Moore takes Australian option

Stephen Moore will cast aside any lingering doubts surrounding his rugby future when he takes his place on the bench for Australia in their Test match against Samoa at the Telstra Stadium today. His decision finally ends speculation with regard to playing for the land of his birth, Ireland.

Moore (22), was five when his father, Tom, an Irish GP, decided to take an assisted-passage job in Australia, the family heading for Queensland from Galway.

Mount Morgan was once one of the richest places in Australia but, by the time the Moore family arrived there, its gold mine was running dry, a fact that brought hardship to the town. The local junior rugby club, however, was about to unearth a nugget.

Moore was only 20 when he made his Super 12 debut for Queensland in 2003 and last year he packed down for Australia A against the French Barbarians in Paris. Moore's selection in the Wallabies' match 22 as back-up hooker to Jeremy Paul is an admission that the 110kg youngster is a player of rich potential.

Moore was still eligible to play for Ireland before this weekend, the Australia A game not counting because France did not select an equivalent side.

He admitted: "That option has definitely gone now. My ambition now, my dream and my goal, is to play as many games as I can for Queensland and Australia."

He has modelled himself not on Australian legend Phil Kearns, the man many critics are comparing him to, but on former British and Irish Lions hooker Keith Wood.

In one respect, however, he has followed in Kearns' footsteps.

Where Kearns was plucked from Randwick's reserve grade in 1989 and thrust into a Test at Eden Park, Moore has earned his first Australian selection off the Queensland Reds' bench. After beginning the Super 12 in the Reds' starting line-up, Moore was exposed as the inexperienced novice he is when the Queensland scrum was demolished by the Bulls in Pretoria in mid-April.

"I'd never encountered anything like that in my life. It was a tremendous learning experience," he said.

He was dropped in favour of Seán Hardman but has now leapfrogged over the latter and NSW Waratahs hooker Adam Freier. Moore could keep alive the long tradition of doctors playing rugby for Australia.

As an undergraduate he's studying for a science degree that in Queensland is a prerequisite for doing medicine.