‘Slow burn’ probably isn’t a term Simon Cron would enjoy being used to describe his tenure at the Western Force, but it is the best way to describe his definite, but gradual, improvement of the most isolated professional rugby team in the word.
His first two seasons, 2023 and 2024, ended similarly. Tenth spot in the Super Rugby Pacific standings, with their last four games encompassing two straight wins followed by successive defeats to leave them agonisingly short of a first appearance in a full finals series (the Force played a qualifying final in the Covid-impacted 2021 Super Rugby AU season).
In 2025, however, the Western Force are a different beast. Coming off their welcome mid-season bye, the Force sit sixth with four wins and four losses, completing the Australian quartet in the play-off places. If they can maintain their win rate and momentum, that maiden finals berth is well within reach.
Back in February, Cron spoke with pride about the quality of his third pre-season campaign in the west, a quality driven by two significant factors not really experienced by the franchise in previous years.
The first was having to incorporate the most returning Wallabies they had ever provided for an end-of-year tour, a challenge for all involved: the players returning late in the pre-season, the others who began months beforehand and trained without them, the coaching staff trying to plan sessions with so many moving pieces.
The second was that players were choosing the Western Force as the next step in their playing career. So often the club of last resort, or a lifeline destination for forgotten Australian and New Zealand players, Cron found players he was really keen on recruiting were now buying into his vision early in discussions. And the more players buying in, the higher the quality of player agreeing to join them.
So Nic White begat Ben Donaldson, to put it in biblical terms. Darcy Swain begat Harry Johnson-Holmes. Harry Potter begat Dylan Pietsch. All of them entrusting Cron with the next step in their development, and all of them contributing significantly to the Force’s welcome depth and improvement as a squad in 2025.
Being 17, I didn’t even have a pair of ‘21s’. And obviously, going over there playing in the bog, I quickly needed to find a pair of eight-studs.
One such recruit was New South Wales Waratahs pathways player turned Leicester Tigers Premiership winner and one-Test England hooker, Nic Dolly.
Having headed to England as a 17-year-old to spend the Australian summer holidays with family in the Manchester area, Dolly’s rugby-loving grandfather had made enough calls and sent enough emails in advance that he soon found himself training with the Sale Sharks academy.
“I didn’t take any boots with me!” Dolly recalled about his rapid rise on arrival in the English north-west. “Being 17, I didn’t even have a pair of ‘21s’ (millimetre stud-length). And obviously, going over there playing in the bog, I quickly needed to find a pair of eight-studs.”
And the rise was rapid. A couple of academy games led to selection in Sale’s Under-18s squad, and by July 2017 he’d signed a five-year senior contract the Sharks described at the time as “groundbreaking”.
“And then, yeah, I don’t know, it just snowballed from there,” Dolly laughed, with obvious understatement.
That first season he spent time on loan with Championship side Rotherham and Sale FC in National League Two North, and showed enough to play five games for England’s Under-18s.
Another loan season back in the Championship with the Jersey Reds led to England selection for the Under-20s Six Nations and Junior World Championship, and after a handful of games for another Championship side, Coventry, Dolly was suddenly signed on a “multi-year deal” by Premiership powerhouse Leicester Tigers.
After two tries on debut for the Tigers in September 2021 – a feat not seen from a Premiership forward in two decades – and tries in his next couple of games as well, Dolly earned selection in Eddie Jones’ senior England squad a matter of weeks later, for Tests against Tonga, Australia and South Africa.
My grandad’s always been pushing me and my brother to the English side ever since we were young, buying us all their jerseys and stuff as we were growing up.
“Dolly’s an industrious player, he’s been very impressive for Leicester, and we feel like he can make the jump to Test rugby,” Jones said at the time. Dolly had gone from Australian schoolboy tourist on holiday with his grandparents to England squad member in less than three-and-a-half seasons.
“That was fully unexpected,” Dolly said of his international call-up. “I think I had played, I’m going to say, four Premiership matches at the time. And I’d started them all because Julian (Montoya) was away with Argentina, and like, I’d been on the back of a few good mauls.
“I’m pretty proud of my (Australian and English) heritage, to be honest. My grandad’s always been pushing me and my brother to the English side ever since we were young, buying us all their jerseys and stuff as we were growing up.
