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No, it isn’t an article about Michael Cheika’s volcanic eruptions in the coaching box. The topic is the inter-state balance of Wallaby selection in 2018.
In particular, whether players from Queensland can force the Australian head coach to re-evaluate his preference for players he knows from his time at the Waratahs.
Said preference is mostly legitimate, but due for its most searching revision, with both the Reds and the Rebels showing improvement this season.
Although New Zealand’s Svengali-like hold over Australian Super Rugby sides continued with a 36th consecutive win last weekend – by the Crusaders over the Brumbies in Canberra – Queensland did succeed in breaking the monopoly of the ‘top five’ by beating the Lions from South Africa at Suncorp Stadium.
This is perhaps the most significant result of the Australian domestic season so far. Although the Reds clearly caught their opponents with their pants down in the first half, and had to defend for their lives in the second, they ultimately hung on to win the game, and that is all that counts.
The side has obvious limitations in their play, but overall Brad Thorn and his coaches are doing a decent job of sewing together some coherence from probably the weakest talent base of any of the four Australian franchises.
Young talent grown from the grassroots, or transplanted through them is being given prolonged exposure at Super Rugby level at Ballymore because there is no other choice – especially after the exclusion of Quade Cooper and Karmichael Hunt.
On Saturday, 20-year-old back Hamish Stewart – who has come through via Toowoomba GS, Queensland schoolboys and Australian under-20s pathway – was handed his first start at #10 and he made a reasonable fist of it.
Reds’ debutant Hamish Stewart (PATRICK HAMILTON/AFP/Getty Images)
Later movers and transplants are also sticking, and growing.
Filipo Daugunu has taken his chance on the right wing with open arms. Part of the Fiji under-20s team at the 2015 World Cup, Daugunu was selected by sevens coach Ben Ryan for his squad for the Las Vegas and Vancouver tournaments the following year.
NRL agent Keith Sanga flew over to Suva to sign Daugunu, but once in Australia he quickly reached an even more important fork in the road. Initially on the radar of both the Brisbane Broncos and the Queensland Reds, it is the latter path he has chosen.
After playing a mere 19 games for his club Wests and Queensland Country in the NRC, Daugunu has shown the most impressive form of any Australian wing thus far in Super Rugby 2018. His speed and elusiveness are a constant threat in space, but it is his commitment to the nuts and bolts of the game (like chasing kicks and jackaling for the ball at breakdowns) which is probably even more significant at this stage of his career.
Number eight Caleb Timu faced the same crossroads. Originally he played under-20s league for the Broncos, but the Reds had been tracking him ever since his high school days and he was probably on Thorn’s radar when the former All Black took over the coaching reins for 2018.
Like Daugunu, Timu picked the Reds over the Broncos when given the choice.
Tight-head prop Taniela Tupou played his schoolboy rugby for Sacred Heart College in Auckland, but crucially declined to sign a loyalty agreement with NZRFU – even after they had changed their own rules to make him eligible for the national secondary schools team.
Tupou has now travelled the Queensland pathway via the Brothers Old Boys club and Queensland Country to Super Rugby, en route to what will surely be a long and notable career as a Wallaby international.
Taniela Tupou (Source: Queensland Reds)
On Saturday, the Reds’ players all proudly wore their club stockings in recognition of the value of those embryonic pathways. That, more than anything, epitomises the culture Thorn is trying to grow from the bottom up.
The skill-sets of players like Daugunu, Tupou and Timu are expanding quickly as their high-level experience, and exposure to elite coaching increases. Tupou won a couple of turnovers on the ground, while Timu took a lineout ball and also won one of the Lions’ throws in his short cameo on the field.
A more established ‘transplant’, whose skill-set is in a state of dynamic development, is centre Samu Kerevi. Despite having lived in Australia from the age of four, he only received his Australian citizenship in the summer of 2016, and was still representing Fiji at under-20 level as late as 2012 (alongside his brother, Joshua) before changing track, and following a route that has stopped at stations such as GPS Old Boys, Brisbane City and the Reds.
