Adam Ashley-Cooper, Nick Cummins, Tatafu Polota-Nau, Benn Robinson and Liam Gill will miss this weekend’s clash with Scotland but the need to have four props in the matchday 23 means Ryan will sit out the massive Millennium Stadium encounter on November 30.
A further five players were given written warnings and another four were verbally warned as to their behaviour after consuming ‘inappropriate levels of alcohol’ on Tuesday night in Dublin. Dave Dennis, Kane Douglas, Saia Fainga’a, Bernard Foley and Nick Phipps were officially warned by letter, with Scott Fardy, Mike Harris, Ben McCalman and Nic White reprimanded verbally.
The Wallabies went out for dinner in groups ahead of their day off prior to the third of their five autumn internationals but head coach Ewen McKenzie was unhappy with how much alcohol they consumed and how late they stayed out. And while there is no suggestion whatsoever that the players were the subject of any external complaints, McKenzie insisted that action needed to be taken to protect the culture of the camp.
“Let’s be clear – these are internal sanctions and aren’t a result of any complaints or reports of inappropriate or sinister behaviour while our players were out,” said McKenzie, who took over from Robbie Deans as his country’s head coach prior to the Rugby Championship.
“Instead, we have chosen to address an issue that has come up internally and we are now being up-front about it. We’ve done this because we need to continually reinforce the need for our players to make smart decisions to benefit the team.
“The worst thing you could do for the Qantas Wallabies in the long term is do nothing, because that would mean we would be ignoring poor culture and a significant performance issue.”
Australia had little difficulty in seeing off Ireland regardless, as they ran out 32-15 winners at the Aviva Stadium. McKenzie’s men crossed for four tries through Michael Hooper (2), Quade Cooper and Cummins as they built on the previous week’s 50-point thrashing of Italy.
They could be without centre Tevita Kuridrani in Cardiff, however, after the in-form Brumbies star became just the fourth Wallaby to be sent off for a dangerous tackle on Peter O’Mahony during the closing stages in the Irish capital.
