Watch every second of the 2025 Autumn Nations Series live and on demand via Stan Sport.<\/a><\/p>\n“If that chance comes, then I’d be stoked to be able to do it again,” Gordon said on Friday.<\/p>\n
“I’m just taking it day by day at the moment. Obviously I’ve got a lot to work on, a lot to learn over the next few days.<\/p>\n
“I’ll keep learning off Joe and Tane and, yeah, we’ll just take it day by day.”<\/p>\n
After joining Leicester in the English premiership, veteran James O’Connor will likely link up with the Wallabies upon their arrival in Europe for Tests against England, Italy, Ireland and France.<\/p>\n
But Gordon and Edmed will be Schmidt’s go-to five-eighths to face Japan.<\/p>\n
Ironically, it was Jones who handed Gordon his Test debut two years ago and thrust the young playmaker into the hot seat in the ill-fated \u00a02023 World Cup campaign in France.<\/p>\n
Now the 24-year-old former Melbourne Rebels star will likely be charged with plotting Japan’s downfall as a second-half replacement in the Wallabies’ tour opener.<\/p>\n
“What struck me about him when he was playing for the Rebels is he’s certainly brave enough,” Schmidt said ahead of the Wallabies’ departure on Saturday.<\/p>\n
“He’s not going to hold back and he’s going to throw himself straight in there.<\/p>\n
“I didn’t see any hesitation (at training) today whatsoever, albeit not on a full-contact day at all.<\/p>\n
“(So) Carter being the 10 in the squad, there’s a pretty good chance that he may be involved (against Japan).<\/p>\n
“If we don’t invest now, we’re not going to profit in two years’ time when that home World Cup is still a massive, massive opportunity for us to really demonstrate what we can do in the game here in Australia.”<\/p>\n
Gordon admitted it was that 2027 World Cup in Australia and “unfinished business in union” that prompted his return to rugby after just one injury-ravaged season with the Titans.<\/p>\n
“I was 22 when I last played for the Wallabies and at the World Cup,” said the eight-Test 24-year-old.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“I felt like I left a bit on the table and that was eating away at me a little bit.<\/p>\n
“So the opportunity to come back came up and, yeah, I’m very excited to be able to take it and get back on board.”<\/p>\n
The Wallabies head off as world No.7 and needing to climb into the top six by the end of the tour to secure an all-important top-six seeding for the 2027 World Cup.<\/p>\n
If they don’t, the Australians will not be a top-seeded side in their pool at the global showpiece and at risk of facing one of the heavyweights like two-time defending champions South Africa, New Zealand, Ireland or France early in the knockout stages.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Schmidt is acutely aware of the importance of racking up as many wins as possible on the five-Test, five-week tour.<\/p>\n
“It’s certainly in the back of my mind,” he said.<\/p>\n
“It’s a tough (rankings) algorithm to work out. All I know is that if you’re playing away from home and you beat a team that’s ranked ahead of you, that’s a good way to improve your ranking.<\/p>\n
“That said, we’re playing two teams that are ranked below us and that’s a good way to lose ranking points.<\/p>\n
“So we’ve got to be good against Japan in eight days’ time and we’ve got to be good against Italy.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Fresh off returning to Australian rugby, Carter Gordon insists he’s ready for the deep end if thrown into…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":223924,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[567],"tags":[64,63,760,85,2500],"class_list":["post-223923","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\/223923","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=223923"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/223923\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/223924"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=223923"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=223923"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=223923"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}