Mark Nawaqanitawase’s end-of-season trip to Auckland ended in tears – of the good and bad variety.
The Waratahs winger joined a long list of young Australian players in holiday mode caught off guard by a phone call telling them to pack their bags for a Wallabies spring tour of Europe.
By last Sunday morning, a day after Australia A’s final match against a Japanese XV, Wallabies selectors had finalised their 36-man squad for five upcoming Tests against Scotland, France, Italy, Ireland and Wales.
The plan was to tell players from the Australia A cohort early on Sunday morning if they had been picked to head up north.
When Nawaqanitawase left Osaka with the rest of the Australia A squad on Saturday evening, he assumed his season was over. Unbeknown to the Wallabies, he had booked an onward flight to Auckland on the Sunday, two hours after landing in Sydney.
“It’s a funny story,” the Waratahs winger told reporters before flying out to Europe this week. “I was actually on a plane. I was off to New Zealand to go on holidays. I got off and I’d seen I’d missed a call from [Wallabies coach Dave] Rennie. I tried to give him a call back and he didn’t pick up. I was just waiting for him to call back. I obviously had to come back [from Auckland] straight away. I was heading over to see my partner and then I had to break the news that I had to go back.”
Mark Nawaqanitawase scores a try for the Waratahs.Credit:Getty
How did his girlfriend take the news that Nawaqanitawase needed to be back on a plane to Australia within 24 hours?
“I guess she was happy, but at the same time sad … a bit of tears here and there,” Nawaqanitawase said. “I felt like I had a few players ahead of me.”
By the time the Wallabies landed in Lyon on Thursday afternoon, Australian time, Nawaqanitawase had chalked up almost 30,000 kilometres in less than a week.
Similar stories to Nawaqanitawase’s have become the stuff of Wallabies legend. Six years ago, Andrew Kellaway, now an established member of this Wallabies side, was picked by Michael Cheika as a development player for the 2016 grand slam tour.
Mark Nawaqanitawase speaks to media this week before Australia’s departure to Europe.Credit:Flavio Brancaleone
But Kellaway was deep in the throes of Mad Monday celebrations at the time, and had a flight booked to Mexico the following day with mates.
“We were all on Mad Monday, so I had to pass that information onto a couple of drunk blokes [I was travelling with] but they were pretty happy for me, I think,” Kellaway said at the time. “Any other excuse [and] they wouldn’t have let me out of it.”
A year later, Blake Enever was on his way to a National Rugby Championship match when his phone rang.
“I thought it was maybe one of the guys asking for a coffee,” Enever said. “I called back, he missed it, but then straight away they called back and said, ‘It’s Michael Cheika. Mate, do you want to come on the spring tour?’”
Nawaqaniatwase has been on the Wallabies’ radar since two tries on debut against the Crusaders in 2020 but his rise this season has been remarkable.
At the start of the year, Nawaqanitawase was so far down the pecking order at the Waratahs that caring the national team was the least of his worries.
“His footy career was at the crossroads,” said Waratahs coach Darren Coleman in May. “He had no chance of getting picked. We went to our first trial in Roma against the Reds and he was the seventh-ranked back three player. He didn’t even make the two teams that played in that trial.”
Nawaqanitawase had to wait until round four to get his chance, before a couple of decent showings off the bench saw Coleman reward him with a start.
Despite an excellent end to the Super Rugby season, Nawaqaniatwase was initially overlooked for Australia A honours but earned a late call-up. Now he’s ahead of Suliasi Vunivalu in the Australian pecking order.
“I’ll take it all in,” Nawaqanitawase said. “I’d love to get a run. It’d be pretty cool to get a jersey and run around with some of the boys.”
With a vertical leap that would worry any opposition coach, Nawaqanitawase says he grew up wanting to emulate Israel Folau.
“Izzy Folau was awesome to watch. I feel like I can kind of do some of the things that he did,” Nawaqanitawase said. “You grow up thinking you want to do that thing. He made the game enjoyable to watch. I want to do the same thing.”
The Wallabies have arrived in France where they will begin preparations for their first match against Scotland in Edinburgh on October 29 (3.30am AEDT Sunday October 30).
Watch all the action from the Women’s Rugby World Cup from New Zealand with every match streaming ad-free, live and on demand on Stan Sport. Continues this Saturday with Scotland v Australia (12.30pm AEDT), USA v Japan (3.15pm AEDT) and France v England (5.45pm AEDT).
