If he ever gets bored with rugby, Wallabies supremo Joe Schmidt could always try his hand at cricket. With Super Rugby Pacific reaching the knockout stages, the head coach urged one of the two remaining Aussie sides to go deeper, in terms familiar to supporters of Australia’s favourite summer sport.
“The longer you stay at the crease, the more chance you’ve got to accumulate runs,” he said.
“We might even see a couple of nice strokes that get them over the line.”
Schmidt needs one of the Queensland Reds or the Brumbies to reach the final to bolster the conviction Australian rugby is moving in the right direction.
If the format had remained the same as in 2024, with eight of the 12 teams qualifying for the play-offs, three Aussie clubs would still be progressing, and in the same position as they were one year later [3rd, 5th, and 8th]. Aussie has won more games overall in 2025 – 48% compared to 44% – but the number of victories against the five New Zealand franchises has stayed roughly the same – 37.5% in 2025 as against 36% one year earlier. That result was skewed ‘in the clutch’, with New Zealand winning all the Trans-Tasman encounters from round 12 onwards, after Australia had achieved parity over the first 11 rounds.
The competition has undoubtedly benefited from the reduction from five Australian teams to four, and the excitement around a renewal of Super Rugby quality has been palpable – at least until those last five rounds. The statistical flags planted earlier in the tournament all reported a strong upsurge in interest:
- A 21.5% increase in average game attendance across the competition to round eight.
- Strong growth in TV audiences across Australia [30% increase in Nine viewership to round eight], New Zealand [12% increase in Sky Sports viewership to round three] and Fiji [395,436 peak Walesi App viewership in round four – more than a third of the Fijian population].
- A 55% increase in follower growth across Super Rugby Pacific social media channels. A 21.5% increase in average game attendance across the competition to round eight.
But for all the spin around the ‘increased jeopardy’ of more lead changes within games, more fluctuations on the ladder and more unpredictable results, when push comes to shove the finished product looks remarkably similar to 2024. The Brumbies are still the best Australia has to offer in third spot, the Reds are still promising rather more than they can deliver in fifth, and the Waratahs are still underperforming given the strength of their roster. The Force have stayed more or less the same, a 4-1-9 record in 2025 matching the 5-9 win-loss slate one year earlier. Nobody in Oz has really made a move – yet.
With five franchises compressed down to four, Schmidt will be hoping for more readymade club combinations to spring up on the short runway into a series against the British and Irish Lions. The tourists set foot on Australian shores in less than four weeks’ time and right now, there is relatively little support elsewhere for the culture in Canberra.
The Brumbies were remarkably unlucky not to have claimed home advantage throughout the play-offs after losing to the Crusaders 31-33 at the death. Kiwi referee James Doleman and his assistant Fraser Hannon contrived to miss an obvious knock-on by All Black wing Sevu Reece in the passage of play leading to the game-winning try.
Two match officials are looking at the same piece of action from less than two metres away, and the huge 65 x 25 feet LED screen is replaying the incident on countless occasions; but Doleman still managed to mistake a foot for the hand attached to Reece’s right arm when he cried ‘It’s off the leg, off the leg!’ in real time, and avoid looking up at the obvious in the aftermath. It was some feat, and it raised serious questions about the use of common sense and the TMO.
Stan Sport pundit Morgan Turinui was rightly filthy afterwards while framing the larger the context for Australia.
“He’s got it completely wrong – James Doleman – around it coming off the foot, but his assistant referee has a clear view and has to step in and fix an absolute gaffe that quite simply cost the Brumbies the game, cost the Brumbies a home semi-final, and completely changes the makeup of this competition,” said the former Wallaby.
“It’s revenue for the Brumbies organisation, it’s home ground advantage [in] week two of a semi-final – they haven’t finished top two in 21 years and they won the comp that year – so, an absolute refereeing gaffe.
“The refereeing, that’s not up to the standard required of Super Rugby Pacific. It quite simply cost the Brumbies second spot on the ladder and really hampers their chance of winning the comp. It’s disgraceful.”
