r/Wallabies

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The Sydney Morning Herald

Paul Cully - 6 min read

Wasteful Wallabies need to be hard on themselves after loss to Ireland

Brave? yes. Wasteful? Definitely. The Wallabies blew the chance to get their Nations Championship off to a winning start, turning a 24-12 lead after 28 minutes into an agonising 33-31 loss in Sydney on Saturday night.

That might sound harsh after the Wallabies matched or beat the Irish in a number of areas, but they need to be hard on themselves because Ireland were sluggish for the first half.

A couple of Wallabies’ mistakes around the 60-minute mark summed up a lack of composure and accuracy. First, Max Jorgensen fired a wild pass into touch after the Wallabies had created space.

Then, Joseph-Aukuso Suaalii threw a loose offload to no one after initially doing well to straighten the line. That’s not good enough, and the mistakes squandered the precious territory and possession that had been won by a strong Wallabies scrum that had been lifted by a noticeably fitter Taniela Tupou.

The goalkicking woes of Carter Gordon and Ben Donaldson were also costly, but the unforced errors in possession need urgent attention as next Saturday’s opponents French will arrive ready to play.

They were very close to beating the All Blacks in Christchurch on Saturday and will add further firepower to the team that will face the Wallabies in Brisbane on Saturday. Their attacking play was superb.

Losing Lonergan was a huge blow

When Ryan Lonergan left the field after 33 minutes after a head knock, the Wallabies led 24-12. Without him, they lost the next 47 minutes by 21-7.

The in-form Brumbies No.9 is a great controller of games, and the Wallabies were guilty of becoming a bit lateral in the second half.

Tate McDermott has his own special qualities, exemplified by his try, but Lonergan was enjoying an excellent Test before his injury and the Wallabies will be far worse off if he isn’t fit to play France.

Carter Gordon’s injury in the second half was also a worry, with the big Reds No 10 showing enough on attack (goalkicking aside) to justify his inclusion.

However, with Waratahs veteran Jake Gordon and the outstanding Western Force No.9 Henry Robertson already ruled out for the year with serious injuries, the Wallabies are already looking a bit light on the style of halfback that Joe Schmidt likes.

The Wallabies’ winner and losers

New second-row partners Jeremy Williams and Josh Canham were standouts for the Wallabies, while Rob Valetini rediscovered his best form as the game unfolded, putting multiple dents into the Irish defensive line.

Life in France is also clearly agreeing with Tupou, who looked lean and explosive when injected into the Test in the second half.

Len Ikitau also showed his class in the No.12 jersey, and the Wallabies’ attacking intent in the first half was a big step up from the end-of-season tour. The jury is out on the effectiveness of Max Jorgensen and Dylan Pietsch switching wings, while the collective discipline was an issue – especially with the current interpretations around the ruck (see item below).

But, the Wallabies’ most obvious weakness was the limited bench impact compared to the Irish. The visitors’ Tadhg Beirne and Nick Timoney brought an energy to the contest that the Wallabies couldn’t match, and Carlo Tizzano was therefore conspicuous by his absence.

Brilliant weekend shows we’ve got our game back

The try-laden first weekend of the Nations Championship confirmed that attacking rugby is back, and the Wallabies certainly bought into the new trend with some genuine ambition in the first half. So, what has happened to prompt this shift without any rule changes?

It’s all in the interpretation, and it is very difficult to miss the influence of World Rugby chair Brett Robinson and his new Chief of Rugby, Mark Robinson. Most notably, the referee teams have clearly been empowered to make quick and decisive decisions instead of checking every try for five minutes with a series of inconclusive replay angles.

That is why everyone should be prepared to live with the decision to award Jamison Gibson-Park’s try against the Wallabies just before half-time.

Was there a forward pass? It was hard to say conclusively, and if we want a quick game that’s the sort of call officials must be backed to make.

Second, there is clearly a lot less leeway for blokes lying on the ground and clogging up the contact area. As a result, legal jackals are harder to make, and we are seeing more quick ball and attacking rugby.

It’s made life harder for players such as Fraser McReight, but the game is now allowing elite players to show their full range of skills.

Rennie’s Wallabies regret

The new All Blacks coach has kept his counsel since Rugby Australia sacked him in 2022, choosing not to address his dismissal or criticise his former employer. But in an interview on Sky Sport in NZ before his first Test in charge against France, he lifted the lid a little.

Rennie said he had no regrets from his time in charge of the Wallabies, but conceded he might have been better at “managing up”. Several former Wallabies and Waratahs coaches over the past decade or so will be nodding their heads at that assessment.

