SYDNEY (Reuters) – Corey Toole will make a late bid for inclusion in the Australia Sevens team for the Paris Olympics along with fellow winger Mark Nawaqanitawase, Wallabies coach Joe Schmidt said on Friday.
Fleet-footed Toole, a standout player for Australia in the World Sevens Series in 2021 and 2022, was listed as “Australian Sevens” in the news release announcing the Wallabies squad to face Wales and Georgia on Friday.
“It’s a massive pinnacle event for Rugby Australia,” Schmidt later told reporters in Sydney.
“I had a discussion with Corey and Corey was happy to prioritize in the short term the Olympics. And then I think Corey will be a real asset to us, if selected beyond that.”
Nawaqanitawase, who will join rugby league’s Sydney Roosters for next season, was also left out of the Wallabies squad despite being one of the team’s best players last year.
The 23-year-old, who played Sevens with Toole for Australia at the 2022 Commonwealth Games, has already started training with coach John Manenti’s squad for a series of warm-up games against Olympic champions Fiji.
“Mark may well … follow that path in the short term, and I think he’d be a real asset for the Sevens,” Schmidt added.
“At the same time, there are some really good Sevens players who’ve played through the whole series. So that’s the conundrum for John and his management to work through.”
Manenti, who also has Wallabies great Michael Hooper bidding for a spot in his squad for Paris, said earlier this week that Nawaqanitawase had a lot to offer in Sevens.
“It’s a fast learning curve and we do things differently. He’s had a couple of pretty hard days training and he definitely looks invested to me,” Manenti told Rugby.com.au on Tuesday.
“He’s probably the biggest body that we’ve got and he can move too. He’s got some great attributes that are handy in Sevens.”
Australia, who were eighth and seventh in the two previous Olympic tournaments, have high hopes of getting into the medal rounds for the first time in Paris after a fourth-placed finish in the World Sevens Series standings this year.
(Reporting by Nick Mulvenney, editing by Peter Rutherford)
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