Watch Australia take on South Africa in The Flight Centre Rugby Championship live and on-demand via Stan Sport.<\/a><\/p>\nThere are four changes on the bench, where prop Tamaiti Williams and backrower Wallace Sititi make their returns from injury.<\/p>\n
At the same time, lock Josh Lord and centre Quinn Tupaea have been added to the replacements after injuries in the first Test to Patrick Tuipulotu and Anton Lienert-Brown.<\/p>\n
Parker’s immediate promotion to the starting line-up is a minor surprise. Robertson had been expected to name the more experienced Sititi to start and to introduce Parker from the bench.<\/p>\n
Williams also was expected to start but Robertson has decided to allow both Sititi and Williams to make more cautious returns from injury.<\/p>\n
Robertson also will have been reasonably satisfied with the scrum performance of his starting pack last weekend as the All Blacks won the first Test at Cordoba 41-24.<\/p>\n
While Parker will be playing his first Test, hooker Codie Taylor will make his 100th appearance, becoming the 14th All Blacks centurion.<\/p>\n
“Codie is a great All Black. He carries a huge amount of mana (status) in our group and it’s important we put out a performance that makes him and his wh\u0101nau (family) proud in his 100th Test,” Robertson said.<\/p>\n
“The way he carries himself and the example he sets are testament to him as a person and he will front this week in the same way he has for the past 99 Tests.<\/p>\n
“Equally, it’s a special day for Simon (Parker) and his family. He’s earned his selection through performance and consistency. He’s a big, physical man, and he’s ready to make an impact.”<\/p>\n
Parker has made an impression in Super Rugby this season as a big man who still possesses pace and skill.<\/p>\n
He is 1.97 metres, weighs 119 kilograms and the All Blacks selectors see him as a possible answer to the size of the world champion Springboks, their opponents in the next stage of the Rugby Championship.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"All Blacks coach Scott Robertson has made five changes to his line-up for the second Rugby Championship Test…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":41952,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[567],"tags":[10751,64,63,760,85],"class_list":["post-86143","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-rugby","tag-all-blacks","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-rugby","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86143","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=86143"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86143\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/41952"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=86143"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=86143"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=86143"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}