LONG READ The 'magic 64' could turn Australia's fortunes this November

Can you keep a secret? Store it under your hat, but Joe Schmidt and his Wallabies may be channelling The Beatles. Not satisfied with one tour, Schmidt and his men are undertaking two in November. In addition to the games against the four home countries who will make up the British and Irish Lions tour party next year, two meaty Australia XV fixtures have appeared on the menu – the first against Bristol Bears on 8 November at Ashton Gate; the second nine days later against England A at the Stoop, nestling in the shadow of Twickenham.

The top 64 players in Australia will be required, 34 for the full Wallaby tour and 30 for the support fixtures: “Will you still need me?/Will you still feed me? When I’m 64” as the old Lennon/McCartney song goes. And the resounding answer to that question for Australian rugby is “Oh, yes/We need you all”.

It is a lot of mouths to feed on tour, but the potential rewards far outweigh the risk. The 64 are indispensable. As Peter Horne, Rugby Australia’s new director of high performance explained: “We are committed to our players getting opportunities to play against high-quality international opposition, with the Australia XV programme a great development tool for our country’s next best players, coaches and management.

“With the British & Irish Lions on our shores next year, these fixtures will allow us to continue to build depth, and for Joe Schmidt and the Wallabies coaching to get a good look at a wider selection of players.”

With Rob Seib [head coach], Zane Hilton [forwards] and Brad Harris [defence] looking after the Australia XV there will be plenty of feedback on progress made by the upwardly-mobile. It is likely at least two players involved in the secondary fixtures will be promoted to the full squad for the final two games against Scotland and Ireland, so there will be a direct relationship between the two tours.

A rookie such as Australia’s five-million-dollar man, league recruit Joseph-Aukuso Sua’ali’i could start on the XV tour and end up a fully-fledged Wallaby by 30 November against the reigning Six Nations champions. That could provide the ideal springboard for Sua’ali’i to mount a challenge for selection against the Lions in 2025, and the man himself cannot wait to get started.

“I am honestly not sure [if I will play], but I am going on that spring tour at the end of the year,” he said.

“There is no Super Rugby [remaining in 2024]. I know once I finish [at the Roosters] I will be straight into it. Footy is footy.

“It’s a footy ball at the end of the day. It’s just about playing.”

The presence of two squads running in tandem will give Schmidt ample selectorial wriggle room as the month unwinds. The twin keys will be the willingness to select overseas players, with all six matches falling inside the international Test window, and identification of the talent most likely to benefit from early exposure at a higher level.

Here are my two proposed squads:

The most important task is to seed veteran players into areas of both tours where they will be most needed. As Schmidt cannot get that experience at home, he needs to claw it back from abroad.

It is a psychological as much as it is a physical hurdle, but Australia must cross that Rubicon to jump-start its curve of improvement. As ex-Waratah number eight Stephen Hoiles commented on Stan Sports’ Between Two Posts show:

“We have always been about protecting Super Rugby, because that’s our product. That product isn’t working for us at the moment, but we’re not picking from overseas.

“South Africa do it, Argentina do it. We are doing what New Zealand does. We are not New Zealand. Just because the All Blacks keep the All Blacks in New Zealand, we should not have to [copy] what they do.”

The main ‘seeds’ on the two tours are Scott Sio for his experience of European scrummaging; Will Skelton, Izack Rodda and Matt Philip for their knowledge of the maul and lineout; Tawera Kerr-Barlow and James O’Connor to mentor the young nines and 10s in the XV squad.

There are others whose value is hiding in plain sight. Ex-Brumby Tom Staniforth was a real workhorse for his Top 14 club Castres Olympique in the 2023-24 season, finishing top of the league in both carries [38 more than the next man] and tackles [44 more than the runner-up]. What has he learned from the relentlessly hard, physical grind of the French club game? Can he be the ‘hard six’ Australia has been lacking since the retirement of Scott Fardy – or provide some extra clues to the real meaning of the role?

Both Miles Amatosero and Sua’ali’i could be picked for the XV squad initially, then seconded to the Wallabies for the final fortnight of tour time. At 6ft 8ins and 128kg, Australia needs the biggest of its big young men to succeed Will Skelton. It requires 6ft 5ins and 100kg of Joseph-Aukuso to be the dominant outside back the Wallabies have been yearning for since the sudden departure of Mark Nawaqanitawase to league, and the disappearance of Jordie Petaia off the rugby scale completely.

Both England A and Bristol Bears will constitute stern tests for the Australia XV. Although Pat Lam’s charges lost their way for large tracts of the last English Premiership season, they still topped the charts with 71 tries scored at an average of four and a half per game. Last Saturday they turned over last year’s runners-up and hot title favourites Bath on their own turf at the Rec. They did it by scoring tries – five of them on their way to a 36-26 victory.

With a core group of fast-twitch attackers built for evasion and agility: Harry Randall at nine, Gabriel Oghre at hooker, Fitz Harding at eight and Max Malins at 15, the Bears never refuse an opportunity to keep play fluid with a tapped penalty. In this case, Randall has eyes for the ball but it is Argentine seven Santi Grondona who makes the decision to ‘play on’. The back play after the ruck is out of the modern European top drawer and it will stress Brad Harris’ XV defence to the limits of its durability.

Later in the half Oghre – who is one of the new breed of do-it-all, footballing-savvy hookers in the Premiership – made the same decision only five metres out from the Bath goal-line, with centre Benhard Janse van Rensburg proving its correctness in the finish.

Bristol are always looking to maintain a high attacking tempo and will ignore the easy three points in order to do it, here with Randall rejecting a shot at goal in the shadow of the posts.

Another important element of Lam’s programme is the sustained desire to attack from the Bears’ own end of the field whenever possible, and do it right from the start until the very end of the game.

If you think you’ve spotted venerable ex-All Black and Samoa flanker Steven Luatua delivering one of his trademark offloads in that first clip, you would be right. Luatua is still one of Lam’s ‘old dependables’ and a totem of the West Country club.

The decision to add a second-tier XV tour to the Wallaby version is undoubtedly one of Rugby Australia’s better choices in recent times. Schmidt will be able to run the rule over some younger players and build his knowledge of their potential first hand.

As ex-Wallaby captain Michael Hooper noted of Tane Edmed’s resurgence in the NPC across the Tasman: “[Tane’s NPC] performance at the moment is fantastic, he’s given us some highlights.

“But these are the big pressure games [on tour] our players need to be playing in before the Lions next year.

“Our players haven’t played up there in these big stadiums.

“They are cauldrons and where you want to be playing your footy. Big pressure. Big moments.”

On the one hand, there is the chance to examine youthful options such as Harry McLaughlin-Phillips and Jack Bowen, as well as Edmed, at problem spots like 10 in the white-hot crucible of an unfamiliar setting.

There is also an opportunity to recall some top European veterans thus far neglected, and see what they have to offer as players and mentors to the uninitiated. At least two players will be able to hop from one tour to the other.

As far as Australia are concerned, 64 is the magic number. It will nourish the growth of the national team, and the staircase of integration it offers is sorely needed: ‘Will you still need me? / Will you still feed me? / When I’m 64’. Double thumbs-up to that sentiment.