The race for the highly-coveted Kangaroos No.1 jersey is heating up, with three superstar fullbacks in contention to win the jersey for the upcoming Pacific Championships.
Australia play Tonga and New Zealand in October, with many of Mal Meninga’s positional selections seemingly open to any number of potential suitors, including fullback were incumbent James Tedesco, Blues No.1 Dylan Edwards and the spectacular Kalyn Ponga are all fighting for a start.
Earlier in the year when Edwards beat Tedesco to win NSW’s fullback role ahead of State of Origin some feared the Roosters captain’s international career was over.
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However, at the time Meninga failed to rule out Tedesco reclaiming the Australian No.1 jersey he held for all three Pacific Championships matches at the end of last year, stating: “We will be picking on form and loyalty and not so much on the future.”
“That’s how I think representative teams should be picked. It’s not about the future – it’s about the here and now,” he added.
Both Edwards and Ponga are breathing down Tedesco’s neck to win the Kangaroos No.1 jersey, with the former well in the race to win his fourth consecutive premiership while the latter was recently described by Braith Anasta as the best player in the world.
It means the door is wide open in the race for Australia’s fullback jersey for the end of year tests as all three men are , and speaking on Monday morning’s Big Sports Breakfast Kangaroos selector Laurie Daley further fuelled the selection fire by making a case for each of the contenders for the jersey.
“I think (Ponga’s) a very, very, very, very good player. I tell you what, if he can continue to do what he does on a weekly basis and if he gets through an injury free season, I’d like to see what we’re saying then,” Daley said.
“Would he play better than Dylan Edwards? Dylan Edwards was sensational on Friday and he’s been sensational for the last three years… so you can say that Dylan Edwards is arguably the best fullback the game has seen (recently).
“If you talk purely on skill you’re going Kalyn. But there’s a lot of things that Dylan Edwards does in his game that you would want every fullback to do.”
Interestingly, Daley admitted that “if you’re picking on talent, it’s Ponga.”
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Yet talent alone is not all that earns players selection in representative sides, with Meninga loyal to those who’ve served him brilliantly in the past, such as Tedesco, Australia’s captain when they won the most recent Rugby League World Cup.
So fierce is Meninga’s loyalty that he stuck Edwards on the wing for last year’s Pacific Championships to accommodate Tedesco, while there was no room for Ponga, who arguably performed better over the back half of last year than he did over the closing months of this season.
But based on form over the entirety of 2024, Tedesco may just have his nose in front of the other two contenders, with Fox Sports Lab stats indicating the incumbent’s overall stats are far superior to Edwards and Ponga’s.
Dylan Edwards:
18 games, 20 average runs, 202 average metres, 10 tries, 10 try assists, 12 line breaks, 18 line break assists and 107 tackle breaks
Kalyn Ponga:
16 games, 14 average runs, 140 average metres, 3 tries, 11 try assists, 17 line breaks, 18 line break assists and 112 tackle breaks
James Tedesco:
23 games, 17 average runs, 176 average metres, 15 tries, 27 try assists, 22 line breaks, 33 line break assists and 158 tackle breaks
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However, the Kangaroos coach admitted the heavy defeat to New Zealand in last year’s Pacific Championships final could force his hand into swinging the axe.
“As everyone knows we got beaten 30-0 in the Pacific Championships final, so we’ve got to take a serious look at the make-up of the footy team,” Meninga said on Fox League earlier this month.
“I feel like in the past we worked really hard on loyalty and those that have done it in the past and been successful but that’s been our biggest loss ever in international history.”
The 64-year-old indicated Origin would play a role, further enhancing Edwards’ claim to be the Australian No.1, despite Tedesco’s 2024 consistency and Ponga’s world-beating end of season brilliance.
Another factor Meninga mentioned is keeping an eye on the future, in particular the 2026 Rugby League World Cup on home soil.
All these factors only further fuel the selection fire in the final weeks of an enthralling 2024 season, with each of Edwards, Ponga and Tedesco all having strong cases to don the green and gold’s No.1 jersey come October.
Source Agencies
