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Joe Schmidt's dig at Lions’ ‘southern-hemisphere’ centre pairing
By PA
Australia head coach Joe Schmidt has taken a swipe at the British and Irish Lions by describing Bundee Aki and Sione Tuipulotu as a “southern-hemisphere centre partnership”.
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Aki and Tuipulotu, who were born in New Zealand and Australia respectively, form a midfield partnership for Friday’s tour opener against Argentina in Dublin and Schmidt has seized the opportunity to highlight their switch of national allegiance.
Aki qualified for Ireland through residency while Tuipulotu is able to represent Scotland because of his Greenock-born grandmother.
“A southern-hemisphere centre partnership that will be pretty formidable,” said Schmidt at the Wallabies squad announcement for their forthcoming match against Fiji.
“I coached Bundee for several years and know him really well and respect him massively as a player. He’s a great contributor to the team environment.
“I’ve only had glancing conversations with Sione but again, by all accounts a champion bloke.
“You don’t get to be captain of a national team without being a great bloke and really professional in those high-performance environments. They are real athletes, those two together, so that’ll be really interesting.”
The number of overseas-born players in Andy Farrell’s 38-man squad has been a talking point ahead of the tour Down Under.
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Ireland’s James Lowe and Jamison Gibson-Park and Scotland’s Duhan van der Merwe and Pierre Schoeman qualified for their nations through residency, while Finlay Bealham and Mack Hansen can represent Ireland through family.
Lions attack coach Richard Wigglesworth responded to Schmidt’s barb by declaring everyone in the squad has earned the right to be there.
“I don’t know if they are questioning their commitment. Everyone has earned the right to pull on the Lions jersey,” Wigglesworth said.
“They are, to a man, incredibly proud to be here. It is not your background or how you have got here, it’s what sort of player you are and what sort of man you are. We have got great men and great players.”
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Will Joe Schmidt be selecting Will Skelton of Auckland? I’m sure Joe’s words are going to come back to haunt him!
I think there has been a few all blacks boys born in oz if I’m not mistaken??
Strange comments for sure considering he coached Bundee at Ireland
Tom Jordan should be there on bench too apologies Daly…I’m down for whoever qualifies thru residency ancestry or whatever this new 5 year rule is dumb I mean say Sevu don’t make WC squad wouldn’t u want to seem him play for Fiji, same for a number of pacific boys in msny different teams fancy some Manu Tuilangi at Samoa sure there will be some SA boys who could play for Nambis..we want best out there all the time don’t we?
It's flawed for sure. There could be plenty coming through now who qualify for 2 or 3 nations between birth, family history and residency.
They make a potentially wrong decision at 21-22 then have to sit out the next 5 years. Rotting away and missing their physical peak.
Josef, behave yourself!!!!
Cheeky monkey!
Joe was pretty swift in getting Jared Payne straight into the Irish mid-field the very second he qualified to play!
Josef Schmitzl?
It's not questioning commitment. It's just pointing out that the home nations players aren't good enough to make their own team as soon as SH players move up north 😆😆
If the World XV don't win this series against Australia, they should be embarrassed.
To be fair, it's just SH players that couldn't make the wallabies/ABs/Springboks that then move north and take the spots from home nations teams. Can't call it a world XV unless the actual top SH players are involved
I here that the ANZAC team is struggling to get big names and a half dozen kiwi players to play for it, perhaps they should ask the Lions team for a half dozen of their ANZ plays to switch sides for the game?
Ya’ couldn’t help yourself, boyo!!!!
You’re not wrong either.