{"id":12668,"date":"2025-07-22T05:55:08","date_gmt":"2025-07-22T05:55:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/12668\/"},"modified":"2025-07-22T05:55:08","modified_gmt":"2025-07-22T05:55:08","slug":"ikitau-wallabies-looking-to-unleash-suaalii-in-melbourne","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/12668\/","title":{"rendered":"Ikitau, Wallabies looking to unleash Suaalii in Melbourne"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"css-2425b0\">Wallabies centre Len Ikitau is eager to get fellow midfielder Jospeh-Aukuso Suaalii involved early in the second Test as they hunt to level the series against the British &amp; Irish Lions.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-2425b0\">Suaalii was contained to just three carries in the first half as the Lions\u2019 rush defence helped stifle the Australian attack.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-2425b0\"><a href=\"https:\/\/lionsseries2025.rugby\/tickets\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\" class=\"css-tm001h\">Final tickets still available! Get your tickets for the British &amp; Irish Lions tour here.<\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"css-2425b0\">Whilst the superstar was heavily involved in the second-half comeback, it wasn\u2019t enough for the Wallabies as they went down 27-19.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-2425b0\">\u201cI felt like I didn&#8217;t really get [Suaalii] into the game as early as I wanted, but that&#8217;s a lot of learnings that I can take moving forward,\u201d Ikitau said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-2425b0\">\u201cWe&#8217;ve only played a handful of games together but it&#8217;s just trying to understand in what places you&#8217;d like to get the ball and kind of just feeding off each other.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-2425b0\">\u201c\u2026We knew there were opportunities with their line speed and how they want to attack us in defence but I think just being able to pull the trigger when the opportunity comes and just being able to back our ability to pull the trigger. There were a few times I think we were just conservative and held the ball where there&#8217;s opportunities out wide.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-2425b0\">Ikitau concedes the pair need to search for the ball more at the MCG even with wet conditions expected for Saturday\u2019s second Test.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-2425b0\">\u201cWe need to go looking for the ball. We can&#8217;t sit on the edge and expect the ball to come because sometimes the way the game is played, it doesn&#8217;t really get to an edge,\u201d he explained.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-2425b0\">\u201cSo just being able to roam around [is key]. It&#8217;s not rugby league; he doesn&#8217;t have to stay on the left side. He can roam around and get into the ruck or close to the ruck if he has to, to get a touch and be in the game.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-2425b0\">\u201cWe&#8217;ve got a few things up our sleeve that we have for the game and if the weather is like that then I guess we&#8217;re going to have to chuck it out but we\u2019ve got some stuff.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-2425b0\">Ikitau finds himself back in the inside centre position like in last year\u2019s Spring Tour, having made his name as an outside centre for the Brumbies.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-2425b0\">\u201cI think it&#8217;s just a number on the back where I&#8217;m in tighter, but I kind of try to play the same as if I was playing 13,\u201d he added.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-2425b0\">\u201cObviously, I&#8217;m defending a bit, but nothing changes in terms of how I want to play and the way I want to go about playing footy.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Wallabies centre Len Ikitau is eager to get fellow midfielder Jospeh-Aukuso Suaalii involved early in the second Test&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":12669,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[567],"tags":[64,63,760,85,2500],"class_list":["post-12668","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-rugby","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-rugby","tag-sports","tag-wallabies"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12668","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12668"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12668\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12669"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12668"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12668"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12668"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}