Brumbies welcome back David Pocock to take on Waratahs

Christian Lealiifano and David Pocock tonight step out for the Brumbies against their oldest of foes, the Waratahs.

Brumbies star David Pocock makes his return to Super Rugby tonight against the Waratahs. Picture: Kym Smith

They’ve played together since they were 15 but when Christian Lealiifano was diagnosed with leukemia in 2016 just as David Pocock was leaving for one last Wallabies campaign before heading off on his sabbatical, it seemed unlikely the Brumbies captain and vice-captain would ever play together again.

Pocock’s return to Canberra was always expected this year, even if he did report for duty in January with a degenerative knee injury that the club ultimately decided required surgery, but no one knew how Lealiifano would fare in his grim battle with cancer.

Mercifully, he beat the odds, recovering so quickly that he was able to play for Ulster in the Pro14 competition late last year before coming back to Canberra and the Brumbies.

Amazingly, Lealiifano played again for the Brumbies before Pocock did but tonight, in week seven of the Super Rugby season, the two Wallabies stalwarts will make their way on to the pitch at Canberra Stadium in the same team, doing battle with the first Australian side the Brumbies ever faced in Super Rugby, the Waratahs.

“I guess that’s what makes it pretty special to be able to run out with him again,” Lealiifano said yesterday.

“It’s going to be amazing and special, purely because we never thought we would get the opportunity again and that’s something I’m very grateful for.”

Lealiifano has good grounds to give thanks, so too Brumbies supporters, but there is little doubt that Pocock’s presence has forced the Waratahs to do a worrying extra level of preparation and planning. Combating him at the breakdown is always an issue but the word from his former Wallabies coach and Panasonic Wild Knights boss Robbie Deans is that while Pocock was in Japan he was developing his ball-running and linking game.

“I think you will be very excited by the way Pocock returns,” Deans said. “I think he’s going to be a key figure in Australian rugby over the next couple of years.”

While the Waratahs have been fixating on how to minimise the damage caused by Pocock at the breakdown tonight, the Brumbies have set their sights a little wider, aiming to attack the star-studded NSW backline through the midfield.

They have taken careful note that Curtis Rona has played most of his football this year on the wing but has been brought into outside centre to accommodate the huge presence of Taqele Naiyaravoro on the flank.

So while Brumbies Test centre Tevita Kuridrani was able to joke yesterday that he was happy to let Henry Speight handle Naiyaravoro, he himself would be kept busy attacking the Tahs down the 10-12-13 channel to test out the defence of Bernard Foley, Kurtley Beale and Rona.

It’s one of the oldest tricks in the book, targeting the opposition’s main attacking threats by taking the sting out of their legs by forcing them to do far more tackling than they are used to. Still, the trick is highly effective.

Kuridrani confessed he had started “really slowly” this season and was still trying to come to terms with head coach Dan McKellar’s tactical change, from a highly structured game to the time-honoured “play what’s in front of you” method that Deans used to teach just before the Brumbies centre came into the Wallabies.

“It’s new for everyone down here but we’ve been working on it and the boys are starting to understand the structure,” Kuridrani said.