Rennie’s implication that politics is a part of the head coach’s role is on the money, even if most of them don’t realise it until too late. The relationship between the head coach and the chief executive or chair is one of the most important in the game.

It appears strong between Joe Schmidt and Phil Waugh/Dan Herbert, and it needs to be the same with Les Kiss if the Wallabies are to have a good World Cup in 2027.

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The Sydney Morning Herald

‘That will be his legacy’: How will Joe Schmidt be remembered by Australian rugby?

Jonathan Drennan - 9 min read

Two and a half years ago, Joe Schmidt put away his fishing rod and golf clubs in Lake Taupo, New Zealand and prepared to cross the ditch to take on a far less peaceful project.

He had been tasked with reviving the Wallabies after their disastrous 2023 World Cup under Eddie Jones.

Since then, Schmidt has coached the Wallabies in 28 Tests, winning 11. As he prepares to hand over the reins to Les Kiss at the end of the month, how will his tenure in Australia be remembered? To understand Schmidt’s legacy, it is important to look beyond the win-loss column.

The appointment

After the Wallabies failed to reach the knockout stages of the World Cup in October 2023, the task of rebuilding the team began in earnest before Christmas.

On his return from France, Rugby Australia chief executive Phil Waugh knew he needed a coach who could not only build morale in a playing squad whose confidence had been shot to pieces, but also help the Wallabies become competitive in time for the arrival of the British and Irish Lions in 2025. It would be the toughest challenge of Schmidt’s coaching career.

“It was obviously a very disappointing and disruptive period for Australian rugby, coming out of the Rugby World Cup and, obviously, the results of the tournament,” Waugh said.

“Certainly, ensuring we had the right leader with the right experience to make the right connection with the group was really important.”

RA had appointed Peter Horne as their high-performance director in December 2023, and tasked him with identifying the next head coach. Horne was confident that he knew the right man for the job, but it wasn’t going to be an easy sell.

Horne and Schmidt had become close friends during their time working together at World Rugby during the Covid pandemic after Schmidt had finished upa successful six-year stint coaching Ireland.

“When I applied for the RA role, I was using Joe as a person that you’d have a chat to and get some sort of checks and balances on things,” Horne said.

“In those conversations, I said, ‘Is there ever a place where you’d be interested in working again together?’”

Schmidt and Horne agreed that the Wallabies needed to become competitive again. The difficult part for Horne was persuading the New Zealander that he was the man to do it.

Eventually, Horne won and Schmidt agreed to take over as coach, but only up until the British and Irish Lions series.

Ultimately, Schmidt would decide to extend his time in charge beyond the Lions series to help facilitate the handover to another rugby friend, Reds coach Kiss.

The work

Schmidt did not officially start with the Wallabies until March 2024, but he started pulling late nights and early mornings in January.

By his own admission, Schmidt didn’t know Australia’s players particularly well. He had previously graduated to the Ireland job after three year of immense success with its most successful province, Leinster. That change had been organic, but rebuilding a broken Wallabies squad in just 18 months was an entirely different challenge.

Waugh believes Schmidt’s work ethic is a large part of what makes him so successful.

“It’s not surface level, he goes to a level of detail for every interaction that he’s having with any of the players,” Waugh said. “You cannot fake hard work, and Joe’s worked as hard as I’ve seen anyone work in a rugby system.”

It was not unusual for RA staffers to receive emails from Schmidt in the early hours of the morning concerning particular game plans or players. Last November, on tour with the Wallabies in London, Joseph-Aukuso Suaalii joked that he wasn’t sure Schmidt ever actually slept.

A regular attendee at Super Rugby training sessions, Schmidt also regularly visited clubs, schools and coaches across the country to develop his knowledge of Australian rugby.

A Super Rugby player not necessarily anywhere near Test selection might nonetheless receive a phone call with a detailed analysis of his game, simply to help improve his performance.

“I don’t know many other coaches that go to that amount of detail where it’s not just about the immediate group, but it’s also about the extended group and then taking enough time to give them feedback that actually can make them better,” Horne said.

“And I just think that’s a huge amount of work that actually lifts the base. You could [just] invest in the top 38 or top 40 players, but the reality is he’s doing way more than that.

“He’s investing in a cohort of players that are going to lift not only Super Rugby, but the national team.”

The results

Schmidt’s win record in charge of the Wallabies stands at 39 per cent, but Horne believes that figure needs some context.

The Wallabies defeated the British and Irish Lions in the third Test last year and only lost the decisive second Test at the MCG 29-26 after a contentious late try. They beat South Africa at their Ellis Park fortress for the first time in 62 years.

