If it turns out this is the last Australian team Michael Cheika ever picks, he is not going to be left wishing he had taken more risks. Cheika has selected 19-year-old Jordan Petaia at outside-centre. He is the youngest player to start there in a World Cup, for any team.
Petaia has played only 100 minutes of Test rugby, on the wing against Uruguay and Georgia. When he found out about it, Eddie Jones could not resist pointing out that the pressure could get to the kid. Cheika was having none it. ”I trust him infinitely,” he said. ”It’s going to be fast and aggressive but I know he will rise up to that challenge, I’ve seen it in him.”
It hasn’t been too fast or aggressive yet. Jones and Cheika, two old teammates and rivals, have been on their best behaviour. And Cheika was not in the mood to pick over Jones’s own selections. “I always say, but no one seems to believe me, my focus is always on Australia,” he said. Besides, he added: “Most of that stuff is, what’s the word, fake news? I mean, none of us is giving out our tactics in real life, know what I mean? We’d be mad if we did. So that stuff is irrelevant. Turn up. Be ready. Play what’s in front of you. Know what you want to get, and then go out there and get it. That’s it.”
It was left to Matt Toomua to stir things up a bit. Toomua spent three seasons at Leicester, and was delighted to have the chance to get stuck into his old teammates. “I know all of their weaknesses‚“ he joked. “I can list them now for you if you want: Manu Tuilagi is a terrible snooker player, George Ford never pays for a beer, Ben Youngs isn’t even the best rugby player in his own family, Jonny May is very weird, and Dan Cole doesn’t have a personality.”
Toomua, who is on the bench, is pretty familiar with Petaia too. Their families are so close they call themselves cousins. So he has been keeping an eye on him this week. “I’ve just trying to make it all as normal as possible for him,” Toomua said, “obviously there is a lot of noise, it’s a quarter-final, so it’s about trying to normalise the experience for him as much as possible, help keep him calm.”
It is not just the occasion from which he has been trying to protect him. Petaia has been in the news, too, because the Sydney Morning Herald reported last week that his mother went undercover to expose what was going on in Israel Folau’s family church. Helen Petaia said she used a fake name to swap emails with Folau’s cousin, and had even infiltrated their congregation, which she described as an “isolated hate group”. She passed on what she had learned to the papers. The upshot was that Folau’s cousin got sacked from his casual job at St Gregory’s Boarding school.
Folau is taking legal action against his former employers Rugby Australia and the NSW Waratahs for unfair dismissal, after he was sacked for posting social media messages that said “drunks, homosexuals, adulterers, liars, fornicators, thieves, atheists and idolaters” were going to hell. The Australian has since reported that his “former teammates” felt “utter disbelief” that Petaia had gone to such “extreme lengths” to get involved in the case. She has said she was only trying to protect her son and others from Folau’s influence.
K Beale; R Hodge, J Petaia, S Kerevi, M Koroibete; C Lealifano, W Genia; S Sio, T Latu, A Alaalatoa, I Rodda, R Arnold, D Pocock, M Hooper (capt), I Naisarani. Replacements: J Uelese, J Slipper, T Tupou, A Coleman, L Salakaia-Loto, N White, M Toomua, J O’Connor.
Cheika and his players did not want to go anywhere near the topic, which is understandable, and they denied that it had even come up in conversation. They are hoping that it will blow over when Jordan Petaia makes a few headlines of his own. He certainly has the talent to do it. “From the first weekend I saw him in training at Queensland I’ve thought he’s going to be one of the greats,” said Samu Kerevi, who starts inside him. He agrees with Toomua that 13 is Petaia’s best position. “It means we can get that ball in his hands a bit earlier and just let him go and do his thing.”
Picking Petaia was not the only surprise Cheika sprang. He has paired Will Genia and Christian Lealifano at half-back. It is the fifth change he has made there in five games. And he has brought Reece Hodge straight back in on the wing, too, after his ban. “They were was tight calls, but I felt I wasn’t going to lose either way,” Cheika said. He was not going to explain them. “I don’t want to give the reasons why, I don’t want to tell the other team what I’m going to do.” All you need to know, he said, is that the match is going to be won by the team ”who wants to attack more”. And that, he said, is where Australia have the edge. “It’s a battle of wills. But the fear inside us is dead. We’re not afraid to go there and get it. And that means it is going to be a great game.”
