Next Gen Wallabies sense Farrell's Lions are there for the taking

The Guardian

7 hours ago

Australian rugby liked what it saw – and didn't see – last week, as the British & Irish Lions got their 2025 tour off to a losing start against Argentina. Sure, it was the opening game of a 10-match odyssey and Andy Farrell's men were lacking cohesion after only two weeks in camp. But for a young Wallabies side rising fast under their head coach, Joe Schmidt, it put blood in the water and proved the tourists are very beatable.
Schmidt's 6-7 record in his first season in charge of the Wallabies might not cost Lions fans much sleep but Farrell, his former second‑in‑command at Ireland, will sniff the seeds of ambush. In their last start in November, the Wallabies led Ireland 13-5 only to lose 22-19. Schmidt won't let that happen again. The 2025 Wallabies these Lions face are light years from the lambs Eddie Jones led to slaughter at the 2023 World Cup in France.
When Schmidt accepted the hospital pass of coaching the ninth-ranked Wallabies in 2024, his mission was to resurrect a two-time world champion side at its lowest ebb, sliding into social irrelevance and debt, its players easy poachings for rugby league. He has done it, capping 19 rookies in 2024 while winning loyalty from the old guard, redressing a sin Jones fatally made by axing the talismanic captain Michael Hooper for the World Cup. That faith is being returned. With Laurie Fischer, the scrum guru Mike Cron and the former Lion Geoff Parling in the brains trust, Australia's skill levels have had a sharp uptick.
In 2024 the Wallabies halved errors (one in 142 passes, down from 67 under Jones), won more rucks and conceded seven points fewer per game. They defended better, and scored more often, dazzling their enemies with blitzkrieg attack from all quarters. It's why local hopes are high and more than 500,000 Lions tickets have been sold.
Australia will be rolling out Generation Next against Farrell's men. Last week Schmidt named a squad of young, hungry mongrels for the Wallabies' tune-up Test with Fiji on 6 July. Most of the 36 players picked there will form the core of his Lion tamers. These are the men who conquered England, smashed Wales and ran Ireland close, all while looking for key pieces in the puzzle they aim to complete by 2027 when the World Cup rolls back on to Australian soil. It's part of a predicted 'golden era' for Australian rugby that also includes a 2029 Women's World Cup and the Brisbane Olympic Games in 2032.
The Lions will glimpse this future when they face Western Force in Perth on Saturday and meet a gold standard bearer for Schmidt's new breed. Nick Champion de Crespigny's form for the Force won a bolter spot in Schmidt's squad. Yet he is merely a feral deputy to a likely starting back row of Fraser McReight, the captain, Harry Wilson, and Rob Valetini.
Lions fans will gleefully recall Kurtley Beale slipping over and missing a conversion that might have stolen the first Test of the 2013 series won by the Lions 23-21. The 95-Test livewire was later busted at 3am in a burger shack with teammate James O'Connor, four days before sealing a 16-15 second Test win. Beale, now 36, will face the Lions for the Force. But neither he nor O'Connor, 34, made this Wallaby squad. Instead, Noah Lolesio, Ben Donaldson and Tom Lynagh are Schmidt's playmakers.
'[They] are all quality,' the former Wallaby fly‑half Quade Cooper wrote recently for News Corp. '[But] they're all cut from similar cloth: smart, skilled, steady. In a high-stakes series, where unpredictability and adaptability are key, you need variety. It's about building a squad with strategic depth … and forging a long-lost identity.'
With his eye for a gap and flair for niggle, Cooper cut through to the achilles of Schmidt's Australia. That Wallabies identity – typically, tough running rugby played with flair and guile – is yet to be established by a backline conductor at 10 a la Mark Ella, Stephen Larkham or Beale. Jones had anointed the cavalier Carter Gordon, then 22, at the 2023 World Cup but that disaster so traumatised 'Flash' that he signed with the National Rugby League soon afterward.
Instead, Australia's most likely mojo man is Joseph-Aukuso Suaalii, the 21-year-old prodigy once lost to the NRL but now re-signed at great expense to front Australia's charge to the home 2027 World Cup. Suaalii's spectacular gifts were on show in November against England at Twickenham where his power in contact and dexterity in the air resulted in four offloads, two try‑assists and three won kick-offs in a famous 42-37 victory – a dervish debut to match that of the vaunted Henry Pollock.
Alas, Kid Dynamite hasn't played since May owing to a broken jaw ('I broke the Ferrari!' his teammate Andrew Kellaway said after the two collided) and is being fed back to true fighting weight by his mum and six sisters. An NRL revenge attack has also deprived Schmidt of the gamebreaking 11-Test winger Mark Nawaqanitawase. Will the coach risk a pocket rocket backline to outzip the 100kg Tommy Freeman, Duhan van der Merwe, Bundee Aki and Sione Tuipulotu?
After losing against an understrength Los Pumas, Farrell has his own worries. The first Test is only three weeks away. Both coaches have five games to survive and thrive as Wallabies and Lions camps galvanise players, coaches, chieftains, media and fans against a common foe. Every day they must build combinations and confidence, studying, irking and outwitting the other while probing, even creating, weaknesses. On 19 July in Brisbane, for the first time in 12 years, all stars will align, then collide.
Joe Schmidt's stiffened stance on squad members playing for their states against the Lions is based on his need to have his men battle-fit for the Test against Fiji, a revenge mission after the Flying Fijians' 22-15 win at the 2023 World Cup – their first against Australia in 69 years.
The Test will be played in Newcastle, burial place of Robert Seddon, now recognised as the first captain of the British & Irish Lions and leader of their inaugural 1888 tour. Seddon sadly drowned in the Hunter River after overturning a rowboat. A teammate recalled him setting out 'with no hat upon his head and a cigarette in his mouth in the best of health and spirits … the very impersonation of happiness and contentment'.
Despite being midway into the 54-game tour – during which the Lions played 19 games of Australian rules football as well as rugby – the side honoured Bob Seddon as 'tour captain' to the end. Likewise the 2013 Lions captain Sam Warburton, who made a pilgrimage to Seddon's grave that year to thank the Maitland rugby club, whose players still care for the gravesite, an act the team manager Andy Irvine said 'demonstrated the spirit of rugby'.
In his 101-Test career with 64 tries, David Campese won plenty of games for the Wallabies by attacking from anywhere on the field, with chip'n'chase kicks, no-look passes or his famous goose-step. The phrase 'too easy Campese' is still common in Australia. Now 62 and a pundit, Campo is still famous for his attack. After the defeat against Los Pumas, Campo wrote that the Lions 'will be toast Down Under' and will 'lose 3-0' unless they fix their aerial game, competition at the breakdown and find an 'enforcer'.
Doubtless, Lions fans will remind Campo of his role in their series victory in 1989. With Australia ahead 12-9 in the third and deciding Test, Campese's loose pass attacking from his own goal gifted Ieuan Evans the match-winning, series-stealing try. 'The idea was perfectly sound, the execution went wrong,' Campo later reflected. Although quickly forgiven by fans and teammates, the woebegone winger fled the post-match function … only to be booked by police for speeding on his way home.
Robert Kitson expects a stimulating series after the Lions touched down in Australia aiming to revive the spirit of Sydney.
Andy Farrell does have some injury concerns, with doubts over the Ireland duo of Jamison Gibson-Park and Hugo Keenan.
The former Lions prop Ian McLauchlan died last week at the age of 83. He captained Scotland 19 times between 1969 and 1979.
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