But in November, at the tail end of a gruelling year, the Wallabies lost all four Tests on their spring tour of Europe, against England, Ireland, Italy and France. Those four defeats did little for Schmidt’s win ratio and obscured the good work earlier in the year, when the Wallabies could rightly claim to have made real progress.

“I’ve described last year as a good year, but a bad month,” Horne said. “He’s been so impactful across the game [in Australia]. Not only with people and communities, but on players and them actually individually getting better... he has helped Australia believe again in itself, and now a lot of the players trust each other to deliver on the performances that are required.”

The players

Schmidt has given Test debuts to 24 players during his time at the helm. Harry Wilson, Len Ikitau and Tom Wright have been transformed from World Cup rejects to key Wallabies.

Second-rower Jeremy Williams debuted in Schmidt’s first Test, against Wales in July 2024, and will win his 26th Test cap against Ireland on Saturday.

Speaking ahead of Saturday’s Test against Ireland at Allianz Stadium in Sydney, back-rower Rob Valetini insisted the systems and methods put in place by Schmidt would continue to bear fruit long after his departure.

“I would probably say as players, probably just through training, I think our habits and things that we’ve been trying to work on have changed a lot,” Valetini said.

“I’d also say our mindset as well going into games. When we first came in, and we started training, he pulled us up a lot on things and I think we were just trying to drive a lot of high standards.”

The legacy

Ireland coach Andy Farrell is uniquely placed to appraise Schmidt’s Wallabies tenure, having worked under him as an assistant for three seasons before replacing him as head coach in 2019.

Farrell has coached against Schmidt’s Wallabies five times: three as Lions head coach and in two November victories in 2024 and 2025 in charge of Ireland.

Though he left in 2019, Schmidt’s presence is still felt at Ireland’s training centre in north Dublin, where players hold each other to account on every detail of their games – a legacy of the Schmidt years. Farrell believes the New Zealander’s time in charge of the Wallabies will, similarly, create a solid foundation that will benefit Australian rugby in the long term.

“It’s not just how he coaches the side, but how he’s grown Australian rugby as a whole,” Farrell said.

“I suppose that was his remit, to hand the baton over in a healthy place. I’m sure he’ll have a connection there, right through to the World Cup and maybe beyond that. I don’t know, but I think the same thing will happen, like it happened in Ireland.

“People will feel the effects of what Joe’s done for years to come, and I suppose that’ll be his legacy to Australian rugby.”

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The Sydney Morning Herald

It is time Australian rugby started to throw some punches

Paul Cully - 5 min read

In the spirit of the Nations Championship format, it is time to choose a camp.

North or south? Or, more accurately, the Rugby Championship versus the Six Nations, as for the purposes of the Rugby Championship, Japan have somehow jumped the equatorial line into the southern hemisphere.

It will be a clean sweep for South Africa, New Zealand, Australia and Argentina (SANZAAR) in round one of the Nations Championship, followed by another in the World Rugby Junior World Championship in Georgia.

No pressure Wallabies or Junior Wallabies, but by the middle of next week SANZAAR nations could be 4-0 up in the Nations and all through to the semifinals of the juniors.

Joe Schmidt’s Wallabies team to face Ireland has rewarded form in most selections, and the bench looks strong.

Chris Whitaker’s Junior Wallabies have been impressive and the French under-20s, whom they will play in the semi-finals next week, don’t look as strong as previous iterations.

As for Ireland, their under-20s were put to the sword 62-40 by our Argentinian comrades on Thursday night, and Andy Farrell’s senior side is at the end of a long season without key individuals.

The presence of Tadhg Beirne and Nick Timoney on Ireland’s bench should give the Wallabies a case of the cold sweats, especially with no Carlo Tizzano to counter them at the breakdown. But the injury-enforced absence of No. 10 Jack Crowley is a big one after the Munster playmaker reclaimed the jersey ahead of Sam Prendergast during the Six Nations.

Farrell has also cleverly compensated for the Japan-bound James Lowe in the No. 11 jersey by picking Jamie Osborne, who has a similarly big left boot, while Hugo Keenan is one of the best players in the world to watch, in any position.

Yet, new Wallabies No. 9 Ryan Lonergan was arguably the best Australian player in Super Rugby this year and the fit and in-form No. 10 options of Carter Gordon and Ben Donaldson are a big upgrade from the corresponding period last year, when Schmidt lost Noah Lolesio in the Fiji Test in Newcastle and was forced to turn to a not-yet-ready Tom Lynagh.

Incidentally, the Wallabies owe Ireland captain Dan Sheehan one for his horrible clean out on Lynagh during the British and Irish Lions series last year. Hopefully, that incident has been stored on the memory sticks of some Wallabies.

