Super Rugby 2018: How ‘skinny’ Hegarty bumped Folau from No 1

Bryce Hegarty, the unobtrusive, unspectacular, dependable fullback could be the man to ignite the Waratahs’ entire game.

Former Melbourne Rebels playmaker Bryce Hegarty has made his presence felt at the Waratahs.

Who would have suspected that Bryce Hegarty, the unobtrusive, unspectacular, dependable fullback promoted last week to the NSW Super Rugby backline, could be the man to ignite the Waratahs’ entire game? Well, Israel Folau, for one.

Folau’s past 57 Tests have been at fullback but he saw what so many others had overlooked, the way that Hegarty bound the Waratahs backline together when he came off the bench, and he started lobbying for him to come into the starting side — even at the cost of the 15 jersey.

“He’s been really good, really good,” said Hegarty. “He was one of the ones behind the move because he was saying to me: You need to be the fullback. I really need to train with you at 15. When I came on at fullback in the first three games of the year (and Folau moved to the wing), we gelled really well together.”

Most saw Hegarty as a back-up player, a good quality replacement to send on late in the match, either at fullback or as a fill-in for Bernard Foley at five-eighth. That’s what he had also been in the three years he had spent with the Melbourne Rebels after leaving the Brisbane Broncos; a journeyman.

Only Hegarty disputed that common reading of him, he and his Waratahs head coach Daryl Gibson. “I certainly never saw it that way and Daryl had spoken to me about that over the last six months, urging me to really make that my position (fullback),’’ Hegarty said.

“I’m a confident guy and confident in myself and I’m confident I can be the best fullback in Australian rugby and that’s what I want to achieve. I want to have that position and play for Australia.

“Everyone would be silly not to have goals like that and I feel like I have good combinations with the people around me.”

At 184cm and 90kg, he is an undistinguished footballer, far less imposing than 193cm, 102kg Folau. Yet, however much Folau himself might have pushed for the move, Hegarty now wears the NSW fullback jersey which had had Folau’s name plastered all over the back of it.

“My body is good,” he said. “That’s always been a bit of an issue. I’ve always been a bit smaller, the skinny kid who didn’t really look like a rugby player, I suppose.

“I try to bring the playmaking and the decision-making and the speed, they’re the positives of my game and I try to bring them to the team as best I can. Hopefully, the rewards and the accolades will come.’’

Given that tonight’s match against the Brumbies at GIO Stadium in Canberra is only his second start of the season for the Tahs and that he’s barely into double figures for appearances during his three years in Sydney, it might seem a little presumptuous for him to even be thinking of Wallabies gold, until one takes into account that Foley, Folau and Kurtley Beale are close to Test certainties.

Then his “good combinations” with them come directly into the play. Could Michael Cheika see him as Gibson does, as someone to bind those talents together?

“That’s what I’m kind of hoping to be,” said the Brisbane-born 25-year-old.

“There are some great players in the team and that’s what I see my role as, connecting everyone and adding my spark when I see an opportunity, taking one of them with me and hopefully adding that cool head to the game.”

Perhaps it’s his legal training — he’s three quarters of the way through a law degree at QUT — or it may be the influence of his father, Steve, a former Manly-Warringah, Valleys and Queensland rugby league fullback, but he’s ­always been a clear-headed strategist on the rugby pitch.

“Dad used to always tell me that you make all your decisions with your head, so make sure it’s clear at all times,” Hegarty said.