WITH seven Wallabies caps now next to his name, Dubbo Roos product Tom Robertson has higher honours in mind for the 2017 season.
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“I’d love to start a Test,” he said. “I’ve got seven caps all off the bench. That’s a big goal of mine to start and get a few more minutes.
“I’d love to get in the finals with the Waratahs too. We were really disappointed last year that we didn’t make it.”
Currently in pre-season training, Robertson and his NSW teammates are working feverishly throughout the scorching Sydney heat in a bid to ensure that last goal comes to fruition.
The Tahs kick-start that bid on the field at Mudgee’s Glen Willow in their Super Rugby trial game against the ACT Brumbies on February 4.
Having toured Europe with the Australian side in the Spring, Robertson said hitting the training paddock with the Tahs in the southern hemisphere summer has been a slog.
“The last time I was around a rugby environment was the Spring Tour, and we went to Europe with the Wallabies and it was minus-4 in Scotland some days … here we’re just off the training paddock and it’s plus-30,” he said. “It’s an adjustment, but it’s good to be back with the boys.”
The medical student absorbed plenty of rugby lessons in that year-ending European tour.
"Internationally it's a totally different game, there's a lot more of a focus on the scrum," Robertson told AAP.
"Certainly at a Wallaby level you've got to be continuously working at your scrum because over there it's the centrepiece of their game."
Robertson stressed Australians passion for expansive rugby meant front-rowers had to do more than just scrummage well.
"You've also got to be very confident at going around the park because that's what Australian spectators love to see is that running style of rugby," he said.
He was one of more than a dozen Wallabies debutants in 2016 as coach Michael Cheika injected almost a whole side's worth of new blood.
"It was a good thing from my perspective having a lot of younger guys that were in the same position, rather than getting chucked in as a youngster with a bunch of older guys," Robertson said.