Former rugby league hard man Mark Geyer has admitted he’s “disappointed” six players travelling with the Kangaroos for the Ashes won’t get any game time and has called for the schedules of future tours to be more expansive.
Geyer harked back to Kangaroos tours of old on which Australia not only squared off with other countries, but club sides and novelty teams.
The Kangaroos tour of 1990, which Geyer went on, featured 18 games mostly separated with breaks of three to four days, with Australia facing Great Britain in three matches, France in two games, club teams such as Wigan, Leeds and Castleford, and novelty sides including a French president’s XIII.
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The current Kangaroos tour consists of only three matches, all of which are being played against England across three consecutive weeks.
Six of the 24 players currently touring with the Kangaroos will return to Australia with not a minute of game time clocked up: Mitchell Moses, Bradman Best, Ethan Strange, Blayke Brailey, Jacob Preston and Dylan Edwards.
To Geyer’s point, every one of those players would get some game time in a schedule similar to those of bygone eras by way of fitness management, meaning fans would get to see raw talent like Strange and Preston running around in green and gold.
“I’m a bit disappointed to see that the other six or seven guys who travelled [won’t] get a run in the game this weekend,” Geyer said on 2GB’s Wide World of Sports.
“I’m not sure I’m a fan, to be honest, that there are three games basically week after week [on this tour] of the UK.
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“I think if they’re going to do it they’ve got to do it properly and at least play a couple of midweek games and at least resemble something like a Kangaroo tour that we used to have.
“I know you can’t do the whole three months; that’s out of the question. But at least make it maybe a six-week tour when you play a couple of their club teams midweek and then we get like a 26-28-man squad who play, [and] we see some other people play.”
Cameron Munster and Nathan Cleary are set to start as Australia’s halves for the third consecutive match, taking place in Leeds on Sunday morning (AEDT).
And while Tom Dearden will at least again get some minutes off the bench, Strange and Moses will again be left to cut oranges.
Coach Kevin Walters said this week that while he’d “like to reward the extended squad for their outstanding efforts on tour”, he felt “the players who have got the job done deserve to play in Leeds”.
The Kangaroos are aiming to sweep the first Ashes series in 22 years 3-0, after claiming the opening Test 26-6 at Wembley Stadium and the second 14-4 in Liverpool.
From left: Reece Walsh, Nathan Cleary and Hudson Young celebrate a try on the Kangaroos’ Ashes tour. Getty
“I would have loved to see young Strange playing in this series,” Geyer added.
“I thought he had a breakout season [with the Raiders this year].
“He got rewarded with the tour but hasn’t seen any game time.
“They [the players] got picked because they were fantastic this season in the NRL, and they deserve the opportunity to play in the green and gold, but unfortunately they won’t get that opportunity to do so. The Prestons of the world, obviously Dylan Edwards has been there [in Test matches in the past], but he’s been on the sidelines [in this series], Mitch Moses, I think we would love to see young Blayke Brailey get a run.”
Ethan Strange in action for the Raiders during his breakout 2025 season. Getty
Geyer featured in three Tests for Australia — one against France and two against New Zealand — and pulled on the green and gold for a string of other games.
“You look at the quality of players in front of them and you understand [why the six players aren’t playing at all],” Geyer added.
“But I just think that the way that it’s all gone down … there’s probably a reason why we haven’t had an Ashes tour over there for such a long time because they are pretty hard to calibrate, I suppose, with both competitions [the NRL and the Super League].”