Third time lucky: Alaalatoa out to shake off captaincy curse

Allan Alaalatoa will captain the Wallabies for the third time on Saturday hoping for better luck than on the previous two.

In November 2022, the Brumbies prop was handed the captaincy for the first time, leading an experimental Wallabies side to their first defeat by Italy. Nine months later, wearing the armband for the second time against the All Blacks at the MCG, he ruptured his Achilles in another defeat and duly missed the World Cup.

Against Georgia in Sydney, Alaalatoa is determined to lead the Wallabies to their third successive Test win and use his previous experiences with the armband to benefit a new-look squad.

“I think it’s just learning from those games and how I lived throughout that whole week [as captain] and things that I’ll probably try and redo,” Allalatoa said.

“You learn from those past experiences. We’re extremely grateful, we’ve got a wealth of knowledge in our coaching team, with coaches who have been a part of some world-class teams.

Allan Alaalatoa leaves the field at the MCG with a ruptured Achilles the last time he captained the Wallabies.Credit: Getty

“For myself to be captaining again, I’m always trying to learn and to grow, and I’m always trying to pick the brains of someone like [scrum coach Mike] Cron to see not only where you can grow as a player, but also as a leader as well – and he’s been massive.”

The Italy defeat particularly provides a sense of déjà vu for Alaalatoa. Former coach David Rennie needed to build the Wallabies’ squad depth, despite the risk of defeat to a motivated Italian team.

Similarly, Georgia have arrived in Australia desperate to send a message to World Rugby that they are worthy of a regular place at the table with tier one nations. What specific learnings does Allalatoa take from Florence ahead of Saturday?

“Probably how we addressed the whole week, making sure that we’re a bit harder on ourselves through our training to make sure that we’re prepared, most importantly, in between the ears,” Allalatoa said.

“Joe (Schmidt) has been massive on that throughout this week, and making sure that we’ve been hard on ourselves throughout the way we’re training and making sure that we’re learning from training because if we make those same errors that we did last week and the week before (against Wales) against Georgia, we’re going to pay.”

A specific error that Allalatoa and his pack have been determined to rectify has been their weak maul defence, after conceding two tries through it to Wales last week in Melbourne.

The Wallabies have scrutinised the maul all week in training and Allalatoa is confident it has finally been fixed.

“It was just probably a little bit of technique stuff and probably the positioning of where some of our players were in those moments and Wales made us pay as we all know,” Allalatoa said.

“The Georgians are very physical up front as we all know, especially in their set piece, so that’s been an area of improvement for us and as a forward pack, we’ve worked hard on that.”