Turning to the other games, the All Blacks take on Brumby/Waratah-turned-Frenchman Tom Staniforth in Christchurch, where France’s depth will go under the microscope as much as new All Blacks No. 10 Ruben Love.

We keep hearing how many good players the French have, so they should cope without their Toulouse players unless their depth has been over-hyped.

They certainly have developed an appetite for Australian players to plug the holes in their development systems. So, it will be an All Blacks win in the south island, possibly by 13 plus.

In Johannesburg, the locals haven’t bothered to turn up for the visit of England, saving their money for the All Blacks later in the year.

With plenty of empty seats predicted at Ellis Park, the Springboks should thump the English, who are without their warrior-captain Maro Itoje and have a couple of key injuries in the front row. Good luck with that against the Springboks’ mighty scrum.

Jetting over to Cordoba in Argentina, the Scots will fancy themselves to fly the Six Nations flag against the Pumas. However, they are missing their brilliant No. 10 Finn Russell, while Argentina will be run by the outstanding Tomas Albornoz and the dangerous Mateo Carreras and Rodrigo Isgro on the wings.

If they get a roll-on in front of their passionate home fans, they will be hard to stop.

In Cardiff, where Fiji are playing their “home” game against Wales, the Fijians have been installed as warm favourites - and deservedly so. Their backline is outrageous, and the crisis-torn Welsh will do well to contain the likes of fullback Salesi Rayasi.

The “south” might even go 6-0 as Japan host Italy in Tokyo. Eddie Jones has named a university player at No. 10, Ryunosuke Ito, but Japan’s advantage might be in the grunt provided by Warner Dearns, Harry Hockings and Ben Gunter.

The SANZAAR sweep will probably rest on the Wallabies getting the job done in Sydney. Australia has a poor recent record against Ireland and has no right to go into the Test with high expectations.

But with a home Rugby World Cup not too far away, it is time Australian rugby started to throw some punches.

The Sydney Morning Herald

Wallabies to deploy new halves combination against Ireland

Iain Payten - 5 min read

The Wallabies are set to deploy a halves combination who have not played together, with Carter Gordon and Ryan Lonergan given the nod in the crucial playmaker roles for the year’s opening Test against Ireland.

The Wallabies will begin their season on Saturday at a sold-out Allianz Stadium against a strong Irish team, who are ranked No.3 in the world and are aiming to win a sixth consecutive game against Australia.

Ahead of an unusual handover to Les Kiss, Joe Schmidt is entering the last month of his tenure as Wallabies coach and he will name a relatively settled team to face Ireland, according to informed sources who are unable to speak publicly.

The merry-go-round of the Wallabies No.10 position is set to continue, however, with Gordon beating Ben Donaldson to the job. Both players enjoyed strong Super Rugby seasons, with the Reds and Force respectively.

It will be the third different starting Wallabies five-eighth in as many Tests. But Gordon’s selection is as close to continuity as possible, with incumbent Tane Edmed and James O’Connor - the man who played No.10 against Ireland on the spring tour last year - both having missed this squad.

Gordon, who switched back from the NRL club the Gold Coast Titans in October, played in the Wallabies’ loss to Italy on the second game of that tour, but suffered a quad injury.

The 25-year-old was selected to play in the Wallabies’ last game of the tour against France but was ruled out on Test eve, after tweaking the same injury while kicking. Edmed was called up to start.

Donaldson was not selected in the tour squad but is set to return on the bench against Ireland in Sydney.

Lonergan is tipped to make his starting debut for the Wallabies after the 28-year-old debuted last year, and played six Tests from the bench.

Incumbent Wallabies halfback Jake Gordon was ruled out after suffering a ruptured Achilles tendon injury in the last round of Super Rugby, leaving a choice between Lonergan and Tate McDermott.

McDermott played three games for the Reds this season, however, after suffering from a serious hamstring injury in a Bledisloe Cup clash in Auckland last September.

Lonergan’s kicking game, in general play and off the tee, likely got him the nod to start ahead of McDermott, who has preferred as a finishing bench weapon by Schmidt for much of the last two years. The absence of the dynamic Queenslander was under-recognised on the Wallabies’ winless spring tour, when the Wallabies were in the fight at halftime in each match but fell away late.

Lonergan and Gordon have not played a minute together, however. The pair were in the same squad in the Italy Test but Gordon came off injured before Lonergan was used off the bench.

The lack of combination will bleed into the midfield, too, where Len Ikitau is expected to return and partner Joseph-Aukuso Suaalii.

