Robbie Deans selections will fire up Lote Tuqiri
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By Wayne Smith June 06, 2009
Was it only last December that New Zealand Herald columnist, Gregor Paul, selected Lote Tuqiri as a member of his World XV?
Even allowing for the fact that rugby columnists - and I'm speaking here from hair-tearing experience - are occasionally driven to such desperate, meaningless exercises because no player, coach or administrator has had the decency to commit an atrocity worth pontificating on - it nonetheless is no small achievement for any Australian to end up on any Kiwi's best-of-anything list.
And the fact is that Tuqiri's inclusion in Paul's team raised no more eyebrows than did, say, Welsh wizard Shane Williams' selection on the other wing or Dan Carter's inclusion at five-eighth or Rocky Elsom's nomination at blindside flanker.
Sure, there were other worthy wingers Paul could have picked but no one was howling down his choice of the swaggering, dreadlocked Australian.
It's probably timely to recount Paul's reasoning: "Once he (Tuqiri) finally made up his mind to commit to the 15-man code, he slowly gained in form and confidence, peaking this year with some devastating performances. He's a huge man, invariably beats the first two tackles and has improved his positional play and defensive work."
Of course, that was last December and if seven days is a lifetime in politics, seven months is an eternity in rugby.
Well, it probably seemed like an eternity to Tuqiri, marooned as he was on the end of a lacklustre New South Wales backline throughout the Super 14, scoring just two tries, a paltry return for the leading try-scorer in Waratahs history.
Over on the other wing, Lachie Turner was scoring six and while it's madness to draw too many conclusions from such stats, they're not entirely without relevance either.
Tuqiri didn't turn in a bad Super 14 campaign by any means, but neither did he sizzle.
He was - how shall I say this? - solid.
Aside from that blooper tape moment when he lost the ball in the act of scoring and when he was run down by the Crusaders' Colin Slade - raising new doubts about his speed - he was never really embarrassed.
But neither did he embarrass too many rivals. He certainly wasn't beating the first two tackles with quite the regularity of last season even if it still took two tacklers to stop him.
Defensively, he was probably the most reliable winger in the competition. The Waratahs had the best defensive record in the Super 14, conceding only 21 tries all season, and certainly no one took any liberties at Tuqiri's expense.
So, what to do with a World XV player who is not in bad form by any means but still is some distance short of his peak?
Clearly Wallabies coach Robbie Deans arrived at the answer to that question a fortnight ago, judging from the fact that he released Tuqiri, along with six other Australian squad members, to play club football last weekend.
It was a move that shouted to the rooftops that none of them was going to be in the starting XV for the clash against the Barbarians, although as events unwound, Drew Mitchell was called into the side once Peter Hynes' knee injury flared up again.
That would have been worrying from Tuqiri's perspective, that even the late loss of Hynes didn't earn him a reprieve.
Where his own season had had an even-handed blandness about it, Mitchell was all over the shop, brilliant one minute, bumbling the next.
It was his late missed tackle against the Hurricanes that, in retrospect, cost Western Force a real shot at the finals but, on the other hand, he did figure prominently in the club's end-of-season highlights tape.
And he has speed, real speed, a quality that looms large in the Deans game plan.
Yet let's get serious here. If it was the All Blacks lining up against the Wallabies at the Syndey Football Stadium, not the Barbarians, would Deans have named the same side?
No one speaks for Deans but Deans himself, and even after a year of observing him at close quarters, he still frequently wrong-foots me.
But I doubt it. I can't conceive Deans would willingly go into a Bledisloe Test without Tuqiri if the big man were fit and fired up.
If that's the case, then this exercise in not even naming him in the reserves against the Barbarians is all about firing him up again. It hasn't cost Tuqiri a Test cap, but it has cost him a little pride. And that's hitting him where it hurts.
I don't believe this for a moment but on the straight evidence of the selection of Mitchell and Turner instead of him, the fact Adam Ashley-Cooper was deployed at fullback not wing and the injuries to Hynes and Digby Ioane, a case could be made - indeed has been made by some - that Tuqiri has slipped to sixth in the Australian wing rankings. Ouch!
Since he came into the Wallabies in 2003, Australia has played 78 Tests. Tuqiri has figured in 67 of them, making him the second most-capped winger in the country's history, behind David Campese. He is not used to putting on the number ones on match day and not even bothering to bring his red/gold/blue/white boots to the ground.
He won't be liking this one little bit and one fears for the retribution he will wreak on the poor Italians next weekend in Canberra, if, as I expect, he is recalled to the starting side for the first Test of the Wallabies' year.
Certainly Barbarians winger Josh Lewsey of England, who has locked horns with Tuqiri in many a Cook Cup Test, expects his old rival to come thundering back.
"Form is temporary, class is permanent," Lewsey observed. "If you play on the wing, sometimes you can play in games where, through no fault of your own, you don't get that many opportunities. You're in a reactionary position.
"Lote is a handful, a big old lump. He is a hell of a competitor, mentally tough and I'm sure he'll brush off any accusations (that he's on the slide)."
The pity is that Lote and Lewsey could have been teammates today. If Deans knew a fortnight ago that he wouldn't be needing Tuqiri, why weren't his services offered to the Barbarians, as were Phil Waugh's?
All indications are that the Baa-Baas have come to Sydney intent not just on turning on a dazzling display of running rugby but on doing a number on the Wallabies to build a case for future Down Under expeditions, so they surely would have snapped him up.
That wouldn't exactly have placed Tuqiri back in the World XV, but it would have placed him where everyone would like him to be - right in the thick of the action.
http://www.foxsports.com.au/story/0,...016959,00.html
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