The Wallabies play the All Blacks more than any other team. This is both a blessing, and a curse.
Australia and New Zealand have contested the Bledisloe Cup since 1931 but, over the course of the 21st century, the annual opportunity to tackle the most successful team in world rugby has looked more like a lesson than a match for Australia.
The All Blacks have held the trophy since 2003, but each year Australian rugby fans find reason to hope, and this time it comes in the form of youth and Mark Nawaqanitawase.
The 22-year-old Sydneysider moves like swiftly running water, and will start on the wing for the Wallabies on Saturday as part of a hugely inexperienced team. The stage couldn’t be any bigger: the MCG, and a projected crowd of 85,000.
Worryingly, the script of 2023 is reading like a Shakespearean tragedy, and we are yet to reach the third act of the Rugby World Cup in France.
After Eddie Jones’s glorious homecoming to coach Australia, the Wallabies were trounced by reigning world champions South Africa in Pretoria three weeks ago, before losing 31-34 to Argentina in Parramatta.
Traditionally slow starters in World Cup years, the All Blacks are coming in hot. They blew away Los Pumas in Mendoza, before defeating the Springboks two weeks ago in Auckland.
So many successive Bledisloe Cup failures must haunt senior Wallabies, but Nawaqanitawase is one of a promising group of young players who have never played the All Blacks, and seem unencumbered by the weight of history.
“Marky Mark”, as he is called by his teammates, was also part of a junior Wallabies team which won the Oceania Championship for the first time in 2019, defeating the Kiwis in the process.
“That was a very good New Zealand team we beat in 2019, and a lot of their guys are also debuting now,” says Jason Gilmore, who coached that junior Australian squad, and still coaches Nawaqanitawase at the Waratahs.
After bursting on to the Super Rugby scene in 2020, Nawaqanitawase found himself well down the pecking order at the start of 2022, but finished the season with two tries in a man-of-the-match performance for the Wallabies against Wales in Cardiff.
“He went back and played club footy for Eastwood, fought his way up, and when he got that opportunity, he was almost fearless,” Gilmore says.
That fearlessness has not gone unnoticed this week at Wallabies training in Melbourne, and is a trait shared by the other alumni of that junior Australian team in the current Wallabies squad.
Prop Angus Bell and lock Nick Frost have graduated to the starting side alongside Nawaqanitawase, while flanker Fraser McReight and utility back Ben Donaldson remain in the wider squad. Wallabies assistant coach Dan Palmer confirmed there hasn’t been a hint of impostor syndrome.
“They certainly don’t seem rattled by anything, they’re just tearing in, and I think it’s a massive factor [that they haven’t played the All Blacks],” Palmer says.
“Some of these guys, they may have played for 10 years against the All Blacks and won once. But the young guys, they’ve beaten New Zealand teams in Super Rugby, and at age grade level. There’s been a real fresh energy about them.”
Fly half Carter Gordon and flanker Tom Hooper are the other newbies facing the biggest challenge of their careers on Saturday. They’re the same age as Nawaqanitawase, but Jones is adamant they are ready, as he balances blooding young players before the World Cup with the biggest domestic fixture of the season.
“I don’t think I’ve ever picked a younger Test team,” Jones says. “I think we’ve got 290 caps in the starting XV. The All Blacks would have, I’d say, close to 1,000. We’ve got a young team out there, not much past history, just ready to play, and we want to play Australian rugby.”
Jones has spoken often of bringing the Wallabies back to this traditional “Australian structure” – tough, uncompromising forwards creating a platform for an inventive backline, with excellent core skills across the board.
The chronic ill-discipline which has plagued the Wallabies in recent times isn’t part of the plan, but in making two key plays which spurred a stirring comeback in Parramatta, Nawaqanitawase showed he knows when to pull the trigger.
“With those style of players, they’re not always going to pull it off,” Gilmore says. “They’re going to do four good things, then make one mistake, but you’ve got to be prepared for that if you want the four good things.”
Nawaqanitawase’s good things have so far been very good, but the young Wallabies will need more than fearlessness to defeat the All Blacks and create the opportunity of winning back the Bledisloe in Dunedin next week.
“I guess it’s about calculated risks,” Nawaqanitawase says. “But I definitely feel like [Jones] gives me the confidence to just go and play.
“I’m excited. It’s not every day you get to play the All Blacks, but it is just a game of footy, and we can’t let any way of thinking or reputation stop us.”
The naivety of youth. After two decades of defeat, it might just be the thing that works.
