Georgia props ought to be on ARU minds

Georgia props ought to be on ARU minds
Bret Harris | July 11, 2008

FORMER World Cup winning assistant coach Tim Lane has urged the ARU to consider recruiting powerful young Georgian front-rowers to improve Australia's scrum.

Lane, who will coach Georgia for the next four years, was amazed by the depth of talent in the front row in Georgia.

"I go to a lot of the club games over there and there are under-16 and -18 props who are huge, enormous kids ... very, very strong," said Lane, who assisted coach Rod McQueen when Australia won the 1999 World Cup.

"Props are not a problem for us in Georgia. We could probably go down to our 10th or 12th prop and play them in our Six Nations tournament and they'd be very strong.

"I said to (former ARU high performance manager) Pat Howard, you should come over and look at these kids because it's a great opportunity for a kid to come to a country like Australia and add value to where we have struggled a little bit in certain areas.

'It has had such a proud tradition of scrummagers.

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"We are going to play the Western Force. Hopefully, the Reds and Australia A," Lane said.

Awesome!

Let's leave their juniors alone though; by all means let them play in Australia but it will be sad if we start poaching them for the Wallabies like we used to do with the Argentineans.