'My dad doesn't want me to': Ex-Wallaby on the verge of playing against Australia

His dad may not be too happy – but former Wallabies’ flanker Jack Dempsey has switched rugby nations and is now in line to make his Test debut for Scotland against Australia.

“I know my dad doesn’t want me to bloody play for Scotland!” the 14-times capped Wallabies’ flanker had laughed earlier this year – but the tough back rower has decided to take the plunge anyway with the Scots under new international eligibility rules.

Dempsey’s grandfather on his mum’s side emigrated to Australia from Scotland, and the 28-year-old, who’s not played for the Wallabies since the 2019 World Cup, had been wrestling for a while with the idea of swapping allegiances.

But the former Waratahs’ forward’s decision was only revealed on Wednesday when Dempsey was named in the Scotland squad for the autumn internationals, the first of which will be against Australia on October 29.

It means he could line up for his debut against his old team in the same fixture which he watched last year from the Murrayfield stands with a pint of Guinness in his hands.

The Glasgow Warriors No.8, who moved to play in Scotland last year, last played for Australia on October 11, 2019 against Georgia in a World Cup group game.

So because he’s spent three years out of the international game, he’ll have served the necessary stand-down period stipulated in new World Rugby regulations and can transfer national allegiance because of a “a close and credible link via birthright” to the country to which he’s switching.

During the summer, Dempsey spoke to his family, and both Scottish and Australian rugby officials, about his future.

“I addressed the summer as a big thinking, brainstorming operation. I went back to my roots, my parents were over here, and I got to meet my extended family, the Scottish side,” Dempsey explained in an interview with the Scotsman in May.

“But I was also keeping an eye on both camps. There was the Argentina series and then Australia have been playing recently.

“Both teams have been playing promising rugby but in terms of my own situation I have pretty much made my mind up.”

Last year, when Gregor Townsend’s Scotland beat the Wallabies 15-13, Sydneysider Dempsey, who was named after the great American world heavyweight boxing champ, was an interested spectator.

“I went to the game and watched it live – sitting in the crowd having a few Guinnesses – and that was the first game I’d been to at Murrayfield when I wasn’t part of the squad,” explained Dempsey.

“My mum is obviously the one who’s on the Scottish side, so I’ll pick her brain about a few different things and what she’s thinking, because I know my dad doesn’t want me to bloody play for Scotland!”

His form for the Warriors has been so impressive, he had been on the radar of Townsend for a while as the coach rings the changes for a potential new era for the Scots.

He’s left star playmaker Finn Russell out of the squad for the Tests against Australia, Fiji, New Zealand and Argentina, has stripped Stuart Hogg of the captaincy and given the armband to flanker Jamie Ritchie.