“I think that was the cool thing, I was able to just enjoy rugby for what it was. And that was just like playing with mates. I enjoyed the everyday sort of process of training and then performing on the weekend.”
Dolly learned of his England selection at Tigers training one day, after then-Leicester coach Steve Borthwick called the squad in together to end a session. “I had no idea,” he said. “Didn’t know how to process it.”
The former Sydneysider says he really enjoyed working under Jones, even wondering “if he’s seen a little bit of himself in me, being a smaller hooker.” Dolly made his Test debut off the bench in a 27-26 win over world champions South Africa at Twickenham in November 2021, and then won selection for the 2022 Six Nations squad for the 2022 tournament, but didn’t add to his one cap.
In May of that year, Dolly also got a harsh reminder that rapid rises can also be followed by rapid falls.
He was named in the England training squad for a July tour of Australia, and in the same week suffered a season-ending knee injury when caught in an illegal ‘crocodile roll’ clean-out in Leicester’s win over Newcastle. He was due to go into England camp the next day.
I just had a random nerve injury in my arm and I couldn’t throw, I could barely do a push-up. It was just a weird, weird injury
What followed was a two-year battle with injury setbacks that ultimately ended with Leicester releasing him in mid-2024, paving the way for Dolly to link up with Cron in Perth.
“It was tough, just the timing of it,” he says. “I think I played most games that (2021-2022) season, 20-odd games, and then to pick up the injury so close to the finals was a bit gutting.
“Then I just had a random nerve injury in my arm and I couldn’t throw, I could barely do a push-up. It was just a weird, weird injury, and it was more just unlucky.
“I’m one to not dwell on it too much, just sort of get on with the rehab and make sure I’m putting everything into the rehab to make sure I come back to the best of my ability.
“But being a contract year, that was a stranger year for me, obviously having to deal with the pressure of not being available, but also being out of contract. So, when the Force came knocking, they really wanted me to come over.”
Dolly says he wasn’t necessarily thinking about a homecoming and hadn’t given the idea of re-qualifying for Australia any thought at all. But Cron and the Force telling him they were keen forced the left-field consideration.
“As a rugby player, as weird as it sounds, you obviously want to be wanted, and that was a nice feeling. It also looked like a good challenge for me.
“It was either to stay in England or to come back home. When they came knocking, they came fairly hard and fast. They were like, ‘We really want you’. So to have them knock on the door and be like, ‘Look, we want to give you an opportunity’, that was something I couldn’t turn down.
“And then obviously learning about the eligibility laws and stuff like that (being eligible for Australia again), it was another opportunity for me to come home and play in a competition that I grew up watching.”
Dolly was theoretically eligible for Wallabies selection in November last year. He wasn’t part of the end-of-year tour and wasn’t included in Joe Schmidt’s training and logistics camp in January, either.
I’m a fairly aspirational guy. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t want to; I want to obviously play international rugby.
But with the Western Force’s impressive start to the season, and Dolly playing very well within that, he’s doing everything he can to enter the discussions.
It is, of course, a hot field. The Australian depth chart at hooker looks pleasingly deep, when you consider Queensland Reds pair Matt Faessler and Josh Nasser, Brumbies duo Billy Pollard and Lachie Lonergan, NSW Waratahs stalwart Dave Porecki, and even Dolly’s Force team-mate Brandan Paenga-Amosa are all capped Internationals. Dolly makes it seven Test hookers on Schmidt’s whiteboard.
As Faessler admitted last week, the thought of a Lions series is always fairly close, no matter how much players try their best not to think about the once-every-12-years opportunity.
“Yeah, I’d say it’s in the back of your mind,” Dolly confirms. “I’m a fairly aspirational guy. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t want to, I want to obviously play international rugby.
“That’s sort of everyone’s end goal, isn’t it? When you play well for your club and when the club starts getting results, then, you know, we’ll see more boys in gold. I think we’ve already pushed a fair amount of boys in there from our squad.
“So yeah, a hundred percent, it’s certainly in the back of your mind, but the great thing around the Super Rugby season is that you can just solely focus on the Force and what will be, will be. It’s a team-first mentality.
“If we’re putting out performances that we’re proud of every Saturday, then the results and everything else should take care of themselves.”
