Rugby Union: Rebels lock Matt Philip has a chance of a Wallabies recall

Rebels lock Matt Philip is off to France to reignite his Wallabies career, but he might be recalled to the Australian side before he goes.

Rebel Matt Philip has been bumped up the order of Wallabies second-row contenders

Melbourne Rebels lock Matt Philip has signed with the French Top 14 side Pau for the 2020-21 season in a bid to reignite his push for a place in the Wallabies, but it may be too late for that purpose. He might already have been recalled to the Australian side before he goes.

Philip has been out of the Wallabies since 2017 and, even with such players as Rory Arnold, Adam Coleman and Will Skelton having removed themselves from the selection picture by heading overseas, it seemed at the start of the year that he was still too far down the pecking order.

But dramatically, the selection roadblock for the second-row pairing was shattered when incumbent Test lock Izack Rodda and rising contender Harry Hockings, both previously of the Queensland Reds, opted out of Australian rugby to accept foreign contracts in May.

That has left Queensland’s Wallabies blindside flanker Lukhan Salakai-Loto, NSW captain Rob Simmons, the Brumbies’ injured Cadeyrn Neville and another young and fast-rising Red, Angus Blyth, as the likely contenders if new Wallabies coach Dave Rennie decides to hold fast to the Giteau Law and not call on any unqualified players.

Yet Philip always remained in the mix, and never more so than after his stirring game for the Rebels in their eight-point loss to the Brumbies in Canberra on Saturday. A repeat performance for Melbourne against the Reds at Brookvale Oval on Friday night – especially now that Blyth has passed all his HIA protocols and is set to be cleared to join Salakai-Loto in the Queensland second-row – could easily see Philip jump to the top of the selection pile.

Still, it will do him no harm as a rugby player to get all the experience he can while at Pau. “I am going for a short stint overseas, that’s locked in, but I’ll be available for Super Rugby and Test matches at the back end of this year,” Philip said. “I’m hoping to come back at the end of next year’s Super Rugby season and be available for next year’s Test matches.”

Blyth’s battle with Simmons in last Friday’s interstate match was expected to provide an early pointer to who might be leading the race to join Salakai-Loto in the Wallabies locking department this season but within 10 minutes of the start of the game he had taken a head knock and had to be replaced. Certainly the Reds lineout deteriorated badly following his departure but Queensland, after leading NSW throughout the first half then falling behind, steadied themselves at the death to eke out a six-point win on the strength of two James O’Connor penalties.

It all makes for a fascinating match-up with the Rebels, the only Australian Super Rugby side that Queensland has not faced this season.

One player who, unfortunately, knows all too much about head knocks, NSW second-rower Ned Hanigan, came through the brutal clash with Queensland knowing he had survived the worst. Hanigan missed all seven rounds of the abandoned Super Rugby competition at the start of the season because of niggling headaches, but his problems really can be traced back to a heavy knock he took in the second round of the 2019 competition against the Rebels.

So desperate was he to put his concussion problems behind him that he even consulted other players who had suffered similar problems, but in the end he realised he just couldn’t rush his recovery. Fortunately – if such a word applies – the coronavirus struck and he and the entire Waratahs side went into lockdown.

Happily, that all now seems behind him and Hanigan was conspicuous for putting his head in dark places during the Queensland match, showing no sign of concern for his safety.

“I’m a bit of an idiot like that anyway, throwing my head at it,” he said. “That’s probably why I was getting knocked out the first time. The first game back it’s not as familiar as what you are used to, because it has been so long, but it only really takes you about 20 minutes that you draw on a bit of experience and it comes back pretty quick.”

As he put it, there was “a bit of heat” as both the Reds and the Tahs threw everything into the contest. “There was a bit of lip from both sides. It was actually good to see that bit of passion back into that rivalry. Both teams were pretty up for it. It swung one way, then the other and in the end we were just on the wrong side of the ledger.”