On the basis of their form this year, the Brumbies probably deserve second place. They received the least support from the unexpected Melbourne Rebels player ‘draft’ but they beat the next best team home and away and finished comfortably ahead of everyone else in the country. When Schmidt begins looking at combinations with inbuilt synergy and understanding, he is more likely to look towards Canberra than in the direction of Sydney, Brisbane or Perth.
If you gave the Ponies’ coaches a choice of all other Australian SRP players with which to strengthen their matchday squad, they would probably come up with a starting XV which looks something like this:
15 Tom Wright, 14 Joseph-Aukuso Sua’ali’i, 13 Len Ikitau, 12 Lalakai Foketi, 11 Corey Toole, 10 Noah Lolesio, 9 Ryan Lonergan/Nic White
1 Angus Bell/James Slipper, 2 Billy Pollard, 3 Allan Alaalatoa, 4 Tom Hooper/Jeremy Williams, 5 Nick Frost/Darcy Swain, 6 Bobby Valetini/Hooper, 7 Fraser McREight, 8 Langi Gleeson/Valetini.
I suspect Stephen Larkham and co would only see the need for definite improvements at numbers one, seven, 12 and 14. One of the most interesting test cases is in the second row, where the Force pairing of Jeremy Williams and Darcy Swain have received most of the media plaudits but the Brumbies duo of Nick Frost and Tom Hooper has proved arguably more rugged and Test-worthy.
Here are some comparative stats up to, and including the penultimate round of the regular season.
With Swain and Williams, you will get great lineout on both sides of the throw, but with Hooper and Frost there will be extra carrying potential and in Hooper’s case, the ability to win that priceless commodity in the modern game, turnovers at the breakdown. Hooper has split time between the second and back rows and has proven he can handle either role. Williams might be able to do the same but he has played second row exclusively in 2025. That will be an important consideration when Schmidt looks to shuffle his deck of cards in the back five with Will Skelton on the pitch.
More recently, the Brumbies half-back pairing of Ryan Lonergan and Noah Lolesio has been making a late run in the Wallaby selection stakes. With doubts lingering over the game management skills of Queensland’s Tate McDermott and Tom Lynagh, they could just be a nose ahead of everyone else. Lonergan in particular has displayed the qualities of a Nic White, a Test-worthy scrum-half.
He kicks well – better than any other Australian scrum-half bar White – and he is as scrappy around the breakdown as the ex-Brumbies and Exeter man. Lonergan knows how to ‘milk the ruck’ at the base.
Even more importantly, he knows how to bring the best out of Lolesio outside him.
With slightly slower ball in the first instance and Lolesio playing in the second line of attack, Lonergan takes steps to attract the interior defence and sharpen the edge of the axe for the ball played behind to his partner. With Lolesio flat and up at the line after a lightning-quick ruck ball, he passes straight off the ground so that the ball hits its target as quickly as possible.
Later in the game the duo released their outside backs successfully.
The other three franchises will be giving Schmidt some polite nudges over the next month or so, as the Wallaby head coach looks for established combinations with which to confront Andy Farrell’s growling Lions. The Reds will argue on behalf of their two halves McDermott and Lynagh, and their full-strength back row of Seru Uru, Harry Wilson and Fraser McReight; the Waratahs will push the chances of their front row [Bell-Porecki-Tupou] and back three [Kellaway, Jorgenson and Sua’ali’i] while the Force will highlight the lineout success of second rowers Swain and Williams.
But it is the Brumbies who hold the trump cards. Up front, Allan Alaalatoa has returned with the bionic re-engineering of a six-million-dollar man, while the old workhorse James Slipper shows little sign of slowing down alongside him. Behind them, Hooper has been the most effective hybrid forward in Australia, Exeter or no Exeter. In the hub of the team, Lonergan and Lolesio finished the regular season as the best-synergised halves in all of Aussie.
If the Brumbies can reach the final, it will offer much-needed confirmation Australia really is back in business, and the Lions will not run up a cricket score on tour after all.
