Former Wallabies head coach Ewen McKenzie is far from confident that Australia can knock over the All Blacks in the second Bledisloe Cup Test match in Sydney.
Les Kiss has been forced to make several changes to his team following the defeat to New Zealand at Eden Park, as Len Ikitau has been ruled out with a concussion while fly-half Ben Donaldson sustained an injury in the build-up.
Those two setbacks have caused a shuffle in the backline, with Joseph-Aukuso Sua’ali’i shifting back into the centres after two starts on the wing, with Harry Potter adding to the run-on team. Declan Mederith takes over the number 10 jersey in Donaldson’s absence, while there is a potential debut among the replacements for Harry McLaughlin-Phillips.
While those changes have been forced, Kiss has made tactical alterations too. In the front-row, he has swapped Angus Bell and Aidan Ross around, the former now starting from the bench, whilst Brandon Paenga-Amosa drops out of the Wallabies‘ matchday 23 entirely as Josh Nasser gets the nod in the starting hooker role, with Billy Pollard added to the bench.
Les Kiss forced to make changes to his Wallabies’ team
Furthermore, Josh Canham is fit again and has been added to the replacements ahead of Lachlan Shaw while Carlo Tizzano and Kalani Thomas replace Nick Champion de Crespigny and Tate McDermott, respectively.
Speaking on the Rugby Unity podcast previewing the second Bledisloe Cup fixture, McKenzie said that while he understood that Kiss’ hand was forced with many of the alternations, he was still baffled by some of the selection calls.
“Les was enjoying the opportunity to sort of rotate players and whatever against Japan and Argentina. Well, it looks like that’s extended now to be able to rotate players against the All Blacks because you’d like to think you’re going in with a more settled combination, but his hands have been forced,” McKenzie began, reviewing the Wallabies’ team.
“He’s lost his midfield; Potter comes in, Suaalli has been at 13 for the last three years anyway. So it’s really the 10 position that’s unfortunate that they haven’t been able to get some consistency there with fitness, and there are half a dozen candidates now, but none of them with great experience or a lot of football behind them.”
Meredith will earn his fourth Test cap this weekend and is one of the 10 players who have started at fly-half for the Wallabies across the 80 Test matches since 2020. The Brumbies ace came off the bench in Auckland last weekend against the All Blacks and was underwhelming according to McKenzie, who hopes he can improve with a week’s worth of prep as the starting 10.
“So it’s really, let’s see what happens. Meredith wasn’t great last week, but hopefully this will be better with this week’s preparation as the starting guy; maybe it’ll be better for him.”
The Wallabies selections that have baffled Ewen McKenzie
The one alteration that has left McKenzie puzzled, though, is the switch at loosehead prop with Ross now starting ahead of Bell; while he understands the reasoning behind the ploy, he can’t see the real value in it.
“I don’t really understand the Bell-Ross swap, to be honest. You can say you’re trying to improve the bench, but I don’t really want to improve the start of the game,” he said before dissecting the rest of the forward pack selections.
“Nasser came on [last week], and he’s a very good ball carrier and a good tackler, but he carried the ball against New Zealand in the second half, and they smashed him backwards three times in a row.
“I’m expecting more there. He’s a tough player, but he’s not a heavyweight hooker, so I don’t know what happened to Brandon Paenga-Amosa – I would probably have had him.
“Pollard coming on the bench, he’s a good player, too. So I don’t mind him getting an opportunity. Canham coming back via the bench; it’s the same discussion we had with Barrett last week. If Canham is coming back from injury, you’d do better starting him and then seeing how far he goes.”
Another big selection call was handing Thomas a Bledisloe Cup debut from the bench ahead of McDermott.
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“Kalani Thomas is a different half-back option on the bench, not quite sure what’s changed there for McDermott,” the ex-Reds boss continued.
“If he is guilty of anything, it’s of being overenthusiastic in terms of he’s coming on and then trying to change the game, which is what he probably feels he’s meant to do but that’s a completely different sort of game when he comes on from when Lonergan’s there. There’s a bunch of changes that don’t instill confidence in me.
“I was looking through those effort statistics and there are a few guys that need to do better. No doubt about that.”
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