Wallabies star describes ‘break glass emergency’ role as a Joe Schmidt ‘luxury’
Wallabies scrum-half Tate McDermott
Tate McDermott has given his verdict on recently becoming a utility pick for Joe Schmidt’s Wallabies.
The scrum-half played at nine last Saturday in Townsville when he replaced Nic White for the compelling denouement to their Rugby Championship match with Argentina.
That 28-24 win has Australia in second place, one point behind the All Blacks heading into this Saturday’s Round Four rematch with the Pumas in Sydney. However, McDermott now offers more to Schmidt’s squad than just his specialist scrum-half role. He has also played twice off the bench as an emergency winger in recent matches.
This new-found positional flexibility allowed the Wallabies to pick a 6/2 forwards/backs bench split for the second Test against the British and Irish Lions, a match where McDermott was called into the action early to replace the hamstrung Harry Potter.
He also featured out wide when the Wallabies adapted to the substitution of midfielder Len Ikitau in the early part of the Rugby Championship second half against South Africa in Johannesburg.
“Interesting to be a part of…”
McDermott told reporters about these new experiences of playing Test rugby in the wing: “That is an option now that I’m sure I can play there. We have got far better wingers than me; I’m just a break glass in case of emergency.
“That’s the beauty of this squad. We have got so many boys playing well in that wing position and right across the backline, forward back, that boys are competing week in, week out.
“Joe has got the luxury of sometimes going to a 6/2 because of the players that can not only cover other positions, but also the other back on the bench can cover multiple positions as well, whoever that may be.
“It has been interesting to be a part of. I was under Brad Thorn (at the Reds), and he used to play me a little bit on the wing late in games. It’s been different coming on as only a winger. I haven’t done that in the past, but it’s been a role I’ve really enjoyed.”
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The Wallabies are preparing for Rugby Championship Round Four in the unusual position of having won three of their last four matches. It’s a consistency that few thought possible given their inconsistencies, but Schmidt has managed to find momentum in recent weeks.
This success won’t lead to any complacency, McDermott insisted. It was only last year when a last-minute win over Argentina was followed by a record 27-67 defeat to the same opposition a week later.
It’s why the Wallabies haven’t been shy with their feedback despite last Saturday’s last gasp win in Townsville over the Pumas.
“Complacency has never really been an issue for us,” he said.
“We only have to look at last year, for example, a really good performance, and then they put 60 on us the next week. There is absolutely no complacency from our point of view because we know first-hand just how good this team is we’re coming up against.
“Joe post-game was happy with the result, but the actual game itself, we have got a hell of a lot to work on and that is what we have been doing.
“We have been being real with the feedback we have been received and some honest chats around where we need to get better, but it’s great because we are turning in the right direction, and we have got to make sure every single day we continue to do that.
“We have strung together a couple of really good performances, and that has been really important for us and an objective from the start of TRC. But for us, we can’t look any further ahead than this weekend.
“We know, particularly from that first half, that they [Argentina] are going to be unbelievably good this weekend, and they are going to be disappointed with how that game finished because they had it there, particularly once they kicked that penalty.
“They probably should have closed it out and they didn’t, so we got lucky in a sense there. But we also created our own luck, and I have been working really hard this week.
“We have obviously reviewed the game, got some key areas of growth, and we have to keep doing what we have been doing, which is finishing the game strong.”
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