While those two have played plenty of rugby as a partnership, Gordon and Ikitau have only played a handful of minutes together for the Wallabies, in 2023. Gordon replaced Ikitau from the bench when the latter broke his shoulder in a loss to Argentina. Ikitau was later one of a number of stars overlooked by Eddie Jones for the World Cup.

Gordon then departed for the NRL in 2024, and Ikitau wasn’t selected for Carter’s one comeback Test against Italy on last year’s tour.

Lonergan shapes as the probable goal kicker for the Wallabies, given he does the job for the Brumbies. Gordon began kicking in the last few games for Queensland and is solid enough, but the No.10 is not as experienced as Lonergan.

Asked on Monday if he would take on the goalkicking, Lonergan said: “Typically it gets spoken about a bit later in the week, but yeah, I’d be happy to do that.

“The 10s were kicking as well and so not sure, we’ll see what happens.”

Now an experienced 28-year-old, who has 108 Super Rugby games under his belt, Lonergan said he was returning to the Wallabies feeling far more comfortable.

“Coming back in this year, I’ve got a bit more confidence knowing that I’ve got a bit of time under my belt now,” Lonergan said.

“I had a lot of exposure this year, you know, I played a lot of minutes and … I started to see the game pretty well. I’d say that that’s probably the biggest thing I noticed was just how comfortable I felt out there and that sort of seems to slow down a little bit for you when you’ve spent a lot of time on the pitch.”

Max Jorgensen: The making of a ‘generational talent’ hailed as rugby’s future

Rugby’s new hope is a ‘generational talent’ on the pitch and off it. A grass roots star determined to return Australia to the top of the international pile.

Jamie Pandaram

@JamiePandaram

15 min read

Max Jorgensen looks up. The frenzied kaleidoscope of players moving around him slows. The roar of the crowd becomes muted. There’s a tackler, with shoulders primed to thump his ribs, ready to bring him down or bundle him over the touchline a few feet away.

Time stands still as his mind comes to a singular focus. “I back myself against you,” ­Jorgensen tells himself. “I’m better than you. I’m going to beat you.”

The 21-year-old Sydneysider is no trash-talker. You won’t see him conducting elaborate try celebrations on the rugby pitch or baiting his opposition, but deep within he carries the self-belief of a world champion boxer.

“You’ve got to have that mindset, no matter who’s in front of you,” a soft-voiced and steely-eyed Jorgensen tells me over coffee on a crisp morning in May. For him, there’s no wavering from a contest. “You’ve just got to massively back yourself. I get the ball, I look at him, and I go, I’m beating you here, no matter what. I’m ­getting through.”

And so often he does, leaving defenders flat-footed, arms clutching air.

It’s a talent Wallabies coach Joe Schmidt says he’s only seen in a handful of players over his own two-decade-long career, before rattling off a roll-call of rugby royalty. “Will Jordan comes to mind, and Mark Tele’a – they can both beat you in a phone box,” Schmidt says of the All Blacks stars. “Cheslin Kolbe and Kurt-Lee Arendse, the two South Africans.

Immanuel Feyi-Waboso of England, you know, Brian O’Driscoll was a bit like that …”

Brian O’Driscoll. The sixth most-capped player in rugby union history, the highest-scoring centre of all time. A legend.

“Max is working towards some of those things that those guys have been doing for many years,” says Schmidt.

Jorgensen, a physical and fast outside back who can play on the wing or at fullback, carries a rare and strange weight on his young ­shoulders just as the game of rugby union reaches a fascinating juncture. In recent years in this country, where NRL and AFL remain the ­dominant football codes, and cricketers, tennis stars and soccer players attract much of the ­national spotlight, rugby has been battling for attention.

That will all change next year when more than a quarter of a million international tourists descend on Australia for the 2027 Rugby World Cup, the third-largest sporting event on the planet behind the FIFA World Cup and Olympic Games.

After several lean years of results, the Wallabies are now ranked eighth in the world, behind teams like Scotland and Argentina, and only marginally ahead of Fiji, but as with any host nation during a World Cup, support for the home team – and expectations – will be high.

There is an opening for a poster boy. And all signs are that Jorgensen, a second-generation Wallaby from the inner-west suburb of Balmain, a born and bred product of the game they play in heaven, is shaping up to be that face.

Fans know it, and the top brass at Rugby Australia do too. It’s why in January, the governing body tabled a multimillion-dollar five-year contract extension for him to remain in the game until the end of 2031. Only two other players in Australian history – Israel Folau and former Wallabies captain Michael Hooper – have been offered five-year contracts.

