Jordan Petaia ready for his Queensland Reds return

Nine games in two seasons. Well, eight and a bit. However many it is, Jordan Petaia has a lot of catching up to do

World Cup star Jordan Petaia is set to return for the Reds against the Brumbies. Picture: Brendan Hertel

Nine games in two seasons. Well, actually eight and a bit. However many it is, Jordan Petaia has a lot of catching up to do if he makes his return to the Queensland Reds against the Brumbies in the top of the table Super Rugby AU clash in Canberra on Saturday.

The eight games are made up of three Super Rugby fixtures, two club matches — one for his club Wests, the other for Sunnybank when Wests had the bye and he needed some football before he went off to the World Cup — and then the three Tests he played in the tournament in Japan, against Uruguay, Georgia and England. Oh, and the “bit’ was the 10 minutes or so he played against the Crusaders before injuring his ankle.

The injury accounted for most of 2019. This year it has been a shoulder reconstruction, following a training mishap in Argentina prior to the Reds-Jaguares match back in February. Even allowing for the lengthy COVID-19 shutdown, he still has missed 10 matches while in rehab, 31 in total over the two season.

Jordan Petaia has recovered from an ankle injury. Picture: Brendan Hertel

On one hand, that is a lot of football for anyone to miss. On the other, any 20-year-old who has played in a World Cup quarter-final and been, in the opinion of Australian selector Scott Johnson, the best Wallaby on the field, can reflect on achievements most players his age can only fantasise about.

Small wonder the Reds have missed him. Small wonder, too, that Queensland captain Liam Wright wasn’t going to jinx him by announcing he would be playing. Still, that almost certainly will be THE case, albeit off the bench.

If there was an upside to Petaia’s injury, it was that it gave former Melbourne Rebels player Hunter Paisami the chance to step out of the shadows. So emphatically did the understudy seize his moment that at one stage earlier this season, he was the player most likely to take over from Petaia in the No 13 jersey for the Wallabies.

Post-shutdown, Paisami has not quite returned to his early season form, though the brilliant line he ran against the Western Force to set up Jock Campbell’s try suggests he is rapidly getting back there. Now that spring has come early following the contract freeze, he looks like being the first player the Reds will sign in the thaw, possibly by the end of this week.

The Reds have also received another boost, with second-rower Angus Blyth likely to come back into the locking combination alongside Lukhan Salakai-Loto. After playing five backrowers in their forwards in the win over the Force, that would give Queensland a more orthodox pack against the ever-formidable Brumbies, with the main conjecture centring on whether Fraser McReight or part-time second-rower Angus Scott-Young would be used in the backrow. Loosehead Feao Foluaika, whose last outing before injury was against the Brumbies in January, is also expected to return to the 23.

Both sides are undefeated in what Wright described as Super Rugby 2.0 and certainly Brumbies’ Test loosehead Scott Sio is treating the match as the ultimate test he will face now at provincial level this year, which is a tribute both to Queensland and to his opposing prop, Taniela Tupou. Still, nothing changes as far as the Brumbies are concerned.

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“Going up against Taniela is as good as it gets,” Sio said. “He’s a bit of a specimen. He’s fast, he’s athletic, he’s big and he’s strong. But in any sport, winning is crucial. You’ve got to find a way to win.”

That certainly will apply in the other match on Friday night, between the Western Force and the Rebels at Leichhardt Oval. The Rebels might be treating it as just another match but for the Force, banished from Super Rugby in 2017, it has never been forgotten that they were culled so that the Rebels could be saved. The fact that their side and their coach, Dave Wessels, then decamped to Melbourne after they were axed will only add further spice to this contest.