LONG READ Why England has proven a land of plenty for Australia's high-flying travellers

It is the time of year when emigration becomes as natural as flying. They may not be cruising the airwaves in a v-shaped formation or a wedge, but the first scouts in green and gold have been picked up on the radar. They have arrived ahead of the Wallabies on their colossal, five-Test November tour of Japan, France, Italy, England and Ireland, and you can be sure that they will meet a lot of old friends along the way.

James O’Connor has been spotted in Leicester, and Tom Hooper and Len Ikitau have landed in deepest Devon. In the Midlands and the West Country of England, the Aussie ‘wild geese’ have begun their annual migration to that pair of well-established rugby homes from home, Welford Road and Sandy Park.

It has become something of a religious rite, a pilgrimage to the Prem. Many a top Aussie 10 has tended to feather his overseas nest in Leicester. In previous generations Pat Howard, Rod Kafer, Matt Toomua preceded O’Connor and all three enjoyed a hybrid player-coach role at the club. With ‘JOC’ now reunited with the Wallabies ex-forwards coach Geoff Parling, he can be expected to contribute extensively to the brains trust behind the scenes.

Exeter have been even more prolific in their signings of Australians than their Midlands counterparts. Devon has provided a home for notables such as Nic White, Greg Holmes, Scott Sio, Julian Salvi, Lachie Turner and many others. Director of rugby Rob Baxter has always eschewed the selection of a specialist open-side flanker and Exeter has become a second home for the hybrid second/back rowers he prefers. In that regard Tom Hooper is a picture-perfect heir apparent to the likes of Dave Dennis and Dean Mumm.

Is Australia is losing or gaining more rugby IP through its overseas dealings? The Land Down Under has tended to leak more talent from number 10, and especially to France and Japan, without receiving any reward for it. Noah Lolesio has left for Japan in his mid-20s with 23 caps, at a time when he should be bedding into Wallaby life. Tane Edmed started two Rugby Championship Tests after performances with North Harbour in the NPC catapulted him into contention. With the Waratahs in Super Rugby Pacific one season later, he remained strictly second choice.

Carter Gordon left the game for the NRL’s Gold Coast Titans one year ago, and nobody can be quite sure what to expect from his prompt elevation to Joe Schmidt’s November tourists on his return to rugby. When the Wallabies trot out at the Japan National Stadium this weekend, they are likely to be facing one of their own playing for the Brave Blossoms, in the shape of 31-year-old Brisbane-born Sam Greene, who plies his trade in the JRLO with the Shizuoka Blue Revs.

Greene appeared in the list of likely successors to Quade Cooper at Ballymore, along with Mack Mason and Jake McIntyre. McIntyre now plays in France for USAP Perpignan and Mason was last spotted in the MLR for Seattle Seawolves. When Cooper returned from his sojourn in Toulon, he was promptly reinstated and the new wave was scattered to the four winds. The cycle was reinforced when a star of the 2019 Junior Wallabies, Zac Lucas was lost to the Ricoh Black Rams in 2021 after getting only a smattering of chances to impress, and progress in his native Queensland.

As ex-Queensland head coach Nick Stiles explained recently: “It’s probably an indictment of what we’ve done with 10s over a while now. They come in young and get flushed out – and there were a handful of guys in that same boat. They don’t get enough football before they play Super [Rugby] and they get flushed out and moved on.

“Sam [Greene] had beautiful skills on him, a nice kicking and passing game. He probably just had to evolve over time around the physical components of the game. He’s done that and he’s played exceptional football up in Japan for a long time now.”

So, for that matter, has Zac Lucas.

But where a flock of promising young Australian 10s have disappeared over the horizon, and towards the land of the rising sun apparently for keeps, the story is very different in England.

