Rugby-Tupou gets chance to stake claim for Lions series with Waratahs
SYDNEY (Reuters) -The Wallabies thought they had a tighthead prop for a generation when Taniela Tupou packed his bags and headed to Australia to join his brother after completing his education in New Zealand.
This weekend, however, he will not be facing Fiji in Australia's only warm-up for the British and Irish Lions test series but instead taking on the tourists in a New South Wales Waratahs shirt.
The 29-year-old was released by Wallabies coach Joe Schmidt on Monday in the wake of a Super Rugby season for the Waratahs which, by his own admission, was well below par.
Waratahs coach Dan McKellar was grateful for his return and is hoping Tupou on Saturday can show the form which has earned him 58 test caps since his debut against Scotland in 2017.
"(I want him) to go out there in set piece first and foremost, back that up with physicality and show the ability to repeat it," McKellar, a former prop himself, said after naming his team on Thursday.
"They are the three things I talk to tight forwards about every day. I want him to be really good around the scrum, lineout, maul and then impose himself on the game as we know he can do with ball in hand and without it."
Schmidt would no doubt echo those hopes as he prepares a nation which has never been blessed with huge stocks of front-row talent for three tests against the Lions, who lack nothing in that regard.
Nicknamed "Tongan Thor" as a rampaging schoolboy forward in New Zealand, Tupou's best moments in a gold shirt earned him one of Rugby Australia's most lucrative contracts, which is reported to earn him A$1 million ($657,300) a year.
Injury curtailed his 2023 World Cup but he was close to his powerful best as recently as the end of last year when Australia beat England at Twickenham and ran Ireland close in Dublin.
A Tupou intercept in the latter match is still etched in the memory of Andy Farrell, who was finishing up with the Irish before his Lions sabbatical that day.
"He's very disruptive, to say the least, and good at what he does," the Lions coach said on Thursday.
"Ireland played against him last year and we saw the pace that he had, he went straight up the middle of the field there. He's not just a disruptive scrummager, he's certainly got power and pace on both sides of the ball."
Schmidt will name a fresh squad for the Lions test series next Friday and Tupou's performance on Saturday night at Sydney Football Stadium could go a long way to deciding if he is in it.
($1 = 1.5214 Australian dollars)
(Reporting by Nick Mulvenney, editing by Peter Rutherford)
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