The Irish school teacher has linked with the Wagga club for the northern hemisphere summer and is already making an impact.

"He's bringing a lot of different things to the club, both on and off the park," coach Jonno Andreou said.

"It's really nice to have someone come from a different country and teach us things and hopefully we can teach him some things.

"It's just unfortunate we won't have him all year so we'll just have to make the most of it."

Sweeney has already played one game for the club just days after arriving in the country and shifts to flanker to tackle Albury at Conolly Rugby Complex on Saturday.

He's impressed Andreou with his defence and communication.

The 23-year-old is only in the country for another five weeks but is looking to experience as much as he can.

"We had a Kiwi coach last year and I'd expressed an interest to travel to Australia as I'm a secondary teacher and have three months in the summer off," Sweeney said.

"I decided especially with COVID that the next opportunity I got I was going. It happened this year."

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After having the bye last week, Waratahs welcome back captain Harry Hosegood, five-eighth Gerard McTaggart as well as Charlie Sykes.

David Capp also returns to number eight with Hosegood and Sykes moving into the second row.

Waratahs are looking to themselves in second spot against a Steamers outfit looking to force themselves back into the top four.

"We've got four games in a row rather than having byes to hopefully get some continuity going into finals," Andreou said.

"Hopefully we can stay injury free to keep the squad together as we need to make sure we stick to our patterns.

"A couple of times we've gone away from our patterns in attack and defence and it doesn't help."

While he's on the other side of the world, Sweeney can see plenty of similarity between the Waratahs style and that of his home club of Ballina.

"I feel the 'Tahs play quite a high tempo game and it probably suits me as we've got a similar style back home," he said. "We weren't the biggest team in the league but were definitely up there in terms of the most skilful.

"I'm a back rower so I like to get around the pitch as much as I can, get my hands on the ball as much as a I can, make my tackles when I have to and hopefully I can learn some stuff I can bring home with me and offload some knowledge I've gained from the northern hemisphere."

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