Source :- PERTH NOW NEWS
James O’Connor and Bernard Foley won’t be waltzing back into the Wallabies for any World Cup swan song as Les Kiss looks to youth to try to break Australia’s near-30-year title drought.
Filling the gold No.10 jumper has been Australia’s trouble spot ever since Foley was at the peak of his powers piloting the Wallabies to the 2015 Rugby World Cup final in England.
Since then, a succession of Wallabies coaches, from Michael Cheika to Dave Rennie, Eddie Jones, Joe Schmidt and now Kiss, have used a seemingly endless number of playmakers in the flyhalf role.
But no one has been able to settle on a stand-out selection, nor has any individual been able to make the position their own.
O’Connor, 36, and Foley, who turned 37 last week, are both two-time World Cup stalwarts with public ambitions to feature in next year’s home tournament in Australia.
But while not ruling out turning to the old heads, Kiss has indicated he plans on backing the younger contemporaries at his disposal and use O’Connor and Foley as merely insurance options if others don’t step up.
With first-choice Carter Gordon sidelined with a broken leg, Kiss this week included uncapped 22-year-old Harry McLaughlin-Phillips alongside Ben Donaldson and Declan Meredith as his three five-eighths in a 34-man squad for Saturday week’s Test against South Africa in Perth.
O’Connor has been named in the Western Force squad for the upcoming Super Rugby Aust tournament, while Foley will have to wait until next year’s Super Rugby Pacific competition proper to remind Wallabies selectors of his capabilities.
Kiss will be watching intently.
“We know experience stands for a lot, without a doubt,” he said.
“The experience that we do have in (Foley and O’Connor) we’d like to see them play some games, and they’ll get plenty of opportunity.
“When you look at experience, you can pull them in at any time and they’ll really get on-page straight away. We know what we get from them.”
For now, though, the first-year Wallabies coach is backing youth over experience.
“To have the opportunity to have Harry McLaughlin-Phillips come in and work with us and see how we work, and obviously Donno has 20-odd Tests already, so he’s building a bit of experience,” Kiss said.
“We’ve got young Declan Meredith, who’s been in superb form for the Brumbies all year, and he’s done really well for us over the last four weeks and he’s played three Test matches to date in this campaign.
“So those younger guys, we’re trying to make sure we get them upskilled, then understand how they can lead the game and drive it forward.
“Part of the thinking was ensuring that those guys can have a bit of blue sky and make sure they take the team and the game forward the way we’d like to.
“And we know that we can always lean back into the experience if we need to.
“So we felt it was just the right decision to bring Harry in and continue the work that he did about five or six weeks ago when he was with the team, and that was our rationale with the experience versus some of the younger guys.”
