The former Queensland and Brisbane mentor is poised to take charge of the Kangaroos for Australia’s first Ashes tour in 22 years after the NRL season concludes.<\/p>\n
Walters was tight-lipped when quizzed about his link to the vacant role on Sunday, but expected an announcement to be made imminently.<\/p>\n
“I can’t tell you anything. There’ll be a decision made tomorrow,” the former multi-premiership winning player said on Fox League’s NRL coverage.<\/p>\n
“We’ll just wait and see. Obviously I’d be very privileged and grateful to get the opportunity to coach Australia.<\/p>\n
“It’s a privilege to put the green and gold on and to coach the side, even more so. We’ll just see what happens tomorrow.”<\/p>\n
The Australian Rugby League Commission has been on the hunt for a new Kangaroos boss since Mal Meninga stepped down to join expansion side the Perth Bears, who enter the NRL in 2027.<\/p>\n
Replacement options had been thin on the ground given ARLC rules prevent active club coaches from taking the role.<\/p>\n
That precluded South Sydney mentor Wayne Bennett from contention despite his interest, with Walters rocketing into the frame once favourite Brad Fittler pulled out to focus on his media duties.<\/p>\n
Cameron Smith, one of the greatest players of the modern era, had flagged his interest but is untested as a professional head coach.<\/p>\n
Walters coached Brisbane to the 2023 grand final, which the Broncos narrowly lost after a Penrith comeback, and was fired a year later after the side missed the 2024 finals.<\/p>\n
Prior to that, Walters led Queensland to victory in two of four State of Origin series as coach.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The former Queensland and Brisbane mentor is poised to take charge of the Kangaroos for Australia’s first Ashes…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":8001,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[567],"tags":[64,63,760,85],"class_list":["post-8000","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-rugby","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-rugby","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8000","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=8000"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8000\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8001"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8000"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8000"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8000"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}