For one thing, there is Waite and his inside knowledge of what makes Joey tick. "He brought me along as a kid and he knows my game inside out," he says "He'll be passing all that information on to the players But we've got so many good players. The way we look at it is that we've got so many ball-players, if they concentrate too much on one, someone else will hurt them."Johns will be at the centre of that conundrum for Great Britain, but he still cannot quite resist the temptation to have the occasional nervous glance at his Newcastle team-mate, Danny Buderus – the only hooker in the party "I hope nothing happens to him," Johns said. The opportunity to prove that he really is the mighty scrum-half Australia sees every week is to precious too lose..
Richard Horne and Kevin Sinfield have been handed the problem positions in Great Britain's team to face Australia in the first Test on Sunday, but there is no place for the Australian-born Michael Withers. Richard Horne and Kevin Sinfield have been handed the problem positions in Great Britain's team to face Australia in the first Test on Sunday, but there is no place for the Australian-born Michael Withers.The Great Britain coach, David Waite, sprang a number of surprises in his line-up for the match at Huddersfield, not least in naming Horne, who has played only a handful of games at scrum-half this year, directly opposite the world's best, Andrew Johns.The 19-year-old from Hull has been preferred to Bradford's Paul Deacon and Warrington's Lee Briers, who occupied the half-back berths against France in Great Britain's only warm-up match last month. "Looking at our resources and the way we want to play, his package of skills most suits us in the first test'', said Waite.Horne fills the gap left by injuries to Sean Long and his Hull team-mate, Tony Smith, whose absence allowed him to revert to scrum-half from centre during the play-offs."It's astonishing really lining-up against one of the world's greatest scrum-halfs", said Horne "But you've got to put that behind you and get on with it I never dreamt I'd get so far this season. My ambition was to get into the under-21s."If Waite is asking a great deal of Horne, the same is true of the selection of Sinfield at hooker. The Leeds player has only turned out at loose-forward and stand-off for his club, but Waite used him at hooker in a trial match behind closed doors against the under-21s and in France and senses in him the ability to do a crucial job left open by injuries to Keiron Cunningham and Terry Newton."If I hadn't seen that I wouldn't have put him there", said Waite. "But Kevin Sinfield playing 80 minutes at hooker is not going to happen. There are a few options that we have used in games and in training."The main variation Waite has up his sleeve is to bring Mike Forshaw, the Bradford forward talked out of international retirement for this series, off the bench at some stage.
Like Sinfield, Forshaw is a specialist back-rower, and his inclusion is a further expression of Waite's belief in the interchangeability of players.It also means that there is no place in the 17 for Paul King, the only experienced hooker in the squad, but the real shock is the omission of Withers.Waite faced criticism in some quarters for calling up an Australian who qualifies through Irish grandparents, but there is little doubt that, purely in playing terms, Withers deserved to be there.Why he should now be left out is a mystery. Waite has gone for Paul Johnson at centre and Keith Senior in the now unfamiliar role of wing, but the three-quarter line would have looked considerably more convincing had Withers been there.. It is all happening down there in the southern hemisphere. Harry Viljoen, the relatively new Springbok coach, harbours wild fantasies about a South African team negotiating an entire 80-minute Test without kicking the ball, while John Mitchell, the very new All Black coach, has effectively promised to restore some old-fashioned knuckle to a silver fern game gone soft.
