Watch every second of the 2025 Autumn Nations Series live and on demand via Stan Sport.<\/a><\/p>\nThis includes one of the Wallabies’ greatest ever skippers Eales, who claimed a World Cup title and several Bledisloe Cup titles.<\/p>\n
“It\u00a0was very special to me, very honoured. John just told me to be myself and trust my instincts and\u00a0really embrace and enjoy every moment come Saturday,” Champion de Crespigny said on Friday.<\/p>\n
“It’s somewhat surprising\u00a0and not something [I was expecting. I think as a little boy you always look up to the Wallabies, and I was fortunate enough to grow up and watch Eales, George Gregan, and Michael Hooper captain this country.<\/p>\n
“You look up to those guys since you were little, so it’s a massive honour and privilege, and yeah, something I don’t take lightly.<\/p>\n
“…There was a little bit of surprise but\u00a0I was very honoured and privileged to be asked by\u00a0Joe just before the team announcement and the support from the group and\u00a0the other players has been phenomenal.”<\/p>\n
The captaincy caps off a remarkable 18 months for the Western Force backrower, who made his name in the Top 14 with Castres.<\/p>\n
A desire to pull on the gold jersey brought him back home, thrust into the Wallabies side for the first British & Irish Lions Test in Brisbane.<\/p>\n
Now, Champion de Crespigny is left to soak in one of the highest honours in the game.<\/p>\n
“[A] massive motivation for me coming back from France was to be able to\u00a0represent my country and it’s something I always believed I’d be\u00a0I could do if I put the right things in place,” he believes. <\/p>\n
“I’ve been very\u00a0fortunate to be within this group at the moment and in telling myself I was going to be captain, I think it’s\u00a0a massive honour and privilege and something I don’t take lightly.<\/p>\n
“I just want to be able to put the team first in everything I\u00a0do.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Nick Champion de Crespigny’s phone was blowing up after he was appointed Wallabies captain, but none was as…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":236576,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[567],"tags":[64,63,760,85,2500],"class_list":["post-236575","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\/236575","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=236575"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/236575\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/236576"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=236575"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=236575"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=236575"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}