The 21-year-old is still a fresh face in rugby union, with just a dozen matches behind him after his signing from rugby league by Rugby Australia in 2024, a move reportedly worth £5m over five years and partly pushed by the then Wallabies head coach, Eddie Jones.
It was not any old club or state match here in Oz, but a Test debut for the Wallabies against England at Twickenham.
And it featured a highlight reel of jaw-dropping moments: two restarts nicked away from Maro Itoje high off the ground; a sharp take-and-give in his own 22; a chasing cover tackle to haul down Tommy Freeman; a pick-up of a bouncing ball turned into a nonchalant one-handed offload standing up while withstanding a double tackle from Henry Slade and George Furbank; another one-handed pass to put Tom Wright in for a try; and a no-look pass made in mid-air above the flummoxed Furbank.
The ex-Australia captain Michael Hooper recently told Sky Sports that Suaalii is formidable “defensively, aerially, and in attack”.
Suaalii is 6ft 5ins and weighs 15 and a half stones, and he is set to bring this mighty frame to Australia’s outside-centre position in the opening Test at Brisbane’s Suncorp Stadium on Saturday.
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“I played against the young Sonny Bill Williams,” Shanklin tells The i Paper, remembering a Wales-All Blacks Test in 2010 among his 70 caps.
“Offloading like that is a skill. Suaalii is big and he’s strong, and he wiggles his body and he knows how to hold the ball correctly – which sounds strange, but not everyone can offload like him, to manipulate your body, know the angles and know the force you’ve got to put through, and when to back off or when to go through hard.
“Ringrose really does like line speed, and he’s such an intelligent player, he makes good reads, he puts so much pressure on players, and even if they do get the ball away, it’s not clean, it’s not crisp, and the rest of the team got time to recover, and corner flag.”
Restarts and the rest of the aerial threat
Suaalii’s height makes him a huge threat in the air (Photo: Getty)Former Australia centre Tim Horan told The i Paper before Suaalii’s Test debut that “we’re just pleased he’s grabbed rugby because going up for the high ball, his leaps, his vertical jumps, his sidestepping – he’s as good of an athlete, as you’ve seen; an athlete first and a rugby player second.”
“Because he’s in the centres, it’s not so much the crossfield kicks they have to worry about, but it will be the kick-offs, and it will be the little dinks over the defence from nine or 10.
The Lions could try man-marking him but that would keep pulling a player out of another area.
“And that means quite a bit of training, learning a new skill set. If Tommy Freeman is on the Lions’ right wing, we might see him switch to the left on kick-offs, and he could get lifted by Bundee Aki, or whatever pod is there.
Suaalii wears his dark hair with a Superman quiff but some say his Kryptonite is the very short time he has spent in rugby union.
A toe injury earlier in 2025 had already restricted Suaalii’s adjustment, plus he made all but one of his starts for the Waratahs at full-back, not centre.
That nightmare scenario has been avoided, but Suaalii was out of action for two months, off solid foods and losing 5kg, in addition to suffering at least three other concussion episodes during his time in rugby league.
He is widely regarded as a ‘once in a generation’ talent (Photo: Getty)Still, Mat Rogers, a code-crosser in the Noughties who played in the 2003 Rugby World Cup final, told Aussie broadcasters Stan Sport it could take Suaalii “a couple of years” before he can play the 15-man game properly “on auto-pilot”.
Horan pointed out: “No 13 is one of the hardest positions on the field to defend in.”
Getting under his skin – while keeping it low-key
Shanklin says: “Part of me really hopes Sione Tuipulotu plays this Saturday because of the beef there.
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“Yes, the Lions could plan to rough him up. But I think the key is don’t mention it too much.
“You’ve been talking about him all week, you want to put a big shot on him, you put a late one in, you mistime it, and then there’s a potential red card.”
But second-row Will Skelton, sitting next to him, relished the prospect of a rematch between the pair: “That’s what you want – our 12s going against their 12s, 13s going into 13s. There will be a physical battle all over the field.”
Overall star quality
“I cannot believe that England game was his first in professional rugby union. It was incredible. That is a once in a generation talent – there would be a handful of players you could name who could do that, over the span of 50 years.
An impressively composed Suaalii spoke on Monday of his pre-match ritual of standing barefoot on the pitch, getting grounded and purposefully taking in every moment. “I’m a pretty weird person, a lot of people know that,” he said.
Many more of us in the rugby union world are about to pass judgement.
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