Northern Edition

Select Edition

Northern Northern
Southern Southern
Global Global
New Zealand New Zealand
France France

Forgotten Wallabies wing on Rennie's radar after Koroibete withdrawal

(Photo by Dan Mullan/Getty Images)

A former Wallabies wing could be in line to make his first test appearance in five years following the withdrawal of Marika Koroibete from Australia’s end-of-year tour squad.

ADVERTISEMENT

Wallabies head coach Dave Rennie announced on Sunday that Koroibete, and prop Pone Fa’amausili, won’t tour with the Australian national side to Japan, Scotland, England and Wales due to family reasons and a calf injury, respectively.

The loss of Koroibete is particularly significant given his status as one of the key Wallabies players, as well as the fact that he has now played his last test as an Australian-based player before joining the Saitama Wild Knights in Japan on a four-year deal.

Video Spacer

The Season – Brisbane Boys College | Episode 9 | Season 8

The new season arrives and the BBC team prepare for Round 1 with a rugby camp on the Sunshine Coast. A new roster and coaching team set the wheels in motion as excitement builds to the start of the Queensland GPS competition. A trial against Ipswich Grammar finalises thesquad and the countdown to the Premiership title defence begins in earnest.

Video Spacer

The Season – Brisbane Boys College | Episode 9 | Season 8

The new season arrives and the BBC team prepare for Round 1 with a rugby camp on the Sunshine Coast. A new roster and coaching team set the wheels in motion as excitement builds to the start of the Queensland GPS competition. A trial against Ipswich Grammar finalises thesquad and the countdown to the Premiership title defence begins in earnest.

However, Rugby Australia’s [RA’s] recent relaxation of the Giteau Law – which has enabled the return of Quade Cooper, Samu Kerevi, Sean McMahon, Will Skelton, Rory Arnold and Tolu Latu this season – could allow Koroibete, who has 42 test caps to his name, to be part of future Wallabies squads.

For the time being, though, Rennie will be forced to make do with Koroibete’s absence as he looks for replacements from within his current squad, which has now shrunk to 35 players.

“Marika didn’t play the last game [against Argentina],” Rennie said from his side’s training base in Oita on Sunday ahead of this weekend’s clash against Japan.

“Jordy [Jordan Petaia] got a start, it gave Tom Wright a sniff. Off the bench, he played really well, so it is a position we’ve got a bit of depth in.

ADVERTISEMENT

“Marika’s an unbelievable player, massive work ethic and physicality, so big shoes to fill, but we’ve got good depth there.”

That hasn’t stopped Rennie from searching abroad for potential replacements to fill the void left by the 29-year-old.

RA’s new-look eligibility rules could prove to be helpful in Rennie’s quest to bring in extra players overseas as he pointed to three-test Bristol Bears wing Luke Morahan as a possibility to link up with the Wallabies squad in the United Kingdom.

It has been almost a decade since Morahan, the former Reds and Western Force flyer, made his debut for the Wallabies in Scotland’s famous 9-6 victory over the Australians in Newcastle in 2012.

ADVERTISEMENT

Morahan went on to make a further two outings for the Wallabies, both of which came in 2016 against England in Melbourne and France in Paris.

The following year, the 31-year-old relocated to England and has gone on to establish himself as a regular at Bristol under the tutelage of Pat Lam.

Given his fleeting appearances in the test arena, his age and the conditions of the Giteau Law, a test rugby comeback may have seemed beyond the realm of possibility for Morahan, but that could very well be on the cards under the current circumstances.

Having already revealed in recent weeks that he has kept an eye on Morahan’s progress in English and European club rugby, Rennie again outlined that the veteran speedster remains a chance at being called into the squad.

Working in Morahan’s favour is the fact that Rennie has ruled calling up Australian-based players as he made note of his commitment to providing those he omitted from his touring squad a full Super Rugby pre-season to continue their development.

“Yeah, possibly,” Rennie said when asked if Morahan could join the squad following Saturday’s test against Japan.

“Obviously we were watching him, as we’ve been looking at lots of players around the globe, so we’ll see how we come out of this tour.

