Watch every second of the 2025 Autumn Nations Series live and on demand via Stan Sport.<\/a><\/p>\nO\u2019Connor linked up with the squad ahead of Sunday\u2019s (AEDT) match with Ireland and will “help them prepare” after missing the first three games of the Spring Tour.<\/p>\n
The 35-year-old signed a deal with the Premiership side towards the end of the Super Rugby Pacific season before bursting back onto the Wallabies scene during the Rugby Championship.<\/p>\n
Originally called in for the British & Irish Lions tour, O\u2019Connor delivered a match-winning performance against South Africa in Ellis Park, breaking a drought that lasted close to 60 years at the ground.<\/p>\n
He featured in every game of the tournament, including starting against New Zealand in the opening Bledisloe Cup Test.<\/p>\n
O\u2019Connor adds further competition to the flyhalf position following Carter Gordon\u2019s return from a quad complaint.<\/p>\n
As for Skelton, he was initially expected to join the group, only to injure himself playing for La Rochelle.<\/p>\n
Skelton went down injured over the weekend in defeat to Toulon, playing in a rescheduled game from October.<\/p>\n
“James O’Connor has joined the squad in Dublin to help them prepare for the Test against Ireland on Saturday,” the statement said.<\/p>\n
“Will Skelton picked up an ankle injury playing for his club on Saturday and will be unavailable for the team’s final two Tests of 2025.”<\/p>\n
The Wallabies also confirmed Darcy Swain will return home to Australia after serving as lock cover for the past fortnight.<\/p>\n
Swain was brought into the squad as a result of injuries to Lukhan Salakaia-Loto (rib) and Josh Canham (concussion) in the win over Japan.<\/p>\n
The Australians have arrived in Dublin ahead of a clash with the third-ranked Irish, who are coming off their own victory over the Brave Blossoms.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Wallabies have been boosted by the return of Leicester flyhalf James O\u2019Connor for the final fortnight of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":276224,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[567],"tags":[64,63,760,85,2500],"class_list":{"0":"post-276223","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-rugby","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-rugby","11":"tag-sports","12":"tag-wallabies"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/276223","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=276223"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/276223\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/276224"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=276223"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=276223"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=276223"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}