With Noah Lolesio and Tom Lynagh out through injury and Ben Donaldson pulling up with a niggle on Thursday training in Johannesburg, Joe Schmidt will turn to the experience of James O’Connor to direct proceedings in Sunday's (AEST) Rugby Championship opener against the Springboks.
Despite the wait between Wallaby caps for the 35-year-old, Joe Schmidt backs the veteran to pull together an 80-minute performance after a strong season in Super Rugby, plus extended time in the Wallaby camp.
This comes over the alternative in Tane Edmed, who was named in the squad after playing for the Waratahs and the AUNZ XV against the British & Irish Lions.
“The good thing with James is he came in right at the start of the Lions series, so he had three weeks with us,” Schmidt explained to reporters at the team announcement on Thursday night.
“He’s had a period to probably just assimilate himself into the systems that we run and to start gaining confidence that he could run the game, and the confidence of the players that he was a guy to listen to. He's done that really well.
“Whereas Tane, because of Tom Lynagh's injury in that last Test against British & Irish Lions, Tame's only just joined us, really. He was on tour with us last year very briefly and made his test debut.
“We've got a fair bit of confidence in Tame as well, but he had a very disrupted Super Rugby, didn't play a massive amount of minutes and didn't play consistently in the Waratahs. We’re just trying to balance all those things at the moment.”
Schmidt will be counting on the former Red and Rebel to hit the ground running, with his solid form for the Crusaders helping contribute to a Super Rugby Pacific title earlier in the year.
It’s a transition that his teammate Tom Wright believes the veteran can do instantaneously, following his influence on the Wallaby camp.
“It's been a seamless transition for him in the respect that he makes no fuss about himself coming back in from a New Zealand Super Rugby side,” Wright explained.
“Obviously, [we were] really disappointed for ‘Turbo’ [Lynagh] to have copped that head knock and obviously been ruled out [but] bringing an older head back into the group, the eagerness to bring the guys that are around him… [during the Lions he was] feeding and giving everything he has to Turbo to be a better player before he had to miss out on this trip.
“[He] was ready to take his opportunity. He was, by no means, coming in as a coach, but was giving them everything he's sort of learned over the years. He's ready to hit the ground running this week for us, which is awesome.”
“We felt that James was best served and the team was best served by James getting enough reps during the week and having the time in the saddle,” Schmidt elaborated.
“We've obviously tracked him through the Super Rugby, playing for the Crusaders. I've seen him play for a number of years, probably because he's played for a number of years, a very long career, but hasn't played for the Wallabies for three years, so he's pretty excited about that opportunity.”
O’Connor’s inclusion is one of two fresh calls by Schmidt from the win over the Lions, with the 64-capped Wallaby likely set to play the full game after Donaldson was ruled out late on Thursday.
Schmidt will opt for a 6-2 bench to counteract the famous ‘bomb squad’, and expects a big shift from the men to support the side.
“Those guys who come into the game later, they become even more important,” Schmidt added.
“We're going to need the guys who come off the bench to add as much value as possible, because those guys who play the full 80 minutes, it's going to be a decent challenge.”
