LONG READ How the grand old men in Wallaby green and gold stunned the Springboks

Picture the scene. You enter your local rugby club, calmly announce 40 is the new 30, then wait for reaction. It will take a while for the laughter and hilarity to subside, and then there will be the sledging – a lot of sledging. But when you start to produce your evidence, there may be a growing quiet, and more than just a few nods of agreement.

In the most physically demanding contact sport on the planet, the golden oldies rule the roost long after their expiry date looks to have passed. NFL ‘GOAT’ Tom Brady was 43 years and 188 days old when he won his 17th Superbowl with Tampa Bay in 2021, and there is a ‘Brady bunch’ of other outstanding throwbacks at the quarterback position; two others in the pantheon of NFL greats, Peyton Manning and John Elway, led the same club [the Denver Broncos] to success at the ages of 39 and 38 respectively. Further back, Johnny Unitas won it with Baltimore at the ripe old age of 37.

In rugby, it appears age is no barrier to lasting success in the on-field ‘brain’ of the team at numbers 9 and 10. Forget the physical mayhem going on all around them, in the halves it is the cold tactical head in the fridge that matters. Johnny Sexton was 37 years old when he led Ireland into the 2023 World Cup as the number one ranked nation. George Ford and Owen Farrell still show few signs of slowing down and remain near the epicentre of England selection debates. Scotland’s Finn Russell is at the peak of his powers aged 32. Age cannot wither them, nor custom stale their infinite variety.

The Wallabies have discovered their own old-new lease of life in the shape of two thirty somethings, Nic White and James O’Connor. ‘Whitey’ bade farewell to the international game in the final Test of the British and Irish Lions series in Sydney and was looking forward to drawing his pension, only to reverse course two weeks later. An injury to first choice scrum-half Jake Gordon underlined the fact Joe Schmidt still sees the ex-Brumbies and Exeter man as the starter needed to manage and implement his game-plan, ahead of the more dynamic 26-year-old finisher Tate McDermott.

Despite 22-year-old Tom Lynagh’s flashes of genuine promise at the 10 spot in the Lions series, the same can now be said of O’Connor, on the evidence of the extraordinary events which unfolded at Ellis Park at the weekend. That 70 years of combined experience was worth its weight in Kruger Rands against the world champions.

With a view of the end of things comes honesty, brutal honesty, as O’Connor commented after the game:

“It meant so much,” he said. “There has been a lot of emotion this week, a lot of reflection. I thought my time in the Wallabies jersey was done three years ago. I fought bloody hard to get back here and the opportunity came after some of the guys got injured, but I’m here now and I’m loving it.

“I’m not going to lie, there’s been plenty of times I thought in my mind, ‘Gee, have I bit off more than I can chew?’ Because training’s quick, everything is hard and quicker, and I thought, ‘Oh man, I might have talked it up too much!’

“The boys have got around me, they’ve looked after me and we’ve slowly just built into this game plan, and I’m really loving the detail that Joe’s bringing. He’s allowing us to play and execute in the killer moments of the game.”

O’Connor probably deserved the chance to play a much bigger part against the Lions, but that is now just another rivulet of regret flowing under an old bridge. On Saturday, his coach and man-of-the-match Fraser McReight referenced his game management and growing influence on the contest, with the Queensland flanker highlighting ‘that kick to get a 50-22 [which] showed his outstanding rugby IQ’.

The selection of O’Connor was just one of many green-and-gold adjustments which worked eventually, after an horrendous start which saw the Wallabies fall behind 22-0 after only 18 minutes.

