Picture this; you’re 21-years-old, you’ve been the most talked about player in rugby union for a month straight, you’re playing your first senior game, your first of any kind in this code since you were a teenager, and you’ve just stepped out to start for your country at Twickenham, the home of rugby. We all know that elite athletes are cut from a different cloth but it’s worth lingering on the staggering set of circumstances that preceded Joseph-Aukuso Suaalii’s Test debut.
Simply not stinking up the place with a string of errors would have been enough. If he’d managed to hold onto the ball and land a few tackles then Joe Schmidt and Rugby Australia could have argued that there was tangible hope in a return of their substantial investment in this unproven prospect. He looked the part, all 1.98m and 98kg of him. But could he handle the bright lights and weight of expectation? We had our answer shortly before kick-off.
