Watch every second of the 2026 Nations Championship live and on demand via Stan Sport.<\/a><\/p>\nBut in 33-Test No.9 Lucu the French still have a winner and a general – his Begles have won back-to-back European Champions Cups.<\/p>\n
Incoming Toulouse flyhalf Romain Ntamack and Lucu’s Bordeaux clubmate Matthieu Jalibert – he’ll start at fullback after wearing the No.10 last week in Christchurch in a two-point loss to New Zealand – will combine to examine the re-jigged Wallabies in Brisbane on Saturday.<\/p>\n
Declan Meredith will debut for the hosts and wear the No.10, while Jock Campbell, ordinarily a fullback or wing, will back him up from the bench.<\/p>\n
Tom Wright, yet to hit his straps on return from a long-term knee injury, will start at fullback, while his and Meredith’s Brumbies teammate Ryan Lonergan will wear the No.9 in just his second start.<\/p>\n
Lucu will turn to their Australian-laced pack to set the platform, as former Brisbane and Ipswich junior Moses Alo-Emile debuts in the front row, huge Brisbane-raised lock Emmanuel Meafou packs in behind him, and Canberra-born Tom Staniforth waits on the bench.<\/p>\n
“Experienced or not, the half-back pairing is always put under pressure, so we will have to do that no matter what tomorrow,” Lucu said.<\/p>\n
“We want to put pressure on them every time they carry the ball.”<\/p>\n
The French have done their homework on the 27-year-old from Cairns, who has only broken through as a starter at the Brumbies this year.<\/p>\n
“If their forwards give them forward momentum tomorrow, they are very good rugby players and they can be dangerous,” Lucu said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“Their 10 is a great attacker, so we will have to keep an eye on him.”<\/p>\n
France beat Australia 48-33 to complete a 0-4 European tour for the visitors last year, their first winless campaign of at least four Tests since 1958.<\/p>\n
A loss on Saturday at Suncorp Stadium would be a sixth straight defeat and ninth in 10 Tests.<\/p>\n
It would leave coach Joe Schmidt with an 11-19 record ahead of his final Test in charge, needing a win to improve marginally on Dave Rennie’s current winning percentage low mark of 38 per cent among Wallabies coaches.<\/p>\n
Lucu doesn’t think they’re going that badly, though.<\/p>\n
“When you look at the results, they are not far from toppling big nations,” he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“We saw it against Ireland last week (in a 33-31 loss), where they would have won if they had managed the last five minutes better.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“The victory wouldn’t have been undeserved because they played a great match.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“They play well, they keep the ball, they are strong, they have enormous ball-carriers to tire out the opposition. It’s not going their way because sometimes they play a bit too much, but they have a good team.<\/p>\n
“We will need to put in a serious performance; it’s going to be tough.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"French captain Maxime Lucu has vowed to torment the Wallabies’ fledgling halves as the scrumhalf pulls the strings…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":48269,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[99,1745,25210,8285],"class_list":["post-48268","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-brisbane","tag-brisbane","tag-france","tag-nations-championship","tag-wallabies"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48268","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=48268"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48268\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/48269"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=48268"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=48268"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=48268"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}