LONG READ How the Lions will heap pressure upon Australia's million-dollar man

Does Joseph-Aukuso Sua’ali’i belong in the Wallabies team? There is an easy answer: of course he does. He is not just the six-million-dollar man, he is the nine-million-dollar man. When the league star was first signed by Rugby Australia before the Wallaby end-of-year tour in 2024, his deal was announced as a three-year contract initially worth AUD $1.6m p/a. Since then, it has emerged a hidden two-year player option could add another $4m to the pot. That is a sweet deal indeed.

It is already more money than Sua’ali’i could earn had he stayed home in the NRL, and it creates a double burden: on the player to justify the price tag, and on Rugby Australia for rolling the dice on another leaguer in a time of financial drought.

The pressure has been ramped up further by a Wallaby midfield in a state of selection flux. Joe Schmidt’s expected starting pick at 10, Noah Lolesio, has been ruled out of the Lions series, after undergoing surgery on a neck injury sustained during Australia’s nail-biting win over Fiji in Newcastle. Tom Lynagh starts in the pivot position. Len Ikitau is one of the two best defensive outside centres in the world, but he has been moved in one spot to 12 to accommodate the ex-Sydney Rooster.

In the circumstances, the return of James O’Connor cannot come soon enough.  The 35- year-old will now be relied upon to provide a steady hand on the midfield tiller, whether he plays in the Test series or not. It may not be the second coming but it will add value on and off the field. Schmidt hurried to justify the selection U-turn at the announcement of his 36-man squad.

“I’ve been talking to James for a long time, right through the Super Rugby season,” he said.

“It’s not that far away from where we started. Obviously, we started with Noah Lolesio and with his injury, we needed to replace him.

Our [remaining] 10s are young in experience. I spoke to Tom Lynagh about the influence James had on him and his development [at Queensland Reds], which was positive.

“I spoke to David Havili, who is with the AUNZ Invitational team at the moment. I’ve coached him and have a lot of time for his opinion, and he said James was a real help with the two young 10s at the Crusaders [Rivez Reihana and Taha Kemara].

“They were all positives and James in his own right has played solidly, coming on at the back end of games for the Crusaders.”

‘JOC’ only found out about his selection an hour and a half before the press conference: “At first I thought he [Schmidt] was taking the p**s,” he said. He only happened to be there because he was coaching the ‘Gen Sevens’ girls at Ballymore. Then he was due to pick up a UK visa ahead of his move to Leicester Tigers. After his first day in camp, O’Connor was promptly pictured with stitches above his left eye and a long cut on his left cheek, but nothing could keep the beaming smile off his face.

“Of course, I want the starting spot [in the Lions series],” he said.

“Maybe the other guys [Lynagh and Ben Donaldson] will have the first bite at the cherry as they were in the first squad. [But] I’ve said to Joe in the past, if there is anything I can do to help with knowledge I can share.

“A Lions series is bigger than a World Cup. I didn’t take it for granted in 2013, I just wasn’t aware of it.

“You usually get one shot at it so you want your aim to be true.”

It might have been a moment of ‘happy chaos’ for the Crusaders playmaker and mentor but it cannot disguise the fact the Wallaby midfield is leaning into chaos rather more than it is embracing the happiness.

Despite the efforts of Ikitau to sew all the disparate pieces together in the last-ditch win at Newcastle, there was an abiding sense from the game the thinking at 10, 12 and 13 is in a rare state of disarray, and much of that muddle can be traced back to the inexperience of Sua’ali’i in the centres.

JAS made four mistakes in offensive tackle situations which led directly to Fijian turnovers, and that will drive Schmidt wild. If there is one part of the game that triggers the ex-Ireland supremo and All Blacks assistant, inaccuracy in contact is it. The first two turnovers involved a failure to secure the ball either during or after the carry.

Sua’ali’i will have cultivated a completely different set of habits in his league career, and none of those would have included the need to protect the ball from a strip in the tackle, or a pilfer after the ball-carrier is brought to ground. In league, the defenders all trot back 10 metres and you get up and play the ball unmolested. Ingrained habits are hard to break.

Australia also lost a couple of balls in contact when Sua’ali’i was the main cleanout support for the ball-carrier.

Fiji’s blockbuster 12 Josua Tuisova is not the easiest man to remove when he is locked on to the ball, but you have expected the nine-million-dollar man to score a knockdown on at least one of those occasions.

The other issue was Sua’ali’i’s role on defence. During his rookie tour in November, the Wallabies tried to hide his inexperience in union systems by tucking him away on the short side as much as possible. Like it or not, the 13 needs to be a principal decision-maker in the sister code and too often Sua’ali’i was caught in two minds, wondering what to do. That committed the Wallabies to a passive drift where they struggled to shut down a chain of passes made across the width of the field.

In the first clip, the Fijian kick return begins just outside the 22, but the first tackle is only made on the green-and-gold 40m line, another 30m upfield. On the following play, the Wallabies are as passive with the ball moving from right to left as they are tracking in the opposite direction. In the second example, they have the numbers to shut the attack down but the first back on the left [JAS] backs off and off until Fiji are able to create a break with their offloading game.

It was much the same from scrums.

The first attack starts around 35m from the Fiji line but Sua’ali’i does not make contact in the tackle until well inside the Wallaby 40m line. All Fiji have to do is make two simple passes to gain 30m of territory, under no pressure at all. In the second clip, two big Fijian ball-carriers [12 Tuisova and eight Viliame Mata] make the initial dents, again exposing Sua’ali’i as the first backline defender after two rucks, and his instinct is to slide off even though the attack has already penetrated deep into the Wallaby 22. There comes a point when instead of giving ground, you have to take it, and Sua’ali’i has not worked out when that moment arrives in his rugby career thus far.

The British and Irish Lions are currently averaging around two passes made for every ruck they build in 2025, and that is unusually high. If, as seems probable, Andy Farrell selects an all-Scotland midfield of Finn Russell, Sione Tuipulotu and Huw Jones for the first Test at Lang Park, that figure is unlikely to drop. There will be pressure heaped on Sua’ali’i’s defensive reads, of a kind he has not experienced before.

If ‘Faz’ also picks two or three number sevens in his back row there will be more stress on his ball retention and cleanout compass when the Wallabies are on attack. It may not be a fair deal, but he is going to have to start earning his union corn before he is fully ready to do it. Nine million dollars may buy a lot of toys, but it creates even more expectation from the Australian rugby public.