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Mark Nawaqanitawase was so convinced he wouldn’t be required for the Wallabies’ Spring Tour this week he jumped on a plane to New Zealand to meet up with his partner.
The surprises have just kept coming for the former Sevens player this year and the latest one sums up where he felt he was in the Wallabies pecking order..
At the start of the Super Rugby season he was left out of a Waratahs trial match in Queensland with Darren Coleman having to deliver the brutal truth that, having failed to impress in two previous matches, Nawaqanitawase wasn’t in his top 35 players. He went back to club rugby before being called up for bench roles in round four and five, and then a start in round six. From there he nailed down his spot.
Coleman told Fox Sports that Nawaqanitawase wasn’t initially picked for the Australia A tour of Japan either – but it’s there where he forced his way into the squad for Europe through his attacking excellence, and the below-par display by Suliasi Vunivalu.
He had an excellent start to the first match in Japan, missed the second, and then leaped off the screen as Dave Rennie watched the third from home.
Mark Nawaqanitawase. (Photo by Julius Dimitaga)
Still, Nawaqanitawase came home and booked a flight to New Zealand and was in the air when Rennie’s touring team dropped.
“Funny story, I was off to New Zealand to go on holidays and I got off and I had missed a call from Dave Rennie,” Nawaqanitawase told reporters. “I tried giving him a call back – he didn’t pick up. So I was just waiting for him to call back.”
He spent a day with his partner in Auckland before having to come back and into Wallabies camp.
“I guess she was happy, but at the same time sad, so a few tears here and there,” he said.
It’s perhaps no surprise that Nawaqanitawase is playing down the significance of his call up but he adds “I’d love to get a run. It’d be pretty cool to get a jersey and run around with some of the boys.”
He says he benefits from staying calm and relaxed about his prospects.
“You play your best footy when you’re not worried about playing footy or getting picked, so I just tried to go out there and have some fun,” he said.
“I feel like I play my best footy when I’m having fun, and I guess things just kind of happen. The more you think about it, the worse the outcome will be.”
Coleman explained how he helped turn the winger’s season around from the lows of preseason by keeping it “super simple.”
“Just run hard and tackle hard and the rest will look after itself,” said Coleman. “That’s all I reviewed him on and all we spoke about – how hard he ran and how hard he tackled.
“The technicalities and the option taking and all that stuff, wasn’t a major priority because no matter how well he did in those aspects if he didn’t run hard and he didn’t tackle hard he was never going to get there.
“He’s always had footwork, but he was never really breaking tackles but now, you see that last try he set up for Australia A, he powered through contact.
“He’s got it him in, he just needed to unleash or unlock or understand how important that is in the game.
“I couldn’t be prouder of him because he’s a good kid and everyone loves him in the squad. Even though his on-field commitment and physicality was inconsistent prior he was never a drag to have around training like he was always a good positive team guy.”
While Nawaqanitawase’s attack was eye-catching in Japan, he acknowledges he has improvements to make in defence.
“That’s one area of my game that I still need to improve and I needed to improve to get the runs in the teams that I wanted,” he said.
“That’s just become a habit after each session with each team I go into, always making sure defence is the priority and working on the attack that comes with.”
As for a role model as a winger, Nawaqanitawase chose one of the Tahs’ greatest – Israel Folau.
“Izzy Folau was awesome to watch and I feel like I can kind of do some things that he did,” Nawaqanitawase said. “You grow up thinking oh, ‘I want to do that kind of stuff.’ And he was always good to watch and exciting, made the game enjoyable to watch and stuff like that. I want to do the same thing for people.”