That carriage has now arrived at the terminus of the national team itself.
Although he started the season outside Duncan Paia’aua, at 13, Kerevi appears to have found a permanent home at inside centre, a position which probably also represents his future for the Wallabies.
Last year I wrote an article indicating how Kerevi could follow in the footsteps of All Black great Ma’a Nonu, another player who started at centre before moving one spot in to second five-eighth.
Nonu had to learn how to pass long, how to kick and how to make his feet work for him in heavy traffic in order to become the best All Black, and maybe the best of all time anywhere, in that position.
Kerevi has always had the good feet, as he proved once again in the game against the Lions:
The biggest area of improvement looks to be in the kicking game, where Samu Kerevi dropped two kicks very precisely into the right area to force short-range attacking opportunities from set-piece:
This first example occurred right at the beginning of the game, and set it up on the front foot for a low-scoring team like Queensland.
Kerevi appears at first receiver on the opposite side of the field to Stewart, with confidence evidently growing that he can fulfil such a role with his ability to run, pass and kick effectively.
Here he picks the space perfectly between fullback Andries Coetzee and wing Madosh Tambwe up in the line, so that Tambwe has to take the ball over the sideline (with the assistance of a strong chase from Daugunu).
Queensland promptly scored off a drive from the resulting line out (0:03 on the reel):
Kerevi’s kick was effectively worth five points, and that increased to 12 with another excellent effort just before the halftime hooter:
Again, Kerevi is trusted to be the first backs receiver, this time on the left of the field. The kick is measured to sit up just short of the Lions’ goalline, so that Ruan Combrinck has to take the ball across it and touch the ball down. The Reds scored from the ensuing scrum (1:26 on the reel).
There were no examples of Kerevi’s passing range during the game, but some question-marks still persist about his defence when the target comes at him with something other than straight-ahead power.
Kerevi was able to inflict damage whenever he was allowed to line up the ball-carrier from a distance:
In the first example, he sets up a turnover chance for Tupou and Daugunu, which was converted into a penalty. In the second, he stops Kwagga Smith in his tracks with a hold-up tackle.
Life instantly became more interesting when huge Rohan Janse van Rensburg entered the fray in the second half. Van Rensburg had been close to Springbok recognition before suffering a long-term injury, and he brings as much mega-tonnage as Kerevi himself on the carry:
A spin move before contact is enough to offset Kerevi as he sets up to make the tackle, and Van Rensburg was unlucky to be held up over the line on the play.
Kerevi also still has problems with a target running away from him in space:
Coetzee breaks free of Kerevi’s lunge at his ankles right at the death.
Summary
There are enough green shoots to suggest that the Reds’ grassroots policy will pay dividends in the long run. Hamish Stewart made a promising first start in the ten jersey, which may in turn allow Jono Lance to return to 15 and Aidan Toua to move out to his more natural home on the left wing. That would give Queensland better balance in the back-line.
Taniela Tupou, Caleb Timu and Filipo Daugunu all chose to follow the Queensland Rugby Union pathway when they had a choice to go to either league (Timu and Daugunu) or New Zealand (Tupou), and that too is a promising development on the micro-scale of Australian rugby.
In time, there is a chance that the ‘shout’ back to grassroots in the wearing of club stockings may acquire a real depth of meaning.
Daugunu, Tupou and Timu continue to improve their skill-sets markedly, and all three will come into Wallaby contention in June.
Samu Kerevi is also expanding his range of skills in the inside centre channel where he seems best suited. His kicking created two tries directly, even if some aspects of his defence remain questionable. His presence at 12 would give the Wallabies the extra ball-carrying presence they need if they go with two open-side flankers, and it would allow Kurtley Beale to drop into fullback.
Can Michael Cheika be persuaded to ‘see Red’ and select a large rump of Queenslanders against Ireland? It would be as much an investment in the future of Australian rugby in the long term, as a statement of intent to beat Ireland in the short.