Injured Wallabies and ACT centre Stirling Mortlock visited Brumbies HQ yesterday. He told JOHN PAUL MOLONEY he's raring to go in next year's Super 14, but his future beyond that is unclear. JPM: You've caught up with Justin Harrison, what do you think of his return to the Brumbies?
SM: It's fantastic news. He's been through a tough trot lately and to give him the opportunity to hopefully give something back to the Brumbies and Australian rugby is a great opportunity for Justin.
From our perspective, every team he's been involved with, their lineout has been dominant if not the best in the competition so he's a big asset.
JPM: He's yet another leader in a team already brimming with them. On top of skipper Stephen Hoiles, you're one of three current or former Wallabies captains in the team. How will the Brumbies manage so many chiefs next year?
SM: Stephen Hoiles is definitely our skipper, but I think it'll be nothing but a positive for the team and Hoilesy to have a number of guys to bounce ideas off and hopefully make this team as efficient and effective as it could be.
JPM: Isn't there a risk of Hoiles being undermined?
SM: The only thing you need to do is be aware of how we conduct ourselves on the pitch. Obviously you don't want five guys trying to talk to the referee. That's Hoilesy's job as skipper.
Certainly we won't be short on ideas and guys willing to put their hands up when it's needed.
JPM: You visited training today, what are your feelings about next year?
SM: I'm extremely excited. We've been extremely lucky to have secured some great signings and a lot of guys went along on the Brumbies tour to France and created better depth.
It's also our second year with this coaching staff. At the end of the day there's probably more pressure involved, because we do have so many quality performers.
JPM: When injury ruled you out of the Wallabies' spring tour you said it wasn't necessarily curtains on your Test career. But it was reassessment time. What have you concluded?
SM: Nothing yet. This season has probably been the worst I've had with injuries because it wasn't one long-term injury it was a string of different injuries and I was always of the mindset that this year my body would tell me how things were going. So from that regard it hasn't been positive at all.
But I want to give myself the opportunity to contribute to the Brumbies and over the next period of time I definitely will be making a decision long term, but at this stage I haven't really been able to make one here nor there. Pretty much all doors are open.
JPM: When would you need to have declared your intention to the Brumbies about whether you'll play on in 2011?
SM: I'm pretty sure that at least by the middle of the Super14 next year a decision would have been made.
JPM: People inferred from your visit to Japan to look at club options that you'd been given a tap on the shoulder by Robbie Deans?
SM: No, not at all. At the time my rehab was going pretty slowly so it was an opportunity to go over then or in December. Realistically I'm not the sort of person who makes a big decision without getting as much information as possible. That was the basis of me being over there. It certainly wasn't from any information that Robbie or any of the Wallabies coaching staff had given me.
JPM: You said at the time of this calf injury that things had gone ''pear shaped'' for you on the injury front. Has your body turned from a friend into a foe?
SM: No, I just think I had a bit of a bad trot this year. Certainly that's what I'm hoping's the case. Looking at the positives here I'm looking at it as a chance to be refreshed, to spend some time with my family and get some more rehab under my belt before starting in January.
I'll definitely be physically and mentally as refreshed as I've ever been.
JPM: The Wallabies' win against Wales last weekend has made people think maybe there is something to this rhetoric of the team developing well towards the World Cup. Two years out, what's your belief in what the Test team can do in 2011?
SM: We have shown a couple of glimpses of what we're capable of, but the reality is that we have got a lot of work ahead of us and we need to do less predicting what we're capable of and more actually getting out there and doing it. I'm really hopeful that's the path we take.
JPM: So do you think the players got a little carried away with the predictions of big things when Robbie took charge?
SM: When you're going through fundamentally changing the way you do things, you have to have faith in it. A lot of the positivity and talk coming out of the camp was probably about that. But a lot of our mixed results were us falling away from that.
What we have seen is that when we are on our game ... we can play well.
JPM: How were you able to reconcile with losing the Wallabies captaincy to Rocky Elsom?
SM: That was one of the things I was really looking disappointed about with not being able to tour. I was very keen to get over there and show that I could give just as much, whether I had the captaincy or not. It doesn't really matter if you've got the 'c' next to your name.
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