Wallaby side to play Samoa selected

Not really MBA related, but I did say I wasn't going to blog just MBA stuff, so there. The Wallaby side to play Samoa on Saturday 11th June has been selected. Here it is below:

AUSTRALIAN Team for Wallaby Test No. 440

1. Bill Young (vc)
2. Jeremy Paul
3. Matt Dunning
4. Mark Chisholm
5. Nathan Sharpe (c)
6. Rocky Elsom
7. George Smith
8. David Lyons
9. Chris Whitaker (vc)
10. Matt Giteau
11. Clyde Rathbone
12. Morgan Turinui
13. Stirling Mortlock
14. Wendell Sailor
15. Chris Latham

Reserves
Stephen Moore
Nic Henderson
Hugh McMeniman
John Roe
Matt Henjak
Stephen Larkham
Mat Rogers

23rd Man: Scott Fava

The composition of the team isn't a huge surprise, given the injury list, which includes Justin Harrison, Dan Vickerman, George Gregan, Brendan Cannon, Al Baxter and Phil Waugh, and with Lote Tuqiri out suspended for a couple of weeks. Five new caps in Chisholm, Elsom, Moore, Henderson and McMeniman.

Overall I'm reasonably happy with the squad considering the injuries - it's pretty much the squad I thought they'd pick. I didn't think Rogers did enough to unseat Latham at fullback, and I felt Elsom deserved his place over Hoiles at blindside. Jones has obviously decided to ease Larkham back into international football via the bench, so it gives us a new halfback combination in Giteau and Whitaker. It will be interesting to see how Gits goes at flyhalf with a backline of this quality outside him as he was pretty average in the Super 12 to say the least. Chisholm deserves his starting spot ahead of McMeniman, but you'd be splitting hairs there if you wanted to challenge that selection.

The most unlucky player has been Scott Fava who had a storming Super 12 and deserved to at least make the team ahead of John Roe, who has been very pedestrian in a pedestrian team. I'm also surprised at Stephen Moore's selection ahead of Adam "The Hobbit" Freier - I thought Freier had a pretty good Super 12 overall.

Anyway, it's a good strong team despite the injuries. I'll be at the game this Saturday and will post my summary afterwards.