13th January 2007, 8:45 WST
http://www.thewest.com.au/default.as...ontentID=18561
DAVE HUGHES

The Australian Rugby Union has backed down on its ban on Wallabies playing in pre-season matches, allowing the Western Force to select Matt Giteau and Nathan Sharpe for the game against Samoa at Members Equity Stadium on January 25.


The Force had been prepared to go against ARU wishes to keep certain World Cup players in cotton wool before the start of Super 14 but an injury to Chris Latham and subsequent spat between national coach John Connolly and Queensland counterpart Eddie Jones persuaded the ARU to compromise on the issue.

Key Wallabies will be allowed to play for 40 minutes in each team’s final trial match.

Reds full-back Latham inadvertently brought to a head the simmering conflict between national and State interests when he volunteered for last weekend’s contact session in which he injured a knee, sidelining him for the entire Super 14 campaign and putting in doubt his World Cup participation.

Force chief executive Peter O’Meara said yesterday the ARU asked for Sharpe and Giteau to be withheld from practice matches but coach John Mitchell had stood firm on his intention to play them against Samoa.

“We agreed to just about everything the ARU wanted regarding those who went on the tour of Europe last November but when they asked us to stand down certain players from all trial matches, we said ‘no’,” O’Meara revealed.

“John felt it was important the players in question go into Super 14 with at least some match conditioning, and the players themselves have asked to be selected in the squad of 22.”

The All Blacks controversially decided last year to sideline 22 players in their World Cup squad for the first seven weeks of Super 14, angering rights holder News Limited but giving three of the four Australian teams an easier passage.

The Force’s first match of the season will be at Subiaco Oval on February 2, against a Highlanders side without front-rowers Carl Hayman and Anton Oliver.

The Reds hit the fixturing jackpot with four matches against below-strength NZ teams and the Brumbies get the watered-down versions of the Blues, Chiefs and Hurricanes but the luckless Waratahs play all five trans-Tasman sides in the second half of the season.

The Force will have their first full-contact session tomorrow at Perry Lakes. It will be open to the public.