Rob Valetini

Who's the 12th? Who's the fullback who's out of form that probably needs a 10 and some stability there? It's Tom Wright.

So thinking about continuity, connection, familiarity, who's the number six is Robbie Valentini.

And I know a lot of CEO, I think he made his debut alongside guys like Tate McDermott, Fraser McWright was there.

So he spent a long time there.

So, um, normally you're, you're sort of getting that 10 across to sort of three forward runners.

Um, but what, what I was sort of s- seeing there was Bob- big Bobby Valentini out wider, looking at Mork and Jose- Joseph Seuailee's-

Yeah

... position-

He is a big wrecking ball.

Jeremy Williams, Rob Valentini, Fraser McWright.

That rounds out the pack.

The number 10, Ben Donaldson.

Um, you got Kelleher there for genuine-

Do you not think our strongest back row, though, as it stands, would probably be Harry at eight, Valetini at six, and Fraser at seven And then you bring like a, ho- Hooper off the bench, move Valetini to eight, play him at six and McBryde at seven.

Is that-

Yeah.

But I, I don't know, I think To- Tom Hooper probably provides more as a starting player than off the bench in terms of impact.

Yeah.

Like, just the, the way he plays, he just gets through lots of, like, lots of work rate, hitting rucks, all that, rather than sort of having someone like a, you know, like a Valetini or a Caleb-

Mm

Yeah, we're very carry heavy, weren't we, in tight? Like it felt like Tom Hooper got through a lot of touches.

Rob Valetini was sort of like just running up against brick walls, found it quite tough going.

Still, you know, massive, but you know, for someone who carries 17 times, making 40 meters is a really hard yakka, and it felt like we were often running into double Argentinian shoulders rather than finding space.

So maybe it's the, uh, execution under a lot of pressure.

Big contestable play.

Rob Valetini's fingerprints all over that one as well, Fergo.

Yeah, and then we saw again the, the, the counter ruck.

It is a part of Scott McLeod's defensive system, and it is paying dividends in these kind of situations, making it a mess, making the breakdown a difficult place for the half, half back to be able to go to for Argentina, and that means they fumble the ball there.

And I think in this instance, we'll just get it up on the replay.

Great interplay there from the nine and Isgro.

Brandon Pangalumo gets up over the top of it, and then we see, uh, Canham flood through with Rob Valetini and, uh, Alan Alaalatoa there start standing guard.

I know they'd already won the ball at that point, but nonetheless, really, really important to be able to keep a strong ruck presence for the defense.

Um, uh, and then even when, when Locky Shaw came on for Canham, it certainly didn't, um, didn't fall away there at the end.

Um- The back row, um, Hooper, McReight, Valetini, a lot of people have wanted to see this back row trio for all of this year essentially.

What did you, what did you make of it? It wasn't really a traditional sort of back row dominate the breakdown sort of game, although they certainly had wins there.

Yeah.

Well, the Wallabies, uh, you know, I'm praising Gordon's, uh, distribution.

A lot of it was to forward runners.

Um, so they did sort of choose to, uh, to use Valetini and, and, and Hooper, and that paid off-

Mm

In sport, Wallabies' captain Harry Wilson's been left out of the side to play Argentina on Sunday morning.

Rob Valetini will start at number eight with Alan Alaalatoa to skipper the side.

Thanks, Clinton.

There'll be more news and sport at 4:00.