Dave Rennie and his Wallabies must deliver on home soil against England

There is something in the air at Rugby HQ and for once it isn’t panic. It smells, dangerously, like hope. The Australia-England three-Test series is less than a month away and Eddie Jones’s side are coming off another dud Six Nations tournament (two wins, three defeats). The coach is facing widespread calls to be sacked and his squad is missing powerhouse centres Manu Tuilagi and Henry Slade to injury.

That’s quite a bit of blood in the water. But will Dave Rennie’s team have the teeth to rip in and win? Although the Wallabies won five straight last season against South Africa, Japan and Argentina, the Bledisloe was lost again. It left Rennie stuck on an uninspiring 40% win record from 20 Tests. That’s not good enough. The Wallabies must win, win more often and do so with style and steel.

Australian rugby is crying out for a Wallabies team with heart, brains and – let’s face it – mongrel to rouse its sleeping-giant fanbase. Rugby Australia has done its bit, delivering the 2027 and 2029 World Cups. With this England tour in July and the 2025 British & Irish Lions campaign, it should get the game out of the red following a $27m loss last year and back in black by 2023. Build it and the fans will come. Now the players and their coach must deliver.

Rennie, the former schoolteacher (“Teaching, coaching, same thing … the kids are just a bit bigger”) and one-time owner of the Lonely Goat Herder pub in Upper Hutt has been playing the long game, plotting an upward course for the 2023 World Cup in France. He has blooded youth and tested the mettle of his senior men. And the evidence is growing that he, and his side, are on the right track.

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