Uncapped Brumbies flanker Jarrad Butler looms as a potential Rugby World Cup bolter, as Wallabies coach Michael Cheika prepares to revise his train-on squad for the global showpiece.
While Butler doesn’t feature in a preliminary 50-man squad that will assemble in Sydney next week, Cheika says the in-form back-rower will come under consideration when he meets with fellow selectors again in the coming fortnight.
The countdown to the eighth World Cup is well and truly on, with Cheika now having less than six months to prepare Australia for their tournament opener against Fiji at Cardiff’s Millennium Stadium on September 23.
Cheika will take a 30-man squad to the UK and he admits the opening six rounds of the Super Rugby Championship have given him plenty of food for thought.
“There’s some good battles going on right now around selections in some positions,” he said on Wednesday.
“The challenge is getting a good balance between giving some players who you know will be there some certainty so you can start planning and giving other guys on the fringes an opportunity to get a chance at going for the spot.
“So we’re going to have the four Rugby Championship (and Bledisloe Cup) games (against Argentina, South Africa and New Zealand twice) for players to put forward their claims on top of the Super Rugby.”
Australia have a bunch of No.7s gunning for World Cup berths, led by incumbent Wallabies skipper Michael Hooper, young guns Sean McMahon and Liam Gill, veteran Matt Hodgson and of course former national captain David Pocock on the comeback this year from two seasons ravaged by knee reconstructions.
But Butler’s form has been so hot for the Australian conference leaders that Pocock was forced to return from a month out with ankle syndesmosis via the bench for the Brumbies’ showdown on Sunday with Hooper’s NSW Waratahs.
Cheika admits the New Zealand-born 23-year-old’s push for a national call-up have been impossible to ignore.
“He’s been playing very well,” Cheika said on Wednesday.
“At this stage, he hasn’t been in the 50 that we’ve had operating, that we’ve been looking at, but we’ll sort of review that squad in the next two weeks to see if some players should be added and some other players should miss out.”
While Butler has a maximum of one more game – against the Cheetahs after the Brumbies’ bye this weekend – to force Cheika’s hand, Pocock is certain to be included in the three-day gathering of 50 Wallabies World Cup hopefuls next week.
Cheika, though, was confident there’d be no lingering ill-feeling or potential for division among the Wallabies following Pocock’s outing of Waratahs forward Jacques Potgieter that led to the South African being fined $20,000 for making a homophobic slur in Sunday’s heated conference derby.
“It’s been put to bed,” Cheika said.
“I’ve spoken to him (Pocock) already because I saw a few reports where people have said he shouldn’t have said it and I told him what I thought.
“I told him he 100 per cent has the right to say it.”
