Australian sevens star Maddison Levi is facing growing uncertainty over her mooted switch to the Wallaroos setup ahead of this year’s Rugby World Cup, with her agent warning the move could backfire.
Mat Rogers, a former Wallaby and dual-code international, says pushing Levi into the 15-a-side format without adequate preparation risks derailing her development and damaging team harmony.
“She’s being set up to fail,” Rogers said bluntly on Stan Sport’s Inside Line. “I’m speaking from Maddi’s perspective purely out of care for her. I don’t want her to be set up to fail, and I think that’s what’s happening if they pursue it further this year.”
Tension brewing within Wallaroos camp
Levi, widely regarded as the top women’s sevens player in the world, broke her hand earlier this year and missed a planned stint with the Queensland Reds. That injury threw a spanner in the works for a gradual transition to XVs, and she has since returned to the sevens fold, set to feature in the LA Sevens next month.
MORE: Wallabies star makes contract call ahead of British & Irish Lions Tour
If she skips the final tournament of the sevens season, she could be available for Wallaroos Tests as early as May 3 against Fiji. But Rogers is far from convinced this is a wise or fair move, either for Levi or the squad she’d be joining.
“She’s not going to have enough game time,” he said. “It’s just unfair on her, and it’s unfair on the squad to throw her in there and expect her to be a world-beater that she is in sevens. It’s too much pressure.”
Though Wallaroos coach Jo Yapp has publicly downplayed the risk of friction, Rogers hinted that problems have already surfaced.
“If I’m busting my b*tt in the XVs team, and all of a sudden you get these seven or eight girls go, ‘oh, I want to play XVs’… I would have been absolutely filthy,” he said.
Although Levi still has time to feature in a handful of Tests before the World Cup begins in August, whether that path is in her best interest remains very much doubtful.