Rugby Union: Dave Rennie could snap 59-year Wallabies custom

The Wallabies coach named 16 rookies in his squad of 44 and looks set to make an unprecedented move.

Dave Rennie is looking to the future with his first Wallabies squad. Picture: Getty Images

It hasn’t happened for 59 years and the last 39 skippers, but is it possible Dave Rennie will announce an uncapped player as Wallabies captain early next week?

Certainly Rennie has let the mystery run its full course, and then some. Even when he announced his squad of 44 on Sunday – which was the natural time to unveil his choice of captain – he left the issue of who will lead them bubbling away on the backburner.

“We want to wait until the team assembles and we want to tell the team as opposed to doing it through the media,” Rennie explained. “We’ll gather most of the squad in on Sunday. We should get the rest in on Monday and we’ll be able to announce it there. So we’ll let everyone know next week.”

All very matter-of-fact, though his delay left observers wondering what this meant for Michael Hooper. Captain for 46 of his 99 Tests, he was the man who led the Australian team into battle in its last Test, the World Cup quarter-final against England last October. Surely, they reasoned, if Hooper was to be retained as captain what purpose was served in dragging out the announcement?

Michael Hooper might not be kept on as Wallabies captain. Picture: Brett Costello

Rennie’s delay might not spell the end of the Hooper reign, but it might just signal the dawn of a new power-sharing arrangement. The Wallabies next month begin a run of eight Tests in 10 weeks. It will be even more demanding than a Rugby World Cup, where a captain can be asked to lead the side in seven Tests in seven weeks. Even though the Wallabies failed two matches short of reaching the final, Hooper played only in four of the five matches, sitting out the Georgia game.

So even for someone as nigh on indestructible as Hooper, there are limits, it seems. Given the arduous schedule that lies ahead, Rennie could lighten the load on Hooper – who has done nothing to warrant the captaincy being taken from him – by doing one of two things. He could name a couple of vice-captains or, perhaps more likely, he could opt for co-captains.

True, that can be messy. There is, however, a way of ensuring it does not become so. By making another openside flanker co-captain with him. Whenever Hooper is on the field, the co-captain would most likely be on the bench. And vice-versa. If perchance they both happen to be on the field at the same time, it will be the man named skipper for the day who would continue to lead.

There are two other contenders at openside flanker — Liam Wright, the Queensland captain, and Fraser McReight, the man who led the Junior Wallabies to the final of the Under 20 World Cup last year. Both have excellent credentials for leading the Wallabies. Indeed, Wright has shown glimpses of greatness in the way he has steered the young Queensland side into the Super Rugby AU final.

But, alas, there are doubts about his capacity to command a place in the Test starting side. Indeed, that applies pretty much across the other Super Rugby captains. Allan Alaalatoa of the Brumbies has Taniela Tupou laying siege to the tighthead position, while Melbourne Rebels captain Dane Haylett-Petty not only has a dodgy knee to worry about but also the likes of Tom Banks, Jack Maddocks and Rebels teammate Reece Hodge, all solid claimants to the fullback position.

As for Waratahs captain Rob Simmons, he certainly has the Test experience behind him – 100 caps, neat – but he has signed for London Irish at the end of this year. And the fact that Rennie is likely to bring a couple of locks home as his “coach’s picks” suggests he too could be struggling for a permanent place in the side.

Which brings us to McReight.

Australia’s original World Cup-winning coach Bob Dwyer always maintained that for a team to achieve real greatness, it needed five or so world-best players in the starting XV. Right at this moment, Australia has none. But it has potential.

Tupou is certainly standing on the brink of greatness. Everyone had a chuckle that a tighthead prop who had just gradually come out on top of a gritty Rebels scrum should even dare think about running that inside line in the 76th minute at Suncorp on Saturday night, let alone do it, let alone set up his winger with a pass that needed to be pinpoint accurate and was. Laugh we might, but what other prop in the world does that, has the skills and the motor to pull it off?

If Australia does achieve a world’s best player any time soon, he will be it. Jordan Petaia looks like being the second. The form he showed for the Wallabies at the World Cup gave the world a startling sample of what he is capable of. And while it may be that there would be a couple of All Blacks and Springboks centres who may rank ahead of him at the moment, he surely will overtake them if he maintains his current rate of improvement.

Fraser McReight.

The other contender is McReight. He is one of the 16 uncapped players named in the Wallabies squad and is utterly unproven at Test level. But there is no question he has already played a significant role in the Reds getting through to the Super Rugby AU grand final. Unlike Hooper he is a classic seven, as hard on the ball as ever Dave Pocock was. And unlike Pocock, who had to work hard to develop this area of his game, he is a fluent ballrunner and a natural link man.

Australia hasn’t had an uncapped captain since Ken Catchpole, against Fiji at the Brisbane Exhibition Grounds back in 1961. But right now, McReight shapes as the man who will lead Australia to the World Cup in France in 2023.

That’s pure conjecture, of course, but when Rennie named 16 rookies in his squad of 44, with another 13 players who have played 10 Tests or less, he was signalling nothing less than a new dawn for Australian rugby.

Hooper will be heading to Japan for his sabbatical in the first six months of next year but, meanwhile, he has an important role to play in the transition to a new captain.

Let’s get to it.