David Nucifora to take up advisory role with Australia in March

Rugby Australia have confirmed that David Nucifora will return to Australia for the first time in almost a decade on a advisory role.

Nucifora is currently with the Ireland as a high-performance director and oversaw the team reach the number one position in the World Rugby Rankings. He also oversaw the rise of their men's and women's sevens programs.

Former Australia international Nucifora started his coaching career with Brumbies in 2002 before switching to Blues in 2005.

In 2009 Nucifora was appointed General Manager of the ARU High Performance Unit. He coached the Australian U20 team at the IRB Junior World Championship in Japan before moving to Ireland. He will head to Australia at the end of his stint with Ireland following the Paris Olympics.

Meanwhile, Peter Horne had been appointed as director of high performance.

“We’ll be in market next week with expressions of interest and ideally we want to be having an appointment in certainly Q-1 (quarter one) in ‘24 given that the Welsh are here in July,” Rugby Australia boss Phil Waugh said.

“So it is a bit of a sprint. We understand that time is against us, but equally it’s really important process to get right.

“This is a journey and this is the start of that journey and a really exciting path ahead for the game here in Australia and we need to be very disciplined and go through the right process to get the best possible people into the organisation.”