USARugger
John Thornett (49)
**My earlier comments were based on Slim's unedited post where he seemed to forget about LFG. Irrelevant now that Liam is going away though.
Pocock wears 8 only because he's an absolute freak and had to be shoehorned into the squad without dropping Hooper, one of the Wallabies best players for the last few years. A pretty severe lack of quality options at 8 during the same period made this the only real option Cheika or the Wallabies had.
Double 7's was a structure that was adopted because of Pocock and there's been plenty of on-field evidence with Cheika as coach that it won't be played without Pocock on the field.
Last year Butler generally came off the bench to cover for Vaea and the majority (if not all) of his time wearing 7 was due to squad injuries. Even then, Fardy was the go-to man for a lot of the on the ball work you'd expect your fetcher/spoiler to be getting through.
It's interesting that Cheika brought him to the Barbarians because there's still an enormous gulf in the 8 jersey for the Wallabies right now (Pocock was always a possibility to take an overseas option after the RWC and has a good history of major injury at this point in his career).
He's not in line behind McMahon/Hooper or any of the other 6s-cum-7 going around Australian rugby - he's a potential candidate to butt heads with whoever else Cheika has in mind to wear the Wallabies 8 jersey after David (and not in the way David has, but as a "traditional" 8).
He had pretty limited minutes when the Brumbie's starting back row were all fit so maybe Cheika just wanted to see a bit more of him - what better way to do it than in person. Not a bad move considering that outside of Vaea there wasn't really anyone putting their hand up. Vaea is also going to be 31+ by the next RWC, having his own past issues with fitness in more than one way.
But thanks Reg, I'd almost forgotten what jersey Pocock was wearing the entire RWC.
