Carlo Tizzano has had a rollercoaster 2025 season, filled with the highest of highs and the lowest of lows, with the flanker ready to take his chance at a Wallaby call-up.
Having come back into the spotlight after winning the Rugby Australia Awards Super Rugby Player of the Year - the first Western Force player to do so.
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It was a deserved award, the Force star topping the Super Rugby try scorer tally with 13 meat pies.
“It means everything,” the Wallaby said at the Awards earlier this month.
“The big thing for me is being an example for younger Western Australians coming through, boys and girls, you know, let them know that this dream is definitely a dream you can live out in Western Australia. To be the first, that's a massive honour for me.
“I had a pretty good forward pack, that helped me out a fair bit with a couple more tries, and my other ones were about 20 centimetres out, so smarter not harder.
“But I think that's a really good representation of the Western Force forward pack really well. A really, really big shout out to those boys, because at the end of the day, those tries aren't happening without them.”
However, it was contrasted with a brutal British & Irish Lions campaign, the Force star copping a barrage of online abuse for the controversial end to the second Test in Melbourne.
Joe Schmidt would rest Tizzano for the first half of the Rugby Championship, but would utilise him off the bench in the final three Tests of the campaign, with him scoring a critical try at Eden Park.
With Tizzano now named to start against Japan and kick-off their Spring Tour, the 11-capped Wallaby is hungry to make it back into the Test arena.
“I'm always raring to go,” the loose forward added candidly.
I think we're really lucky, we actually have a lot of depth in the squad, and I'm really excited to see, to not only myself [to] get an opportunity, but other boys as well.
“There's a fair few boys who haven't got as much game time, and I know that they're going to do a really good job when they do get that opportunity.”
Tizzano will be looking to make the most of his opportunity, with his Wallaby teammate Fraser McReight resting in the stands.
However, the Force loose forward has memories of the intensity of the 2024 tour and plans to take the lessons learned to build on them in 2025.
“I just think more [of] the atmosphere, about Twickenham last year, I was in the crowd, and just that whole week, the lead up into that week, trying to prepare the boys was intense,” Tizzano added.
“It was awesome, and then the game itself was unbelievable, like that is the best atmosphere in a rugby game I've ever been a part of, playing or spectating, so I'm really excited for that.
“Fraser's an unbelievable athlete and rugby player, he's won this award I'm pretty sure the last two years in a row, so he's an unbelievable competitor.
“It's actually such a privilege to have that level of competition, because he does something, I want to do something, and vice versa, so I'm really privileged to have a guy like him in the same position as me.”
