Saint-Etienne: Wallabies great Matt Burke believes Ben Donaldson deserves another chance at fullback for this weekend’s World Cup match against Fiji and has applauded Australia’s willingness to kick penalties and take points on offer.
Eddie Jones’ decision to start Donaldson at fullback against Georgia for the first time in his short Test career was viewed by many as a risk, but it paid off for the Wallabies as the New South Welshman scored two tries in a 25-point haul that included six kicks at goal.
Donaldson became the third Wallabies fullback to score 25 points in a single World Cup match.
Burke chalked up 25 points against France in the 1999 World Cup final, while Chris Latham ran in five tries against Namibia in a 142-0 demolition job in 2003.
Andrew Kellaway was the unlucky man at the selection table last week, having been picked at fullback for both Tests against New Zealand and then a warm-up clash against France. Australia lost all three Tests.
Burke is intrigued to see which way Jones goes for Australia’s second match of the tournament on Sunday (Monday 1:45am AEST) in Saint-Etienne, but feels Donaldson has done enough to get the nod for the Fiji fixture.
The Wallabies will name their team for the Fiji match on Friday.
“I can only imagine after the performance of last week, you can’t rotate the team around,” Burke told this masthead. “You want to play a strong team against Fiji. That scoreboard pressure is going to be so important. It lends itself to choosing Donaldson at 15.
“He did incredibly well the other day. He turned up in the right spots when it was on. A fortuitous try that started from [Taniela] Tupou when he went over the top there [with a pass]. You’ve got to put yourself in those spots and find the line.
“His goal-kicking was great. Twenty-five points in a World Cup game; that’s pretty special. He’ll remember that for a long time.
Thumbs up: Ben Donaldson was man of the match.Credit: Getty
“Undroppable is a strong word. From what he proved the other day, he’ll be a massive cog in this team now to make sure they score points.”
Donaldson’s selection was partly due to the poor kicking of No.10 Carter Gordon against France.
Jones wanted to alleviate pressure on Carter by giving Donaldson kicking duties off the tee, something Burke was surprised by.
“With Jones going all-in on Carter Gordon, I thought Donaldson would have been the back-up kicker to give the young bloke some confidence against a team like Georgia,” Burke said. “You could argue that the goals that he kicked would have been a nice way to ease into a World Cup. Turns out, Eddie had a different plan.”
Burke feels for Kellaway but is bullish about the fact that Australia needs a world-class kicker in the starting XV.
The 81-Test former Wallaby enjoyed seeing the scoreboard tick over against Georgia in three-point increments in the first half.
“I’ll never forget when I came off a plane and one of the journos 25 years ago said, ‘you’re only in the team because you kick goals’. I said, ‘yeah, great’,” Burke said. “If you can contribute 12, 15, 18 points a game, you should be in the team. If Donaldson can rack up three or four penalties and conversions, it becomes a nice little points haul.
Matt Burke in action for the Wallabies at the 2003 World Cup.Credit: Getty
“As Jones said the other day, at half-time we hadn’t won the game but we were on our way because of the scoreboard pressure. When you’re out in front like that, teams put pressure on themselves to play catch-up footy. You see opposition players’ heads go down when points get knocked over.
“You don’t want to create pressure on yourself by kicking for the corner.”
The Wallabies have not lost to Fiji since 1954 but Burke is adamant it won’t be an easy victory.
“This is going to be an incredibly physical game,” Burke said. “This is not a lay-down misere. This is a case of battling though and knowing you’re going to get whacked on the way to victory. But if they do that, Australia put themselves in a great spot to make it through to a quarter-final.”
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