Wallabies read riot act

An advance party of Wallabies travelling to Cape Town tonight have been warned to be on their best behaviour in the wake of previous controversies involving Australian rugby tourists in the same city, including one player being sent home writes Greg Growden for Rugbyheaven.

Although Australia play Fiji at Subiaco Oval tomorrow night, six players will miss the match and travel to Cape Town to prepare for the following weekend’s Tri Nations opener against South Africa at Newlands. Rocky Elsom, Mark Gerrard, Matt Giteau, Wycliff Palu, Nathan Sharpe and Guy Shepherdson will be accompanied by three team officials – manager Phil Thomson, skills coach Alex Evans and trainer Jason Weber.

The rest of the Wallabies travel to South Africa on Sunday night.

The Wallabies were recently warned by team management that they will not accept any form of bad behaviour on tour – especially in a city where players had been involved in numerous unsavoury incidents. As one Wallabies team management member said last night: “They know the circumstances if they step out of line.”

Apart from the infamous Cape Town taxi affair involving the ACT Brumbies, the Wallabies last trip to this city in 2005 was a nightmare, capped off by Matt Henjak becoming the first Wallaby sent home from a tour in 39 years following a nightclub incident in which he threw the contents of a glass at other patrons.

Lote Tuqiri and Wendell Sailor were each fined $500 and received two-match bans, suspended for two years, for staying out too late at a nightclub, while Matt Dunning, who also went out but returned to the team hotel earlier, was fined $500. On the same tour, the Wallabies were ridiculed in the local media when it was revealed that they had been involved in a team game at a Cape Town restaurant, where some players admitted to having a morbid fascination in eating each other.

Two days later the Wallabies lost the Nelson Mandela Challenge Plate with an appalling performance against the Springboks in Johannesburg.

Meanwhile, good behaviour of a different kind has been demanded in Perth, with the coaching staff planning to remind their new Test second-rower James Horwill not to get carried away with his emotions in his debut international.

Horwill is a traditional second-rower who loves standing his ground and being assertive. As Wallabies coach John Connolly explained: “James is a good player, and a real tough bugger.” Yet Horwill’s aggression has regularly seen him spend plenty of time cooling off in the sin bin.

“That’s the way I like to play football,” Horwill said yesterday. “There’s no point changing that, and I think it would be smart to stick to what I do best. It’s got me in trouble here and there, with some yellow cards and stern ‘talking-to’s from the referee. But I am attempting to control my aggression.”

The Wallabies will be relieved by that, as will their fans when they discover that Stephen Larkham won’t be a standing target for the marauding Fijian defenders for the whole 80 minutes of tomorrow’s Test in Perth.

Playing Larkham against Fiji is a major gamble, especially with far more important Tests coming up. However, the selectors believe Larkham needs another run after missing the first Test against Wales. But he will still only play about 50 minutes against Fiji, before being replaced by Sam Norton-Knight.

The selectors also know that if they are going to give their new centre combination of Scott Staniforth and Adam Ashley-Cooper the best chance to excel, they must spend some time outside the experienced halves combination of Larkham and George Gregan. Australia’s biggest problem is getting proper back-up at halfback, five-eighth and inside centre, and selectors are using this Test to gauge whether Staniforth is up to Test standard at inside centre.

Despite Norton-Knight being named as back-up five-eighth for this Test, Giteau is likely to take over as pivot if Larkham gets injured during the Tri Nations.