Clubs such as Northampton and Leicester and Exeter have become second homes which multiplied the possibilities for Australian players living at their main residence in the international game. At Franklin’s Gardens, Andrew Kellaway and Lukhan Salakaia-Loto played a big role at the club and returned to Super Rugby as better players, while Josh Kemeny and James Ramm are fast following in their footsteps. Howard won trophies as the head coach of the Tigers before he boomeranged back home in 2011 to a high-profile role as general manager for team performance with the Australian cricket team.

The Australian success stories at Exeter are even more compelling. White discovered a whole new lease of Test-match life after a stint at the Chiefs and Mitch Lees flew all the way from Super Rugby rejection, and working at the Westpac bank in Sydney “sitting on my arse all day and eating takeaways for lunch”, to the fringes of the England senior squad during his time at Sandy Park.

The new kids on the block, and the latest sons of the Lucky Country to feel the warm fuzzy of rugby life down in Devon are current Wallabies Hooper and Ikitau. Another Sydney-sider with a big body like Lees, Hooper is in no doubt he has arrived in the right place at the right time:

“My nan always says, ‘a couple belly laughs a day keeps the doctor away’, and I’ve definitely been getting enough of that here,” he said. “I played a lot of rugby with Nic White, and he’s given me a glaringly positive impression of this place. The two of us are very similar and he fit in like a duck to water here, so hopefully I’ll be the same.

“I’m a big believer in competition breeding success. For me to be in a back row that’s really competitive [Ethan Roots, Greg Fisilau, Ross Vintcent, Christ Tshiuza, Richard Capstick and young Welsh sensation Kane James are all on the club’s books], you don’t know who is going to start or come off the bench. That’s exciting to me. If you’re competing internally, it makes the competition externally all the better.

“I pride myself on going head-down, bum-up and just getting into the thick of stuff. If I can do that, it’ll let guys like Lenny [Len Ikitau] and ‘Sladey’ [Henry Slade] and our star-studded back three light up the field.

“If I’m doing the tough stuff, the stuff that nobody else wants to do, then it’ll make everyone else look pretty good. Being a Chief means hard work. I think it means even in the dark, when no-one is really watching, the standard we hold ourselves to has to be exceptional.”

O’Connor and Hooper had a significant hand in their new clubs’ success at the weekend, with JOC steering the Tigers to a nail-biting 22-20 over Prem champions Bath and Hooper fulfilling his ‘tough stuff’ promise to Exeter in a wet-weather demolition of Londoners Harlequins 38-0.

Both players brought their Rugby Championship best to the table. For O’Connor that means aggression on attack – making passes in the clutch of the defender, standing as short as he dares to the man or the forward pod in front of him.

The rewards of playing on top of the defence arrived in 34^th minute via one of JOC’s trademark long passes delivered right on the gain-line. It was all very reminiscent of Ellis Park two months ago.

For Hooper, on a rain-sodden afternoon at Sandy Park, the best outcome meant rolling up his sleeves and going to work in the darkened mineshafts of the ruck and tackle zone.

Hooper and Ikitau were constantly in the thick of the action, reinforcing one another’s work near the ruck. In the first snapshot, Hooper has already driven through once on the pick and jam to be supported instantly by another from his partner-in-crime, then he picks out one of Exeter’s spectacular back-three attackers [Manny Feyi-Waboso] with a short offload.

The short offload game and the steadfast Hooper/Ikitau relationship stood the Chiefs in good stead throughout.

It wasn’t pretty in the dark but it was mighty exceptional work on the day, and Harlequins had no answer to it. The ‘wild geese’ of Australia have suffered contrasting fates in the professional era. A succession of young, promising 10s have fled the coop and never returned. Some are living their best lives in France, others such as Greene and Lucas ply their trade in Japan and one of them may even represent his adopted nation against the land of his birth this weekend.

There is a much better chance of the boomerang returning back its owner when the destination is England. Not only does it come whistling back, more often than not it is gleaming and has taken on a coat of added polish. White, Salakaia-Loto and Kellaway were all more Test-worthy when they returned than when first leaving Australian shores. However long or short their stays, Hooper, Ikitau and O’Connor will all experience the same ‘bounce’ and relish the moment.