“We’ve made a real commitment to the guys who were left behind to go straight on leave and come back in November to have a decent off-season, and we’re very focused on maintaining that, which will mean we won’t look back at home to try and bring someone over.”

It wouldn’t be the first time Rennie has called on an exiled player for international duty this year, as he gave Cooper and McMahon their first tests in four years against the Springboks and Los Pumas, respectively, during the Rugby Championship.

Similarly, McMahon’s Suntory Sungoliath teammate Kerevi made his first test appearance since the 2019 World Cup against the All Blacks in Perth, a feat set to be matched by French-based pair Arnold and Latu on the upcoming tour.

Skelton, meanwhile, will join 38-year-old prop Greg Holmeswho became the oldest Australian international since World War Two against Los Pumas earlier this month – in making his first outing in test rugby since 2016 in the coming weeks.

Regardless of whether or not Morahan is called into the squad, Rennie maintained that a decision on who will replace Koroibete, or Fa’amausili, won’t be made until the Wallabies arrive in the UK.

ADVERTISEMENT

LIVE

{{item.title}}

Trending on RugbyPass

Comments

0 Comments
Be the first to comment...

Join free and tell us what you really think!

Sign up for free
ADVERTISEMENT

Latest Features

Comments on RugbyPass

J
JW 1 hour ago
Does South Africa have a future in European competition?

I rated Lowe well enough to be an AB. Remember we were picking the likes of George Bridge above such players so theres no disputing a lot of bad decisions have been made by those last two coaches. Does a team like the ABs need a finicky winger who you have to adapt and change a lot of your style with to get benefit from? No, not really. But he still would have been a basic improvement on players like even Savea at the tail of his career, Bridge, and could even have converted into the answer of replacing Beauden at the back. Instead we persisted with NMS, Naholo, Havili, Reece, all players we would have cared even less about losing and all because Rieko had Lowe's number 11 jersey nailed down.


He was of course only 23 when he decided to leave, it was back in the beggining of the period they had started retaining players (from 2018 onwards I think, they came out saying theyre going to be more aggressive at some point). So he might, all of them, only just missed out.


The main point that Ed made is that situations like Lowe's, Aki's, JGP's, aren't going to happen in future. That's a bit of a "NZ" only problem, because those players need to reach such a high standard to be chosen by the All Blacks, were as a country like Ireland wants them a lot earlier like that. This is basically the 'ready in 3 years' concept Ireland relied on, versus the '5 years and they've left' concept' were that player is now ready to be chosen by the All Blacks (given a contract to play Super, ala SBW, and hopefully Manu).


The 'mercenary' thing that will take longer to expire, and which I was referring to, is the grandparents rule. The new kids coming through now aren't going to have as many gp born overseas, so the amount of players that can leave with a prospect of International rugby offer are going to drop dramatically at some point. All these kiwi fellas playing for a PI, is going to stop sadly.


The new era problem that will replace those old concerns is now French and Japanese clubs (doing the same as NRL teams have done for decades by) picking kids out of school. The problem here is not so much a national identity one, than it is a farm system where 9 in 10 players are left with nothing. A stunted education and no support in a foreign country (well they'll get kicked out of those countries were they don't in Australia).


It's the same sort of situation were NZ would be the big guy, but there weren't many downsides with it. The only one I can think was brought up but a poster on this site, I can't recall who it was, but he seemed to know a lot of kids coming from the Islands weren't really given the capability to fly back home during school xms holidays etc. That is probably something that should be fixed by the union. Otherwise getting someone like Fakatava over here for his last year of school definitely results in NZ being able to pick the cherries off the top but it also allows that player to develop and be able to represent Tonga and under age and possibly even later in his career. Where as a kid being taken from NZ is arguably going to be worse off in every respect other than perhaps money. Not going to develop as a person, not going to develop as a player as much, so I have a lotof sympathy for NZs case that I don't include them in that group but I certainly see where you're coming from and it encourages other countries to think they can do the same while not realising they're making a much worse experience/situation.

144 Go to comments
LONG READ
LONG READ Does South Africa have a future in European competition? Does South Africa have a future in European competition?
Search