Watch every second of the Wallaroos 2026 season live and on demand via Stan Sport.<\/a><\/p>\nThe 28-year-old was selected in several camps last year, but her omission from the contracted group for 2026 was a hammer blow to her ambitions.<\/p>\n
However, an ACL injury to Katalina Amosa has the Waratah firmly back in contention, with an intra-squad game on Saturday the perfect chance to impress new coach Sam Needs.<\/p>\n
“It was heartbreaking not being re-signed for 2026 but injuries do happen so you always have to be ready,” she told the media.<\/p>\n
“I’m just taking it one day at a time. I’m not trying to get too far ahead of myself.<\/p>\n
“I’m not riding the emotional roller coaster, just yet focusing on what each day brings, nailing down my details and fighting hard for whatever comes next.”<\/p>\n
Merlo admitted that missing selection last year took a toll after she helped the Waratahs to the Super Rugby W title earlier in the year.<\/p>\n
It took going back to the grassroots to re-establish her love of the game to change her mindset about being back in Wallaroos camp.<\/p>\n
“I think I was a bit burnt out from last year, not really enjoying footy, and I wanted to get back to what I started playing for the first place,” Merlo explained.<\/p>\n
“I think for me, it was all about being able to enjoy every moment as it came so being able to get back to club footy and kick a ball around when I’m not really a kicker, have that freedom to express myself however needed<\/p>\n
“Being able to go back and teach\/coach (at Sydney Uni), I think I found my passion back for rugby through that…I’m lucky enough that my partner’s the coach so that’s been really cool\u00a0with having a piece of home there\u00a0and we’ve just got a really new playing group.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NSW Waratahs hooker Brittany Merlo is ready for another shot at a dream Wallaroos debut after her squad…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":545589,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[567],"tags":[64,63,760,85,19259],"class_list":["post-545588","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-rugby","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-rugby","tag-sports","tag-wallaroos"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/545588","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=545588"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/545588\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/545589"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=545588"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=545588"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=545588"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}