Joe Schmidt has gone with experience. To open the Rugby Championship on Saturday in Johannesburg against South Africa (4.10pm French time), the Australia head coach has decided to start Nic White and James O’Connor at half-back, two 35-year-olds who count as elder statesmen in the Wallabies squad.

O’Connor preferred to Donaldson to replace Lynagh

Nic White, who wore Montpellier’s colours from 2015 to 2017, had announced his international retirement at the end of the three-test series in July against the British and Irish Lions. Jake Gordon’s injury prompted his head coach to ask him to push his plans back a little.

For James O’Connor, a Super Rugby winner this year with the Crusaders and who also played in the Top 14 between 2015 and 2017, at Toulon, it is the absence of first-choice fly-half Tom Lynagh, concussed in the Wallabies’ third and final match against the Lions in Sydney (22-12), together with Noah Lolesio’s already confirmed withdrawal, that has propelled him into Joe Schmidt’s starting XV, at the expense of Western Force’s Ben Donaldson, who is not even on the team sheet. Apart from O’Connor for Lynagh, the Wallabies’ starting line-up is unchanged from the one that took the field on 2 August to face (and beat) the Lions.

The starting XV : Wright – Jorgensen, Aukuso-Suaalii, Ikitau, Pietsch – (fh) O’Connor, (sh) White – McReight, Wilson (capt), Hooper – Skelton, Frost – Tupou, Pollard, Slipper

Replacements : Paenga-Amosa, Bell, Nonggorr, Williams, Gleeson, Champion de
Crespigny, McDermott, Kellaway.