{"id":181422,"date":"2025-10-01T02:00:11","date_gmt":"2025-10-01T02:00:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/181422\/"},"modified":"2025-10-01T02:00:11","modified_gmt":"2025-10-01T02:00:11","slug":"tom-wright-on-the-brumbies-rocket-fuelling-billy-pollards-wallabies-rise","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/181422\/","title":{"rendered":"Tom Wright on the Brumbies ‘rocket’ fuelling Billy Pollard’s Wallabies rise"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Wallabies hooker Billy Pollard<\/a> is finding a rich vein of form in 2025 and contributing handsomely to Australia\u2019s rise back through the global ranks. Brumbies<\/a> teammate Tom Wright<\/a> credited the youngster\u2019s ascension, in part, to a \u201crocket\u201d earlier in the year.<\/p>\n

The 23-year-old began the international season as a reserve behind Matt Faessler<\/a> and Dave Porecki<\/a>, but has started the last six Tests while enjoying a long-awaited period of fine health.<\/p>\n

Pollard scored 11 tries in 15 Super Rugby Pacific<\/a> games in 2025, a tally that placed him second only to Wallaby teammate Carlo Tizzano<\/a> on the season, and helped the Brumbies make another semi-final berth.<\/p>\n

Canberra teammate Wright, who is sidelined after an ACL tear at the beginning of the Rugby Championship, had a tongue-in-cheek review of the hooker\u2019s form.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe would have been the first to tell you how good he\u2019s going,\u201d Wright grinned on the Kick Offs and Kick Ons<\/a> show.<\/p>\n

\u201cI saw it was his first Test try on the weekend. I haven\u2019t spoken to him since the game, but I\u2019m sure we\u2019ll hear plenty about that, and about how he\u2019s carrying either Taniela (Tupou) or Allan (Alaalatoa) and (James) Slipper and (Angus) Bell, and how he\u2019s just doing everything for the team at the minute.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut, he probably got a rocket a bit earlier this year at Brumbyland, which was good. He had to start taking it a bit more seriously because he\u2019s got so much potential.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe saw him carve up on a couple of little runs, in a bit more broken play on the weekend. Bill has had that ability for ages, but he hasn\u2019t had much luck in his early career with a couple of niggles.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut I was stoked for him. First try, it\u2019s a tough place to go and play. It put us back in the contest a bit. He\u2019s worked pretty hard on his set piece to be fair, it\u2019s the number one thing we rip into him about.\u201d<\/p>\n

While Wright is ruled out of competition for the remainder of the year, he said his recovery was going well and that his gold No.15 jersey was in safe hands.<\/p>\n

Andrew Kellaway was coach Joe Schmidt\u2019s first call to replace the star fullback, but an injury to him before the weekend\u2019s Eden Park Test saw selectors pivot to young sensation Max Jorgensen. The 21-year-old has started his professional career on the wing, but has expressed a desire to make the fullback role his own.<\/p>\n

\u201cJorgo\u2019s pretty exceptional, I think he\u2019ll be in the Test arena for a while, regardless of what position he\u2019s playing,\u201d Wright said of the speedster\u2019s first game at 15.<\/p>\n

\u201cHard luck in your first game (at fullback) to get limited ball. The All Blacks<\/a> had it on a string early. Beauden (Barrett) made a couple of contestables just trying to bring him forward.\u00a0But I thought he did well considering the lack of ball that we were able to move around.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think he\u2019ll be better for it. You learn hard when you get tossed in the deep end. He\u2019ll be better for having the run, but he was just as disappointed as the rest of the guys.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Wallabies hooker Billy Pollard is finding a rich vein of form in 2025 and contributing handsomely to Australia\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":181423,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[567],"tags":[64,63,760,85],"class_list":["post-181422","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-rugby","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-rugby","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/181422","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=181422"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/181422\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/181423"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=181422"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=181422"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=181422"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}