Rugby: Try drought foreign feeling for Folau

Name: Rugby: Wallabies 'we can improve'
Uploaded: 2014-08-23T10:09:58+12:00
Duration: 171 s
Description: Wallabies head coach Ewen McKenzie knows his team can improve a lot from last weeks 12-12 draw, 'We we're off at some key moments and we know we can improve a lot this week'.

By Darren Walton

AAP·

22 Aug, 2014 05:00 PM2 mins to read

Wallabies head coach Ewen McKenzie knows his team can improve a lot from last weeks 12-12 draw, 'We we're off at some key moments and we know we can improve a lot this week'.

Israel Folau can't recall a try-scoring drought quite like it and he certainly hasn't faced a challenge as big as that which awaits him at Eden Park tonight.

After ending 2013 with the equal most tries in a calendar year by a Wallaby and opening 2014 with a spectacular hat-trick in Super Rugby, Folau enters the second Bledisloe Cup test without a five-pointer to his name in his past four games.

The code-hopping superstar last crossed the stripe seven weeks ago in the NSW Waratahs' 44-16 rout of the Highlanders.

Since then, he's watched teammates at state and national level run in 13 tries for the Waratahs and Wallabies.

Folau, Super Rugby's joint top try-scorer this year, was left scratching his head when asked how long it had been since he endured such a long time between celebrations.

"I can't remember at all," he said. "But for me, that's not a big thing.

"Going into the game I'm thinking about doing my job for the team and that's not necessarily always scoring tries.

"There's some really good players around myself that can do that as well and hopefully we can perform as a team on the weekend."

Personally, Folau is due a big one after rating his own game in last Saturday's 12-all stalemate in Sydney "probably a six" out of 10.

The fullback's unusually quiet night included one wild pass that flew over Kurtley Beale's head when the Wallabies had a two-man overlap and the chance to put the All Blacks to the sword.

"I obviously wasn't too happy, but there wasn't much that we could have done," Folau said.

"Obviously the conditions didn't really suit the way we wanted to play so I did as much as I could. The main thing for me is that I did my job for the team and hopefully, if it's dry this weekend, we can play a bit of footy."

Having won an NRL grand final with the Melbourne Storm, a State of Origin series with Queensland and been Australia's youngest player to represent the Kangaroos in a league test, Folau has rarely experienced being such an underdog.

- AAP