Throwing young playmakers into the Bledisloe Cup cauldron in New Zealand has been fraught with danger for the Wallabies, but rookie five-eighth Carter Gorden looks set to get a second crack at the All Blacks in Dunedin.
In 2021 it was Noah Lolesio given the task of guiding the team in gold jerseys around at Eden Park and the result was a 57-22 smashing. The 23-year-old is now not even on the radar of Wallabies coach Eddie Jones.
But Jones looks set to put Gordon back in the No.10 jersey for his fourth Test cap despite a jittery first crack at the All Blacks in last weekend’s 38-7 thrashing at the MCG, where he struggled with his kicking particularly as the Australians persist with their building blocks approach to the World Cup.
“I think he was a bit disappointed in the way he played but he’s a young man and he’s had two or three caps,” Wallabies assistant coach Neil Hatley said of Gordon’s first-up effort.
“He’s getting better day by day, so we’ve got to keep putting him in those positions to help him find his feet and from a forward pack point of view we’ve got to give him better ball to work with.”
There’s a renewed sense of urgency for the Wallabies who have just 39 days until their opening World Cup clash with Georgia to turn around the form that has resulted in three-straight losses since Jones took the helm again.
“Patience is a priceless commodity in professional sport … but we understand that there’s a real urgency to it,” Hatley said.
“We’re not going to sit here and pretend that we’ve got all of the time in the world, as we don’t.
Critics are already circling Jones, who will field a team with at least 10 changes to the side that lost to the All Blacks at Eden Park less than 12 months ago.
That’s because 10 of the players who were in that 23-man team are not even in the current squad, a mix of injuries and non-selection.
But hooker David Porecki was adamant Jones’s capacity to bring new ideas, and new ways of thinking, would bear fruit for the building Wallabies.
“He knows that the nucleus of the team is the players and the players need to run the show, not literally, but if we are strongly connected as a team on and off the field, the performance will show that if we are still together as a team when it’s tough,” he said.
“He’s a fantastic operator and the boys have loved his interaction.
“He definitely challenges your way of thinking in a positive way that even for the older boys that haven’t been exposed to it … I thought I knew how a program is meant to be run and how things during the week are meant to be and he’s opened our eyes to different possibilities on how to do stuff that’s interesting
“I see it as positives for this group. I see it as positives in the teams that I’ll be in the future that you can implement … he always wants to continue to learn, continue to progress in his own career.”