“There’s probably a fairly limited number of players that come through the system that are genuine generational talent,” says Rugby Australia chief executive Phil Waugh, acknowledging Jorgensen’s outstanding potential. Waugh doesn’t just mean on the pitch, either. The game’s boss has been looking for a different story to tell the Australian public about rugby union. One where talent is nurtured, harboured and grown in-house, and the sticky fingers of rugby league scouts are kept at bay.

“The story of Max Jorgensen, coming from a junior mini rugby club through to performing on the global stage in a Wallaby jersey, is just a great example of how we’d like to see the game portrayed in the public eye. Generational talent is not just physical attributes and what a player can bring on the field, but also culturally … in terms of elevating rugby in Australia and the connection to the community.”

Jorgensen re-signed on a deal reportedly worth about $900,000 a season; it includes clauses that will allow him to play two stints overseas (and capitalise on the riches of foreign clubs in Europe or Japan), while remaining eligible for the Wallabies right through to the Rugby World Cup in 2031. His journey might be the ­blueprint for rugby to secure its young talent and ensure the game’s future.

So, how did he get here? And how was he not poached – like so many others – by rugby’s rival code? Well, before we consider Max’s journey, fans should be reminded of the path trodden by his father, Peter.

Peter Jorgensen played two Tests on the wing for the Wallabies against Scotland in 1992, in a team that was captained by Nick Farr-Jones and featured legendary names like David Campese, Michael Lynagh, Tim Horan, John Eales, and Phil Kearns. Two years later he switched to rugby league to play with the Sydney Roosters, then the Penrith Panthers.

The rugby old guard weren’t happy – and when he scored eight tries in his first 10 games for the Roosters, rugby league administrators were crowing.

So when young Max Jorgensen burst onto the scene, performing brilliantly in junior representative rugby league before he’d reached his teenage years, the scouts had him on their radar. He would go on to star in the GPS rugby union competition with his school, St Joseph’s College in Hunters Hill, and before the Jorgensens knew it offers were flying in from NRL clubs and Super Rugby.

Peter and his wife Johanna made a pact with Max that he wouldn’t sign a thing. Not until he’d finished his studies. But it didn’t stop the wooing.

In Year 11, he spent six weeks training with the Roosters’ first-grade squad under coach Trent Robinson. The only other student allowed to train with the NRL side was Robert Toia – now a Queensland State of Origin star.

“There are pros and cons, obviously, to be in your last year of school and getting chased by league and union, that’s the dream,” Jorgensen says now of the scrabble over his signature. “I hadn’t even left school, and both codes wanted me. That’s so special in itself. I never took that for granted. Whichever way I went, I wasn’t going to regret it.”

Nevertheless, the pressure was intense. After six months “trying to work out what I wanted to do with my life”, he made the call. Like so many of the current generation, Max Jorgensen was going to look past rugby union and head to rugby league, where traditionally the path to playing professionally was clearer.

Peter was in Paris at a friend’s ­wedding when the call came through. “He told me, ‘I’ve made my decision, I’m going to league’, which I was a bit surprised at, but I was very happy for him. I thought that was it, and that was fine. I rang his manager [Clinton Schifcofske] and we started on the negotiations.”

Only things didn’t end there. Several weeks later, at an unrelated meeting with Rugby Australia, Schifcofske sat talking through the deals of several of his other clients. One of the suits inquired about Jorgensen and was told the young speedster had made up his mind; sorry folks, he was headed to league.

“All of a sudden, Rugby Australia just backflipped, said, ‘OK, we need to fix this’,” Peter says. “It was a sliding doors moment.”

Rugby Australia took the unprecedented step of naming Jorgensen, then still a Year 12 student and the captain of his school’s First XV, in their Australia A squad to tour Japan in October 2022 as a development player. It was all the convincing Jorgensen needed that not only was he already in the national picture, but that with rugby, he could travel the world.

He recalls: “My dad and mum were so ­supportive through it all. They never really put any pressure on me.” But surely Jorgensen Snr had a preference? “Max was really confused throughout the whole process. Towards the end of it, he pinned me down, and he just said, ‘Dad, you’ve been telling me all year, 50-50, that you don’t care where I go, but you do want me slightly to go to rugby, don’t you?’ And I said, ‘Well … it might be 51-49’.”

Sometimes, professional sport is all about the one-percenters.

“I think ‘Mum’, ‘Dad’ and ‘Ball’ were his first three words,” says Jo Jorgensen, Max’s mother, who seems only too happy for her 21-year-old son to still live at home with his parents (alongside older brother Jake and younger sister Zoe).

“He does get very well looked after by my beautiful wife,” Peter says. “There’s a lot of laundry and cooking going on, which is not done by Max. He’ll milk it for as long as he can.”

