In Fraser McReight and Carlo Tizzano, the Wallabies have two openside flankers who would walk into most Test sides — but likely room for only one of them at any given time.

The fight for the gold no.7 jersey will only escalate in the lead up to next year’s World Cup and fortunately for the Wallabies, the competition is bringing the best out of the pair.

McReight has established himself as one of the world’s premier openside flankers over the past two years as both an on-ball jackal threat and a mobile link in open play.

Breathing down his neck is Tizzano, whose sheer tackle volume, breakdown presence and try-scoring record at Super Rugby level has seen Wallabies fans call for him to play alongside McReight.

The incumbent McReight told The West Australian it was not just the presence of Tizzano that pushed him, but the Wallabies’ embarrassment of riches among their back-row options.

“You can complement each other really well as two sevens because of what the other person might need or might want but me and Carlo are two very different players as well,” he said.

“I have direct competition with Carlo, but then you look at the back row, and you’ve got Harry Wilson, Bobby Valetini, Tom Hooper was one of our best last year and made the PREM Rugby team of the year, and Charlie Cale is so different and so athletic.

“You need competition. It means you don’t rest on your laurels, means you work extra harder.

“You should be living on a little bit of precipice of anxiety and stress because that means you’re getting pushed, and then how you develop is up to you.

“If you’re strong in your mind and believe in what you’re doing and what is right for the team, and you have that confidence, then I’m sure you’ll do good things.”

The McReight-Tizzano battle is not a new phenomena for Australian rugby — natural opensides George Smith and Phil Waugh played together plenty of times and both started the 2003 Rugby World Cup.

And 12 years later, when the Wallabies reached the 2015 World Cup final, they again employed twin sevens in the form of Test greats David Pocock and Michael Hooper.

Tizzano told The West Australian he was always open to more game-time alongside the Queensland Reds back-rower and the contrast in the pair’s styles coupled with their strengths could work for the Wallabies.

“If you have locks on the field, the way they tackle is a bit different compared to a back rower, especially a seven. The tackle height is a lot lower, and most of the time a good jackal is from a good chop tackle,” he said.

“The more guys on the field that can do a strong chop tackle, that’ll lead to a turnover. You can kind of even split the field a bit in defence with having two jackal threats either side.

“I’ve tried to construct my game so I can play in the middle, I can play on the edge, I can play anywhere, and mould my game to whatever opposition is in front of me.

“I can play a really big physical game, a dynamic game, turning over the ball, getting off the line and hitting people, tough carries to the middle, hold width on the edge.”

While the counter-argument to having two sevens on the field at once is the loss of size in the absence of a bigger blindside flanker, Tizzano said he felt both him and McReight played above their size.

“Me and Fraser’s contacts, do we hit like we’re small? I don’t think so. We put people on their backs, add a lot of breakdown pressure, slow their ball down and we carry hard through the guts,” he said.