One week in: what do we know about Les Kiss, Wallabies coach?

What have we learned about Les Kiss after his first week as an international rugby coach?

The now former Queensland Reds head coach named his first Wallabies squad on Thursday July 23, they assembled in Sydney the following Monday and spent all of last week getting up to speed with any slight changes to the Joe Schmidt regime, and they left for Japan on Saturday.

The first match of the two-Test Japan Series will be played in Osaka – at the home of the Kintetsu Liners – on Saturday night AEST, before the return leg in Townsville the following week on August 15.

The first message has been repeated a few times of late and was always going to come up with the Wallabies using North Sydney Oval as their training base last week.

“You know, since I was announced, it sort of sat in the back of the mind when you talk to mates from the league days, for sure,” Kiss admitted early in his press conference last Thursday. “The mind goes there. But I’m a rugby man now.”

“I’ve been in rugby now longer than I’ve been in league. But it was nice to be there at the Oval and look at the fig tree and, you know, some memories come flooding back, for sure.”

Kiss is, of course, referring to his league days with the North Sydney Bears, where the speedy winger notched up one hundred games for the red & blacks, which in turn saw him selected for a handful of games for both Queensland and Australia.

“Where I missed the tackles?” Kiss got in first, when Harry Wilson was asked if the coach had been pointing out how many tries he scored in which corners of the patch of turf affectionately known as ‘Bear Park’. Kiss himself is the first to point out the irony of him forging his name as a rugby defence coach, given his defensive shortcomings on the rugby league field.

But this wasn’t the first time he’d used the “I’ve been in rugby now longer than I’ve been in league” line. He mentioned the fact at his first official Wallabies press conference earlier in the same week he named his first squad, and it’s come up in other interviews he’s given, too.

He knows it’s going to be a novelty for a little while yet, but now is the time for him to reinforce his rugby credentials. The days of the slight, but speedy rugby league winger are long in the past. This now is the time of Les Kiss, the rugby coach.

“I’m a rugby man now.”