Jo says she gets a thrill when the doorbell rings and a horde of children awaits wide-eyed outside. “They’ll ring the doorbell and ask, ‘Is this where Max Jorgensen lives?’ You can have 20 kids at your front door,” Jo says. “And Max is so good with them. He will always come out for photos and a chat, give them some signed gear.”

Jake, who recognised early that Max was ­extremely ordered as a child, and would move around figurines on his desk to drive him mad, keeps his younger brother grounded. “I am so proud of him, to see it come to fruition like this,” Jake says. “But obviously it is weird – you don’t really realise that he’s a celebrity of sorts, because he’s not a celebrity to me.

“Someone at the pub will be like, ‘Oh, Max’s brother, how’s Max going?’ You never really get used to people treating your little brother as a celebrity. We’ve got to keep him humble. We’re always into him at the dinner table, ­family gatherings, making sure he doesn’t get ahead of himself, always keeping him honest.”

It doesn’t surprise those closest to him that Jorgensen has now been capped 20 times, with a highlight reel that includes a try in the 84th minute to defeat England at Twickenham in 2024, and his spectacular catch-and-sprint ­effort in the opening Test of the 2025 British & Irish Lions series.

This season, Super Rugby fans were treated to some of Jorgensen’s finest footwork, with brilliant tries for the Waratahs against the Highlanders, Fijian Drua and ACT Brumbies. His form inspired a now infamous quip in ­commentary from Hooper that has since stuck: Jorgensen is “Mr World Class”.

But the signs of his skill and talent were on show early. “I remember him playing under-8s, and there was a game where he did a chip-and-chase and ran through a bunch of defenders, got tackled close to the line and had the timing and sense to put the ball over his head to score,” Peter says. “Sometimes you wondered if he was just good for someone his age, but he kept playing against older kids and kept doing the same things.”

Despite his obvious talent, Jo remembers how he was too embarrassed to be seen at school in his representative rugby kit outside training, preferring to change in the car, out of sight of his peers. “What I can say about Max through this whole journey is he hasn’t changed, he’s remained completely the same person,” Jo says. “Extremely humble – he ­almost avoids the attention.”

The young men who have played alongside him agree.

Jorgensen’s cousin Oscar, a year younger, recalls how selfless young Max was when they began high school together and played at Joey’s. “There were probably a few ­occasions where Max could go on and score tries by himself, but he trusted us to get the ball over the line,” Oscar says.

“That’s just his character, that unselfish nature that he has to set up his teammates. Having someone like Max put confidence into you was huge. He went a long way to building up the footy ability of everyone in the team.”

Patrick Young, son of former Wallaby Bill Young, has known Jorgensen since they were five years old. “No matter how big he’s gotten in such a short span of time, he’s always up for it, and when I say he’s always up for it, he’s always up to go on and grab a bite for dinner or go on and grab a beer, if he’s available,” says Young, who is now contracted to the Canterbury-Bankstown Bulldogs NRL team. “I’ll always cherish how he’s made me feel, although he’s rapidly become this big thing.”

Blessed as Jorgensen is with natural skills, as soon as he and Jake were old enough to develop hand-eye coordination their dad developed a strict backyard routine for them – even after training sessions with their club teams. “He’d make me do 100 passes every day, 50 on each hand – usually a few more on my bad hand to be honest,” Jorgensen says. “We’d go in the backyard. Even days we didn’t have training, which we didn’t love at the time. When I was young, I was like, ‘I’m not doing that, I hate it, I don’t want to do it’. But I’m glad he forced me to do it. It made me a better player.

“You’ve got to go above and beyond to be the best player you can be. And if you want to make it to the highest level, you’ve got to do things by yourself, things that people don’t see.”

Peter, who went on to finish his playing career in the UK (Max was born in Sheffield and holds a British passport), understood the long-term payoff. “It was a fine balance between not getting him to do too much and stifling any enjoyment that he and his brother had for the game, but at the same time, I knew they had lots of ability and needed the additional practice that everyone does,” Peter says.

“It’s just the basics … if you weren’t doing these kinds of repetition, basic skills, then you weren’t going to get there. That’s exactly what first graders do anyway when they get older. So I was trying to get them to focus, but without being too much of a crazy helicopter parent.”

Off the pitch, Jorgensen has needed to ­discover resilience when the highs of ­professional sport gave way to the inevitable lows of injury. He completed his maiden Super Rugby season with NSW in 2023; on the ­surface, his charmed ride continued when he was selected in Eddie Jones’ World Cup squad. But that first year was hardly the smooth ride he’d hoped for.

