Wallabies coach Joe Schmidt has called up four members of the Australia XV to bolster his playing stocks for the final two Autumn Series Tests – but Corey Toole isn’t one of them.
Ahead of the Wallabies match against Scotland on Monday (AEDT), Schmidt has brought in forwards Tom Hooper and Harry Hoopert and backs Darby Lancaster and Hamish Stewart, who were all with the Australia XV on their two-game tour.
Lancaster has been preferred to Toole with the Wallabies needing some cover in the outside backs following injury to Dylan Pietsch.
Stewart, who played at No.10 for Australia XV against Bristol before going to No.12 against England A, is cover for the expected loss through suspension of Samu Kerevi. Kerevi faces the judiciary late Tuesday AEST.
The arrival of Hoopert could signal issues with James Slipper, who was only able to last 20 minutes against Wales before going off. Taniela Tupou missed the game though injury.
The Wallabies arrived in Scotland on the back of wins over England and Wales.
The Scotland coach Gregor Townsend has hailed the turnaround sparked by Schmidt since the World Cup, and given a glowing endorsement of rookie centre Joseph Suaalii, who is expected to start in Kerevi’s likely absence.
“They’ve improved,” Townsend said of the Wallabies post-Eddie Jones.
“Just playing the Rugby Championship you’re better on the back of that because you’ve got six games against three of the top teams in the world now – Argentina are obviously in the top five and South Africa and New Zealand are in the top two, so getting that experience to play each of those teams twice will make you better.
“Joe Schmidt, who’s a brilliant coach, has spent time with them now and they have some really good players.
“They may have gone through a little dip but they’ve got all their squad available and they’ve even been able to make changes in the back of England and bring in guys like [Will] Skelton and Kerevi could make them stronger going into the game. It’s going to be a very tough game.”
Townsend raved about Suaalii’s debut against England, where he was voted man of the match.
“I thought some of his touches were incredible,” Townsend said.
“For your first game of union, it’s a|Test match at Twickenham, and you’re able to offload lovely soft touches and he’ll take a lot of confidence out of that and I just really know they’ve got a world-class footballer already.
“But if he doesn’t play then we’ll have our hands full with [Len] Ikitau and the quality players they’re able to select.”
Townsend is likely to pick a strong team but will be without injured former Wallaby Jack Dempsey.
So far this Autumn series Scotland have beaten Fiji, ᵴtriƥped of their European stars, and fallen to defeat against the Springboks.
“It would be very disappointing if we were to come away with a defeat but we’ll have to play really well to win,” Townsend said.
“The more I looked at the game (South Africa), the more I was impressed with a lot of aspects of what we did. The defence, the togetherness, the mental strength when we were a man down.
“There’s things we can improve and finish off those opportunities but if we play at that level in every game this season we’ll have a really good season.
“Against Portugal and Fiji we obviously got more opportunities to attack. Other players got to play for Scotland so there’s positives to take out of those performances but we’ll still look at areas to improve and we’ll know we’ll have to keep improving to beat the likes of Australia and our games in the Six Nations.”
