Wallabies coach Joe Schmidt favours a domestic-based squad after considerable success with the All Blacks and Ireland, but does it still work for the Wallabies?
against South Africa last week in Brisbane that could have been worse, one of the most frequently asked questions in Australian rugby grew a little louder.
The loosening of eligibility criteria helped to bank the Springboks back-to-back World Cups in 2019 and 2023. The freedom to select the best players has also given South Africa perhaps the greatest depth chart in world rugby. Australian rugby also risks losing its best teenage talent to countries like France which have strict quotas to fill of nationally developed players who spent three years in an approved training centre before turning 21.
‘It’s not black and white, it’s more around how do we support Joe ... to maximise the performance of the Wallabies.’Mitchell now believes that Australian rugby is at a point where it must open its selection policy as wide as possible to compete with the best in the world. ”I also so think it’s a good thing for someone like Bell or someone in their younger years to go over and experience the set piece and the front-row type of work that they’re getting over there and then come back in the prime of their careers, rather than losing players in their prime, let them go and develop over there, and then they come back here in their prime.“
Waugh is closely supporting Schmidt to ensure that he has the best possible squad, but is also working with his coach’s former employer New Zealand Rugby . “Within the agreement, it’s important to have protections to ensure that our Super Rugby clubs are as strong as possible to compete as best we can against these other Super Rugby clubs, including Moana Pasifika and Fiji and so I think with their eligibility criteria, then we’ve got to be very conscious of any amendments that we do to our eligibility criteria.”
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