Dave Rennie hopes to Wallabies throw selection net into deeper waters

Wallabies coach Dave Rennie says he would have no problems selecting a player based with a New Zealand or Japanese club in Super Rugby.

Incoming Wallabies coach Dave Rennie. Picture: AAP

Incoming Wallabies coach Dave Rennie has cleared the way for a loosening of Australia’s eligibility rules by declaring he would have no problems selecting a player based with a New Zealand or Japanese club in Super Rugby.

At present, only those playing with Australian franchises are eligible for Test football — aside from those foreign-based players who qualify under the Giteau Law — but Rennie on Monday broadened the scope to take in any player involved in Super Rugby.

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“Whether there is any possibility of Japanese clubs to link in with our competition next year … we certainly have players playing in that competition and whether that would make them eligible for selection because you can compare apples with apples,” Rennie said. “My view is that if we had a Wallaby playing for the Blues, for example, we get to see him playing and playing against the best Aussies, then from a selection point of view it makes sense that you could do that.”

But Rennie didn’t see the exemption extending beyond Super Rugby.

“I’m not a big fan of trying to pluck guys out of France. We have no influence over how they train and how they prepare. Having been up there (as coach of the Glasgow Warriors) for the past three years I have a pretty good idea of how a lot of those French clubs train. Best-case scenario is that we have them here (in Australia) helping young players ­develop.”

Certainly there is no appetite within Rugby Australia for abandoning the Giteau Law. Even new chairman Hamish McLennan, while declaring himself “a free marketer at heart”, believes that throwing open the selection door to anyone playing anywhere in the world — effectively the South African model — would lead to an exodus of Australian players.

Widening the selection criteria to include all footballers playing Super Rugby would give the Wallabies access to players such as Jermaine Ainsley, the three-Test prop from Melbourne Rebels who has signed with the Highlanders next year.

Yet its main advantage could be if it nudges New Zealand into also agreeing to select its Test players from within the entire Super Rugby competition, not just from the Kiwi sides.

It has become a regular complaint from NZ that Australia does not have the depth of players to be able to run five Super Rugby sides, but those reservations could evaporate if New Zealand is able to send its excess playing strength to Australian clubs without jeopardising their hopes of becoming All Blacks.

It still has not been decided what selection committee Australia will resort to now that the triumvirate of Michael Cheika, Scott Johnson and Michael O’Connor has been dissolved following the World Cup. For all but his last year as Wallabies coach, Cheika was effectively a sole selector but Rennie does not see himself assuming such power.

“I have no issues with Jonno (Johnson) being part of that process,” Rennie said. “I think our ability to justify our selections to someone slightly removed from the group is not a bad thing. But how I’ve done it in the past, it’s a real group decision.

“As coaches, we all have an idea of the squad that we want and we get clarity around that and there will be the odd position that we might not agree on so we might sleep on it. But I am happy for Jonno to be part of that process.”

Rennie described success and how to define it as “the million-dollar question” but certainly he insists he is deeply unhappy with Australia’s current standing of seventh in the world. “We need to be better than that,” he said.

Yet it is entirely possible that before the Wallabies (81.90 points) start climbing the rankings, they could fall even further down the ladder, to below Scotland (80.60) and possibly even Japan (79.28). After all, they are likely to play no other Test side this year except the All Blacks, a side Cheika’s Australian team only beat three times in 14 meetings in the past five years.

Rennie’s side is scheduled to play them no less than four times this year — perhaps exclusively — and rare are the examples of any team improving its world rankings when faced with such a schedule.

Still, that is not how he looks at it. “I reckon the more times you play the All Blacks the better because we haven’t had a lot of success against them over the last 15 years and we have to put ourselves under pressure against the best.

“From a conditioning point of view, we have tried to work the Super Rugby sides to get the boys a lot fitter, to get them back on their feet quicker, back in the game, both in attack and defence because that’s a massive part of it.

“We reckon if we can work hard for each other and get a wall in front of teams, we can defend for long periods and hopefully create turnovers and score off those.”