• The Wallabies demonstrated once again the ‘Skelton lineout’, featuring only two receivers in Nick Frost and Harry Wilson, works just fine. Not just fine, it is becoming an aggressive weapon of choice. Frost dug into the Springbok lineout throw as deeply as he had the Lions’ feed in Sydney. The Bokke only won 11 of their 16 throws for a miserable 69% return, with the Brumbies giant making the mid/tail of the line a ‘no-go’ area with three steals. Between them, Wilson and Frost made 16 lineout balls available to their scrum-half, a remarkable stat considering the skipper was completely undeveloped as a lineout target before Schmidt and Geoff Parling took over in 2024.
• The pennies dropped from the eyes, and Australia realised domination does not necessarily derive from building rucks, and keeping possession for the sake of it. Where the Wallabies built an average of 116 rucks per game versus the Lions, they only set 77 in Johannesburg, 25 fewer than the world champions. That ratio of one try scored for every 13 rucks built compared to a ratio of 1:38 against the Lions. Their six tries only cost them 17 phases of play and four came from turnovers – three more than in the entire 2024 tournament.
• There were some encouraging signs the Australian attitude to defence is changing. Nowhere was the change more lucid than in the more ‘libero’-like role adopted by Joseph-Aukuso Suaalii, increasingly playing the ball rather than the man. The ex-league star has looked uncomfortable trying to diagnose plays developing in front of him and moving sideways to counter them on defence. At Ellis Park he was given freer rein to attack space rather than mark men, and he looked all the better for it.

JAS is the last line defender but he is running the lane in front of him, not looking to turn out on to the attacker outside [Pieter-Steph du Toit]. Even the final Wallaby turnover try came from a situation triggered by a Suaalii blitz.

Suaalii misses with the blitz on Damian Willemse but it is the kind of miss a coach doesn’t mind. It gave notice to the Springboks their handling would be under the kind of physical pressure the Wallabies were unable to exert on the Lions until the third Test. Those hands duly break down and Tom Wright picks up the scraps to score at the other end of the field.

Those improvements will have given Rassie Erasmus plenty of food for thought ahead of the second game in Cape Town, and he will be mindful of the influence of the man sitting closest to him in the coaching booth, New Zealander Tony Brown. Is Brown’s emphasis on ball in hand taking the Boks too far away from their core philosophy and traditions? Can their big forwards really sustain the aerobic efforts needed to cover ruck after ruck in phase attack?

It was O’Connor who epitomised the way Australia grew into the game better than anyone else. He began with a 50/22 attempt which rimmed out of the cup, but by the end he was sinking the putts dead centre.

Like Russell, O’Connor has learned how to overcome pressure, and pass beyond mistakes made early in the game relatively late in his career. Where Noah Lolesio and Tom Lynagh tend to play off the line in attack, the Springbok rush defence simply could not force O’Connor to take to step backwards. Most of his critical decisions were taken in the teeth of contact.

Run square, two steps before you hit the line, look for the pass in contact. It is something Australia has been missing from the men picked at 10 in recent times. The long ball over the top of the blitz is far more effective when the defence has less time and space to recover.

Both passes are made in the grasp of the D and not a moment before, and it was O’Connor’s obstinate refusal to be forced off the gain-line which as much as anything, won the game for Australia. ‘Rabs’ argued the much-vaunted Springbok rush D to a standstill and the Wallaby attack took several steps forward of the back off an act of naked middle-aged willpower.

The confidence the ‘old-new’ 10 generated among his team-mates was reinforced by his willingness to put his head into some very dark physical places when most needed.

Four years ago, another Kiwi head coach of Australia dug 33-year-old Quade Cooper out of involuntary international retirement and made him the saint and saviour of Wallaby fortunes at the 2021 Rugby Championship. In 2025, read Schmidt for Dave Rennie and O’Connor for his old mucker at the Queensland Reds.

The names may have changed but the shades of selection have not. Australia is reaching back to the past to pluck out a future for their game management needs at 10. Of the younger brigade in whom so much time and effort has been invested, Carter Gordon, has left for league and Lolesio is on his way to Japan. Lynagh might be the business but he is still very raw.

The growing trend of outside halves playing international rugby successfully well into their mid-thirties, and sometimes beyond, suggests the experiment may be more than just short-termism. But Rennie was sacked unceremoniously only one year later, and Schmidt is handing the green-and-gold reins over to Les Kiss in 2026. There are no golden-oldie guarantees, and the Ellis Park ludus mirabilis needs to be more than a one-day wonder.