{"id":305239,"date":"2025-11-24T08:51:07","date_gmt":"2025-11-24T08:51:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/305239\/"},"modified":"2025-11-24T08:51:07","modified_gmt":"2025-11-24T08:51:07","slug":"joe-hawkins-wales-deputies-ready-to-step-up-against-springboks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/305239\/","title":{"rendered":"Joe Hawkins: Wales deputies ready to step up against Springboks"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Joe Hawkins has gone from being an international exile in Exeter to helping Wales try to cope without their England-based contingent.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Steve Tandy&#8217;s men finish their autumn campaign with a daunting fixture against world champions South Africa in Cardiff on Saturday.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">A game against the Springboks would be hard enough with a full squad but Wales will be forced into huge changes to the 23 that put in a spirited performance in the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/sport\/rugby-union\/articles\/c1kp329v38do\" class=\"ssrcss-k8mrr8-InlineLink e1kn3p7n0\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">52-26 defeat by New Zealand.<\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Tandy is without Montpellier&#8217;s Adam Beard plus 12 players who have gone back to English clubs because the money-raising encounter has been arranged outside World Rugby&#8217;s official Test window.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Hawkins, who won his first cap in two years against the All Blacks after a move to Scarlets allowed him to resume his international career, is confident that the deputies can step up.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;You&#8217;ve always got to be ready and a chance can always come earlier sometimes due to injuries,&#8221; said the centre or fly-half.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;The boys have been training hard and I&#8217;m pretty confident anyone who does come in can do a good job next weekend.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Joe Hawkins has gone from being an international exile in Exeter to helping Wales try to cope without&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":305240,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[567],"tags":[64,63,760,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-305239","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"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/305239","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=305239"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/305239\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/305240"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=305239"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=305239"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=305239"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}