Farewell to Australia's centurions
What a team of contrasts Australia’s rugby team is.
On one end of the scale, you have the boozing, swearing, spear-tackling hulk of Lote Tuqiri, the best-paid player in the team, the record-paid Wallaby of all time and yet one who has spent this season failing to fire for the Waratahs, failing to meet fitness requirements in June, and failing breathalyser tests during the Tri-Nations.
On the other end of the scale, and indeed, at the other end of the back-line you have George Gregan and Stephen Larkham; the former a world-record Test cap holder and national team captain for some six years now, the latter a fly-half who has come through injuries and threats aplenty and still reigns supreme as possibly the greatest ever. Dan Carter may have taken fly-half play to new levels on occasion, but only when he is still on top of his game at 31 years of age and 100 caps can he stake his claim to Larkham’s crown.
The void to be left by these two in Australia’s team when they head to the rugby retirement homes of Toulon and Edinburgh respectively is currently inestimable. Of those coming through, only the green Berrick Barnes of Queensland shows anything like the ability of Larkham to read a game from fly-half, and he is still a teenager. At scrum-half, things are so desperate that coach John Connolly has been willing to remove the creativity of Matt Giteau from the centre, simply to have some Test-level service from the base of the scrum.
Fans might be tempted to say Australia will miss Gregan and his leadership more – all the more so now he has been re-instated as captain for the World Cup – but it really will be Larkham who leaves the biggest hole. He may have been opposite Jonny Wilkinson when the World Cup-winnig drop goal was kicked, and the rugby world in unison celebrated Wilkinson’s achievements at the 2003 Rugby World Cup, but Wilkinson was playing behind a pack that obliterated all in front of it. When England’s pack of 2003 – and the years building up to it – had an off-day, Wilkinson had an off-day too. Think Grand Slam decider against France in 2000 and Serge Betsen’s dominance, or the quarter-final against Wales in 2003 when he was bailed out by Mike Catt.
Larkham has rarely enjoyed that kind of ‘ball on the front foot’ privilege, yet his consistent intelligence and variety to his play has kept Australia ticking over time and time again. Rather than find his own form dependent on his team-mates’, it often works out that when Larkham has an off-day, so do Australia.
He is unique to the position in that he is not a natural kicker either, certainly not a kicker of the Carter/Wilkinson ilk. Bizarrely for a fly-half, his scrum-half partner Gregan has landed more Test drop goals than him. But there is a timing of the pass, and an astonishing awareness and breadth of vision to Larkham’s game, as well as a long, languid stride that carries him almost over a gap rather than through it. There is a modesty to him as well, a sense of proportion to his persona that knows he is only ever as good as his next game, and a natural shyness that keeps him fishing for trout in his spare time, rather than media attention.
The Tuqiris of Australia’s current era would do well to have a good look at the pair of Test centurions about to take their final home bows. Someone of Tuqiri’s experience ought to be showing the Berrick Barneses how to grow into a team rather than outdrink and outearn it. And when this Saturday comes and Tuqiri is sitting on the sidelines while Gregan and Larkham bid their farewells, Australia’s fans would also do well to rise and acclaim two true icons of the modern professional game whilst telling Tuqiri that he ought, in finest Australian traditions, to ‘pull his head in’ once and for all.
By Dannny Stephens
