
Jp
Guest
Woo just beat the all blacks, you sound like ireland, you beat a weak team by 5 points, that's the reality.
Vic rugby
Guest
But what about his xfactor??
MitchO
Guest
Hi EJ, I just wanted to say that Matt Philip had a pretty good super rugby season prior to the NRC stuff. I don't know Maddocks but wish him well. I like Rona and really like his offloading. He seems to have a great ability to get his arms free and the ball away. However I do feel for Banks because he looks like a proper rugby player. I question the value of Moore on the tour. I thought these tours are about the future not the past. Moore is not playing test rugby after the tour so is he really needed to mentor this team? Surely not. I said on the other post that TPN doesn't or shouldn't need mentoring and TPN and Kepu can mentor Uelese. Throw in a head coach, a forwards coach and experienced guys like Hooper (yes Hooper), McCalman and Genia - Moore should stay home and go to the beach with his kids. I like Moore. I think most rugby people do have a measure of respect for him but surely an NT trip is great time to blood two new hookers with TPN as the old head. Robertson doesn't convince me in two years time he should have put on 10kgs of muscle and 20kgs of smarts so I will have to defer to the coaching staff. Good to see Faulkner getting a go. At 28 ish now is his time to show us he is good enough. McCalman did not really impress me his last start at Wallaby 6 but with practice he will be a decent 6 and he is a decent albeit stopgap 8. He did play a big role in us beating Wales at the last RWC. Fingers crossed his shoulder hangs together. McCalman can show Hanigan and Philip how it is done. Coleman too for that matter.
ScrumJunkie
Guest
Not that good? He's played 72 tests. Even if he never plays another one I will remember his contribution fondly, one of the most entertaining players of all time. Great vision, great skills.
KBG
Guest
forgive me but i am honestly not sure if you are serious or sarcastic. hopefully the latter. foley is surely rugby's equivalent of the emperor's new clothes. had the iceman not kicked so woefully in the 2nd bledisloe, we might now hold that trophy. and he almost cost us the last game until he was finally removed as kicker (at which time, a mate said that there ends any reason for his existence). and this does not include so many missed tackles, poor options, knock ons and so forth (the one thing i do genuinely admire about foley is that no matter how many mistakes he makes - a lot - it never brings him down. he is always back in as though nothing has happened). granted i might have grown up during a time of riches - mclean, ella, lynagh, larkham et al - but have we ever been so bereft at fly half? every time i hear foley described as the iceman, i feel like vomiting. think 3 out of 10 in the last two bledisloe tests. think back to missing from near in front back against scotland. if you want an iceman, look at queensland's league star, thurston, with one arm hanging useless from a damaged shoulder, stepping up in the last seconds of orgin 2 to nail a kick from the sideline, on his wrong side, with 80,000 fans screaming for his blood to win the game and keep his side in the series. clearly, rugby's standards are lower than ever.
KBG
Guest
all of which makes some sense except that they are not taking anyone else to develop. what happens when cheika finally realises how utterly ordinary foley really is? so we have one very bog average fly half in a touring party of 32. plus some guys we could shoe-horn in, if needed. no one to develop. cooper's performance on the weekend was hardly anything like him at his best, and we may never see much better from him again, but it was surely at least as good as anything we've seen from foley this year. the fly half stocks are woefully thin.
Taylorman
Guest
Perhaps we need the final nail? ?
soapit
Guest
yep i didnt see the other article, probably didnt get passed the headline admittedly. agree with you all and twas. surely this was about 90% likely .
soapit
Guest
you take goose and you get maverick tho
Tah-Man
Roar Pro
He hasn’t been wanted by a few national coaches now and they’ve all given him a shot. Maybe they all know something that his dedicated cult on the roar don’t? Like maybe that he’s just not that good?
Tah-Man
Roar Pro
Cooper is a proven failure. He’s Rugby’s Mitchell Pearce and everyone knows it. The bloke can play half decent in a kick and giggle match like the Babas, but he’s not got the ingredients to mix it with the big boys. Ontop of all that, he’s in his final years now anyway, so why bother taking him when we could develop other players?
Train Without A Station
Guest
Do we need an article at all? Player who coach has not chosen in recent squads misses out on current squad. Not exactly news.