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Overlooked Wallabies wing joins Australia sevens squad

By Online Editors
Jack Maddocks training with the Wallabies. (Photo by Chris Hyde / Getty Images)

Overlooked for the Rugby World Cup, Jack Maddocks is joining his older brother Will in the Australian men’s sevens squad as they attempt to qualify for the Tokyo Olympics.

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Melbourne Rebels star Maddocks was considered unlucky to miss Wallabies World Cup selection, but he has been training with the Cup squad in Japan on standby ahead of their first match against Fiji on Saturday.

Rugby Australia said he would be loaned to the sevens program in a short-term move ahead of their Olympic qualifier, the Oceania Sevens, in Fiji in November.

The 22-year-old will join the squad in Germany for this month’s Munich Sevens.

Australian men’s sevens coach Tim Walsh said he was excited about having two Maddocks in the squad.

“Jack is a quality athlete and an amazing rugby player; he can run, leap, jump, weave and is a competitor, which is exactly the kind of player we want,” Walsh said.

“Will has been no slouch either and continues to smash records in the team with his speed and fitness, so to welcome Jack is going to enhance our environment.”

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Jack Maddocks tries to step his way around All Blacks defender Ngani Laumape for the Wallabies. (Photo by Anthony Au-Yeung / Getty Images)

With six Test caps, Maddocks said he was looking forward to trying something new.

“It’s a good opportunity for me to go test out sevens for a bit and have a crack,” he said.

“Tim (Walsh) hit me up to see if I was interested.

“I haven’t played much of sevens before so the challenge excited me, and it was a good opportunity to play with my brother so that was a big lure for me.”

Maddocks will return to the Rebels after the Oceania Qualifier and remains on stand-by for the Wallabies’ Rugby World Cup campaign.

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– AAP

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J
Jon 9 hours ago
Jake White: Are modern rugby players actually better?

This is the problem with conservative mindsets and phycology, and homogenous sports, everybody wants to be the same, use the i-win template. Athlete wise everyone has to have muscles and work at the gym to make themselves more likely to hold on that one tackle. Do those players even wonder if they are now more likely to be tackled by that player as a result of there “work”? Really though, too many questions, Jake. Is it better Jake? Yes, because you still have that rugby of ole that you talk about. Is it at the highest International level anymore? No, but you go to your club or checkout your representative side and still engage with that ‘beautiful game’. Could you also have a bit of that at the top if coaches encouraged there team to play and incentivized players like Damian McKenzie and Ange Capuozzo? Of course we could. Sadly Rugby doesn’t, or didn’t, really know what direction to go when professionalism came. Things like the state of northern pitches didn’t help. Over the last two or three decades I feel like I’ve been fortunate to have all that Jake wants. There was International quality Super Rugby to adore, then the next level below I could watch club mates, pulling 9 to 5s, take on the countries best in representative rugby. Rugby played with flair and not too much riding on the consequences. It was beautiful. That largely still exists today, but with the world of rugby not quite getting things right, the picture is now being painted in NZ that that level of rugby is not required in the “pathway” to Super Rugby or All Black rugby. You might wonder if NZR is right and the pathway shouldn’t include the ‘amateur’, but let me tell you, even though the NPC might be made up of people still having to pull 9-5s, we know these people still have dreams to get out of that, and aren’t likely to give them. They will be lost. That will put a real strain on the concept of whether “visceral thrill, derring-do and joyful abandon” type rugby will remain under the professional level here in NZ. I think at some point that can be eroded as well. If only wanting the best athlete’s at the top level wasn’t enough to lose that, shutting off the next group, or level, or rugby players from easy access to express and showcase themselves certainly will. That all comes back around to the same question of professionalism in rugby and whether it got things right, and rugby is better now. Maybe the answer is turning into a “no”?

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