A Big Day for Ballymore/A Conversation with Izack Rodda

I had a great day today at Ballymore stadium. I got to watch the Wallabies train and meet a few of them for the first time, as well see the Reds do their thing. The Wallabies are in Brisbane, ahead of their match against Italy - 3pm this Saturday at Suncorp - on Channel 10.

Henry Speight was humble enough to take a photo with me, even with my Reds hat on

Bumped into this stranger. I tried to make him feel as welcome as possible at Ballymore

For this weeks player interview, I was lucky to sit down with the giant himself, Izack Rodda. Enjoy!

Hey Izack, thanks for taking time to chat. I know things are busy for you at the moment.

Yeah no worries mate!

I heard a rumour you've been training with the Wallabies. Is that true? 

Yeah it’s true I trained yesterday.

How did it go?

It was exciting. It was a new step for me in my career. It was a lot of fun and a lot of work. Contacts are a lot harder than over here, so it was good.

Back to the Reds - how's the teams training going at the moment?

Yeah trainings been good. We’ve doing a lot of games and we’ve been working specifically on our line out work and kick-off reception which has been good for us. We’ve been lacking that this year, so we’ve been really honing down on it in the last couple of weeks and really improving.

So how did you end up playing for the Reds?

Well I finished school up at Ipswich Grammar in 2014 and I came over to the under-20s programme and was in that for about 2 years. In 2016 I went from that and started training here and haven’t left since. I sort of just went through the pathway.

You’re originally from Lismore, which is in New South Wales.

Yeah I grew up in Evans Head down in Byron Bay. They had some scouts from the school come down to one of the local rep game and asked me to come along down to the school there so I just took the chance.

Sorry about the game last night.

Yeah the Blues sort of went to sleep in the second half, and let Queensland back into it. JT was never going to miss that kick.

What was your highlight from the teams recent trip to Samoa?

It was probably Jakey McIntyre dancing with his shirt off at the dinner, with a little Samoan girl in the show they did. That was definitely a highlight.

And the question we ask everyone... can you tell us something about yourself that not many people may know?

Umm… when I was 6 years old, I played soccer and did ballet for school. Not many people know that. I kept that on the down low for a long time.

Thanks for your time. Good luck with your training this week.

No, thank you. Pleasure. Yeah, one more session to go and then a couple of days off.