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Wayne Smith | May 21, 2009
Article from: The Australian
ROCKY Elsom and Wycliff Palu won't be included and almost certainly neither will a third great Waratahs backrower, Phil Waugh, when the Wallabies squad to play the Barbarians, Italy and France next month is announced today.
Elsom, who on Saturday will spearhead the Leinster pack in the Heineken Cup final against the Leicester Tigers in Edinburgh, will return to Australia to play for the Barbarians against the Wallabies at the Sydney Football Stadium on June 6.
The expectation is that he will then recommit to the Wallabies, even if the Waratahs and Reds are still in a tug-of-war for his services.
The fact that he has not yet put pen to paper, even with the national body, has given rise to fears that Elsom is trying to have his cake and eat it too by resuming with the Wallabies but still maintaining his links with Leinster -- presumably at the expense of returning to Super rugby.
ARU sources insist that will not happen. If Elsom does not commit to playing with an Australian provincial side, he will not be selected in the Test squad.
Indeed, the ARU believes the rugged blindside flanker already has had the best of both hemispheres by being granted special exemption to go to Ireland for the past nine months yet still permitted to come into the Wallabies reckoning, despite not having played Super rugby this year.
Test number eight Palu, who was named on Tuesday night as the winner of the Matthew Burke Cup for the second year in succession after being voted the NSW Players' Player, has joined a mounting injury list and is likely to be out of football for up to a month after surgery on a broken bone in his hand.
Palu's injury gives his rival for the number eight gold jersey, Western Force livewire Richard Brown the jump on Test selection this season, providing he has overcome his own injury concerns with his ankle. It also means Brumbies captain Stephen Hoiles is in line to have his Wallabies career reactivated after last playing for Australia in the 2007 World Cup quarter-final loss to England in Marseilles.
With George Smith certain to be coach Robbie Deans' first-choice openside flanker, the question is whether Waugh or rising Western Force youngster David Pocock will be named as back-up.
There is a growing perception that Waugh, like Force captain Nathan Sharpe, is not a Deans-preferred player, but the reality is that he played in 12 of the Wallabies' 15 Tests last season, even if he only started in five of them.
Waratahs coach Chris Hickey has no doubt 77-Test veteran Waugh deserves to be chosen. "From game one of Super 14 to game 13, his form was consistently high and at times outstanding," Hickey said. "There are a lot of good number sevens around but if you pick on form you don't go too far wrong and Phil has been in great form."
Still, Pocock too has performed impressively and at the age of 21, he represents the future. Even if he is marginally behind 29-year-old Waugh at this stage of his career -- itself a debatable point -- it is fair to assume he will have surpassed him long before the 2011 World Cup.
Waugh could probably accept that the selectors have to make a hard call if only two opensiders are included, but he will be devastated if he misses the squad and Force backrower Matt Hodgson is included, as was rumoured yesterday.
Hodgson was the third Musketeer behind Brown and Pocock in the Force backrow this year, earning high praise for his incredible work-rate but even though he played at blindside flanker, he is very much a player in the Waugh mould and, a month short of his 27th birthday, not appreciably younger than the Waratahs captain.
It will be intriguing to see whether Brumbies tighthead Guy Shepherdson has done enough this season to earn his first call-up under Deans. Certainly he has not matched the dynamism of his front-row partner Ben Alexander -- what prop in the Super 14 has? -- but Shepherdson has put well behind him last season's indifferent form and turned the Brumbies scrum into something of a weapon.
Meanwhile, the Force's hopes of recruiting Stormers playmaker Peter Grant as a replacement for Brumbies-bound Matt Giteau have taken a hit following his selection in a Springbok training squad to play a Namibian XV in Windhoek on May 29.
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au...015651,00.html
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