“First year of Super Rugby, round two for the ‘Tahs, I did my AC joint [where the collarbone connects to the shoulder blade], so I was jabbing my shoulder [with painkillers] for the whole season,” Jorgensen says. “I was an 18-year-old coming out of school. I’ve never jabbed myself before. Then at the end of that first season, I did my knee pretty bad, a grade three MCL, and then partially tore my ACL. In the moment, that was completely devastating. Any athlete knows that.”

He saw four surgeons – two recommended surgery, another two said “back yourself and rehab it”, and he did the latter. It healed in time for World Cup selection, but then came ­another setback: in just the second Wallabies training session in France, Jorgensen jumped to catch a ball and broke his ankle. “I just felt like, ‘Why is it always me?’ There are probably 30 other guys out there. Why am I always getting injured?’ That was pretty much three injuries in a row. I had to miss out playing at that World Cup due to that training injury. It really hurt.”

Through his rehabilitation, Jorgensen began to see things through a new lens. “I switched it to, ‘That’s footy’. It’s part of footy, it’s a contact sport, that’s going to happen. I can’t change that, so how can I bounce back? Shifting that mindset was massive for me.”

Almost a year later, in August 2024, under new coach Schmidt, Jorgensen was picked to make his Test debut against world champions South Africa in Perth. “It was my greatest achievement to date,” Jorgensen says. “Bloody amazing. I was so grateful for the opportunity Joe gave me to put on that gold jersey, play for your country, and represent your loved ones. It’s a very special feeling.”

And one that only two years previously, he’d almost denied himself. In the end, playing for the Wallabies on the world stage was worth it.

“You grow up watching State of Origin, that’s an amazing game, to be out there would be sick,” Jorgensen says. “But then you go down the path of playing for the Wallabies against the British & Irish Lions, or in a World Cup … I think some of those big events were hard to go past. I really wanted to be involved in those types of things.”

When his contract negotiations came around again earlier this year, he says, despite media reports suggesting he was weighing up rugby league offers, the decision “was a lot easier this time around”.

“After playing for the Waratahs and the Wallabies for two or three years leading into that, I was like, ‘I really want to be successful within those two teams’. I want to do something great. Not only as myself, but as a team.

“Something I want to do is be a part of the Waratahs for a long time and win a Super Rugby title. I think that’s made my decision pretty easy. A home World Cup is coming up. To be able to win a World Cup on home soil also makes your decision pretty easy.”

After last year’s spring tour of Europe with the Wallabies, Jorgensen hit the road on a­ ­driving holiday around Norway, Sweden, Finland and the Netherlands with his long-term girlfriend Chilli Evans.

The daughter of former TV chef Pete Evans and his first wife, Astrid Ellinger, Evans has ­virtually no knowledge of rugby, Jorgensen says. “She actually doesn’t want to know about it. When I start talking about it, she doesn’t want to hear it – which is good!”

He says Chilli – and travel – have given him the priceless gift of perspective. “Footy’s not the only thing in life,” he says. “There’s so much more to life to enjoy and to love. To experience different cultures and see how they live on that side of the world is pretty cool. You learn things.

“Say, you have a bad game, well, you can’t let that knock you around for the next whole week, and then you’re miserable around your loved ones and your friends. You’re going to drop the ball. You’re going to miss a tackle. That’s just footy.

“You’ve got to review yourself hard and be like, ‘How can I be better in this situation?’ I like to always bring myself back to playing under-12s. Why am I playing this sport? It’s because I’m having fun with my mates and I love the sport. I try to get that outside noise away and just be like, ‘I’m playing footy, I love it, this is what I want to do’.”

Schmidt will be hoping Jorgensen is channelling his love of the game into his finest form when the Wallabies face Ireland in the opening game of the Nations Championship in Sydney on July 4. “Max is one of those understated kids who is very confident, but there’s zero arrogance. It’s almost paradoxical. He just wants the ball, and he wants to play, and he’s got a good instinct for the game,” Schmidt says.

“He’ll want to do well individually because he knows that if he does well individually, that contributes to the team performance, so I’d just love for him to get a little bit of time and space and be able to exploit some of those small spaces.”

The past decade has been tough going for Wallabies fans, who last saw their team lift the Webb Ellis Cup at a World Cup in 1999, and a Bledisloe Cup in 2002. According to Jorgensen, a change is gonna come.

“Just stick with us, keep supporting us, and the results will come,” he says. “It’s been a very similar group for the past two or three years now. The boys are getting more and more Test caps to their name and a lot more experience and learning from their mistakes. The results will come our way, and we’re going to turn into one of the best teams in the world."