David Pocock

At 36 years old, David Pocock has this physical status:

Pocock played for the Force, where he made his debut in 2006 against the Sharks in Durban. Pocock made appearances for Australian Schoolboys and Australia A in the 2007 IRB Pacific Nations Cup, earning man of the match multiple times in the tournament. He then made his Australia debut as a substitute against the Barbarians on 3 December 2008.

Pocock made his test debut in Hong Kong against New Zealand in late 2008, and then played against Italy and the Barbarians on the Wallabies spring tour. That same year he also captained the Australian Under 20s at the Junior World Championships in Wales, and was then awarded the Emirates Western Force captaincy for the development tour of England.

In 2009 Pocock played 13 Super Rugby games and was again called up to the Wallabies Squad. The year 2009 was a breakthrough year, during which he featured in 13 of the 14 Tests played by Australia – including a man of the match effort in the drawn Test against Ireland at Croke Park, as well as a maiden Test try during the 33–12 win over Wales at Cardiff. Pocock had earlier started the year by scoring his first try for his adopted country during the 55–7 win over the Barbarians in a non-cap match in Sydney. As a credit to his improving performance in the game Pocock replaced longstanding Wallaby openside flanker George Smith, late in the 2009 Tri-Nations. In the Wales test in the 2009 Autumn Internationals, he put his thumb back into its socket after it had been dislocated and continued to play. He was, however, substituted at half-time and replaced by George Smith.

In 2010, Pocock became the first choice openside flanker for the Wallabies. He won the John Eales Medal in 2010 – the highest honour in Australian Rugby. Pocock was recognised at an international level after being nominated alongside five other players for 2010 IRB Player of the Year, an award given to the best player in world rugby. In addition he was recognised with the Australia's Choice Wallaby of the Year and awarded the Rugby Union Players Association (RUPA) Medal of Excellence.

In both 2010 and 2011, Pocock was a finalist for the IRB International Player of the Year.

Pocock took over the Wallabies captaincy during the 2012 midseason test series when regular captain James Horwill was injured.

At the conclusion of the 2012 Super Rugby season, he left the Western Force to join the ACT Brumbies.

In 2013, he underwent a knee reconstruction, and Michael Hooper became the Wallabies first choice number 7.

In 2014, in the course of his third game back after knee reconstruction, he damaged his anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) and had another knee reconstruction in late March 2014. On 15 January 2015, Pocock and teammate Nic White were appointed vice-captains of the Brumbies for the 2015 Super Rugby season.

He played in all three games during the 2015 Rugby Championship, Australia won all those games and won the trophy for the first time since the 2011 Tri Nations Series.

On 23 September 2015, Pocock scored two tries in Australia's opening game of the 2015 Rugby World Cup, a 28–13 win against Fiji at the Millennium Stadium, as well as also scoring a try in a defeat to the 2015 Rugby World Cup Final the New Zealand All Blacks.

Pocock signed a three-year deal with the Panasonic Wild Knights of Japan's Top League in May 2016. The deal, agreed on in negotiations that also involved the Australian Rugby Union (now Rugby Australia), was structured to make him eligible to play for Australia in the 2019 Rugby World Cup. He played the 2016–17 Japanese season with the Wild Knights; once that season ended in January 2017, he took a sabbatical from all rugby until the start of the Wild Knights' 2017–18 season. Immediately after the end of that season, he returned to Australia to play for the Brumbies in the 2018 and 2019 Super Rugby seasons, skipping the 2018–19 Japanese season. On 6 September 2019, Pocock announced his international retirement after the 2019 World Cup in Japan, where he will then complete his Japanese contract in 2019–20.

On 23 October 2020 Pocock announced his retirement from all forms of rugby to focus on conservation efforts.

Post-rugby career

In 2021 Pocock graduated with a Master of Sustainable Agriculture from Charles Sturt University which he began in 2013 while playing Rugby.

Pocock is concerned about global warming and the damage to the environment from human activity. Most notably, he visited the Leard Blockade against the expansion of the Maules Creek mine in the Leard State Forest and was arrested for taking part in a nonviolent protest.

In 2012, he publicly supported the Australian Government’s since-revoked fixed price Emissions Trading Scheme, saying, "Climate change is one of the biggest challenges of our time and to finally see the government taking action is a bit of a turning point... It's probably not the perfect model, but I think it's a really good start and it's something we need to do for the future of Australians."

Pocock is one of the more visible campaigners in professional sports in Australia against homophobia, actively taking a stand both on and off the field.

Alongside this, he had been a public advocate in the campaign for same-sex marriage in Australia. He had been a guest on the ABC's panel show Q&A, debating among other topics the issue of legalising same-sex marriage. Although he and his partner Emma held a marriage ceremony in 2010, they had refused to sign documents that would result in their legal marriage until their potential gay friends may be able to do the same. After the country enacted legislation to allow same-sex marriage in 2017, they officially signed marriage documentation on 1 December 2018.

Pocock has also been active in promoting accessibility for the hearing-impaired. He sought to bring an Auslan interpreter to the Senate floor for his first speech as a member of that body on 1 August 2022. Under Senate rules, Pocock was required to ask permission to bring a "stranger" to the floor, which is almost exclusively used for visiting dignitaries. The Greens supported his request, but both major parties opposed it, fearing that it would set a precedent to invite more "strangers". The government soon offered a compromise of having an interpreter shown on screens placed on the floor of the Senate. Pocock stated that he would pursue rules changes to allow Auslan interpreters on the Senate floor. This was not the first time he had shown support for the hearing-impaired; during a 2015 rugby union match in which he scored a hat-trick, he made the Auslan sign for applause after one of his tries as a shout-out to a friend whose first language was Auslan.

Political career

In December 2021, Pocock announced he would be running as a candidate for the Senate, representing the Australian Capital Territory (ACT) in the forthcoming federal election. On 18 March 2022, a political party called "David Pocock" was successfully registered with the Australian Electoral Commission, so that the name appeared above the line on the Senate ballot paper. In an interview with Television New Zealand in May called 'From Ruck to the Senate' Pocock explained his reasons for running for the Australian Senate as an independent candidate and how he hoped to bring a socially progressive voice to the Senate and reform the integrity monitoring process for politicians in parliament. He prosecuted an agenda to tackle corruption in government and political advertising laws, as well as campaign to increase Australia's expenditure on renewable energy, and restore the rights of territories to legislate on euthanasia. Pocock was declared elected by the Australian Electoral Commission on 14 June 2022, thereby winning the second of the two ACT seats and unseating incumbent Liberal Senator Zed Seselja to become the first non-Labor or Liberal person to be elected as a Senator for the ACT, and the second non-Labor or Liberal person elected to represent the ACT at the federal level (after Lewis Nott, who was MP for the ACT in 1949–51).

In July 2022, Pocock opposed the Labor government's defunding of the Australian Building and Construction Commission.

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