{"id":946743,"date":"2026-10-30T19:48:00","date_gmt":"2026-10-30T19:48:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/946743\/"},"modified":"2026-10-30T19:48:00","modified_gmt":"2026-10-30T19:48:00","slug":"nations-championship-2026-rugby-news-kurtley-beales-wallabies-recall-explained-england-test-looms-for-coach-les-kiss","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/946743\/","title":{"rendered":"Nations Championship 2026 rugby news: Kurtley Beale\u2019s Wallabies recall explained; England Test looms for coach Les Kiss"},"content":{"rendered":"

Kurtley Beale<\/a> has a real shot at adding to his 95 Tests as an inside centre as Wallabies<\/a> coach Les Kiss<\/a> made it clear on Friday that the 37-year-old was not there to make up the numbers.<\/p>\n

Beale played his last Test five years ago and won a shock recall on Wednesday<\/a> following Hunter Paisami\u2019s withdrawal from the Nations Championship<\/a> squad.<\/p>\n

\"Kurtley<\/p>\n

Kurtley Beale of the Force passes the ball.\u00a0Getty<\/p>\n

Kiss picked Isaac Henry at No.12 in Australia\u2019s last Test against the All Blacks<\/a>, and he is the favourite to hold that position for the November 9 (AEDT) clash with England at Twickenham.<\/a><\/p>\n

But Kiss would have no hesitation in playing Beale, and he is likely to feature at some stage over four November Tests in the United Kingdom.<\/p>\n

\u201cNo-one comes in just to fill a void,\u201d Kiss told reporters on Friday at the team\u2019s Coogee team hotel ahead of the Wallabies\u2019 Saturday flight out of Sydney.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s in there to perform, and I have spoken to him on this. I like the fact that we\u2019ve given the younger guys a chance to grow, without the experience sitting on their shoulder.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve always said we\u2019d lean back into the experience if we wanted to, but he\u2019s coming in to predominantly drive that second five-eighth position, 12, around that area. And he can flex into 15 and 10 in our sessions and in how we build our game, going forward.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kiss consulted Beale\u2019s ex-teammate Nic White and Western Force coaches Simon Cron and Brad Harris before picking the veteran. <\/p>\n

\u201cThe feedback I got is he\u2019s been super quality around the group in terms of, holistically, just helping drive the programme. Similar to James O\u2019Connor, they\u2019ve both been like that. But Kurtley\u2019s aware of where he sits with that.<\/p>\n

\u201cI know he\u2019s hungry to do what he can. He just said, \u2018I just want the team to be better\u2019, and he\u2019ll work hard for us.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kiss admitted it was disappointing to lose Paisami, who will instead focus on settling into his new life in Japan with the Shizuoka Blue Revs.<\/p>\n

But the 61-year-old was in a typically upbeat mood following Thursday night\u2019s Rugby Australia Awards, where gun flanker Fraser McReight took out the John Eales Medal<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Kiss knows England\u2019s capital very well, having coached London Irish from 2018-23.<\/p>\n

\"England<\/p>\n

Eddie Jones talks to Les Kiss in 2019 when the pair were coaching in England.\u00a0Getty Images<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s no better place in rugby in a lot of ways (than Twickenham) in terms of those wonderful battles between Australia and England,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe game that they\u2019re playing, it certainly has the tenets of set piece and kicking are central, but you can see… they\u2019re going to have an attacking edge to them as well.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo there are real challenges that we know that are ahead of us, but that\u2019s what we need. We need that now. This is the last window before we close out into what will become a massive year for every country.\u201d<\/p>\n

Wallabies squad for Nations Championship<\/p>\n

Forwards: Harry Wilson (c), Allan Alaalatoa, Miles Amatosero, Angus Bell, Josh Canham, Massimo De Lutiis, Tom Hooper, Isaac Kailea, Tom Lambert, Fraser McReight, Josh Nasser, Brandon Paenga-Amosa, Billy Pollard, Lukhan Salakaia-Loto, Lachlan Shaw, Carlo Tizzano, Taniela Tupou, Rob Valetini, Jeremy Williams<\/p>\n

Backs: Kurtley Beale, Filipo Daugunu, Ben Donaldson, Carter Gordon, Isaac Henry, Len Ikitau, Max Jorgensen, Ryan Lonergan, Tate McDermott, Declan Meredith, Harry Potter, James Ramm, Joseph-Aukuso Suaalii, Kalani Thomas, Teddy Wilson, Tom Wright<\/p>\n

Watch the Wallabies and All Blacks in the Nations Championship.\u00a0Add the Stan Sport package<\/a>\u00a0to watch rugby live and on demand with no ad-breaks in play<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Kurtley Beale has a real shot at adding to his 95 Tests as an inside centre as Wallabies…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":946744,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[567],"tags":[64,63,760,85],"class_list":["post-946743","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\/946743","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=946743"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/946743\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/946744"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=946743"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=946743"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=946743"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}