When is it time to go?
With the spotlight firmly on Wallaby captain George Gregan and his possible axeing/retirement, Danny Stephens takes a look at the vexed issue of when it is the right time to step out of the rugby limelight.
Our columnist Duncan Bech reflects on what he makes of England's coaching shake-up and gives us his views on the possible return of a certain knight of the realm…
Martin Johnson, John Eales, Tana Umaga, Fabien Galthié, Rob Howley… Notice the connection? Five of the professional era's greatest players, all retired – from the international scene at least – and all remembered for being at the peak of their powers and the zenith (relatively) of their careers when they took their boots off for the final shower.
All continued at club level for at least another season, but they knew, and knew well, that the Test intensity was no longer in their bodies. Like cherished old cars, they still drove. But not at the same speed, only with the same comforting familiarity and reliability. They could not even go the distance they used to. By the end of the next Rugby World Cup, you will probably be able to add Fabien Pelous and Agustin Pichot to that list, among others.
Another list now: Lawrence Dallaglio, Os du Randt, Neil Back, Matt Dawson, George Gregan. The connection here? Five players whose powers were/are clearly on the wane, yet they pushed on regardless, to the cost of their own teams more often than not.
It is perhaps the biggest quandary a coach of any team has to ponder: when to take a senior player off the rota. How do you explain to a great of the game, a loyal servant of years, that he is no longer required?
Because even though you can see the willing and able spirit, the weakening flesh is now a problem?
It was one of Sir Clive Woodward's downfalls when he took the Lions to new Zealand in 2005, that he was unable to realise this, just as it appears to be a failing of Andy Robinson and Jake White at the moment. The best rugby players are immensely proud people, and it needs a coach with titanium resolve to impose his will upon this pride.
The player currently most at the centre of the 'should he stay or should he go' debate is George Gregan. He has a world record 125 Test caps, is a Rugby World Cup-winner, as well as captain of his national team a world-record 55 times.
The covering tackler who saved a Bledisloe Cup twelve years ago when he hammered Jeff Wilson into touch in only his third match for the Wallabies, who has developed a reputation for being the hardest-working scrum-half of the eleven professional years… on and on the accolades go.
While his competitive streak and dour relations with the media cause controversy and debate, there is nothing on his copybook that truly stands out as a blot. Gregan is a true rugby great, a player who will be spoken about by grandparents to grandchildren years from now.
Blots they are not, but there are more and more smudges appearing on the pages of the final chapters of Gregan's story. There is the try by Bryan Habana last year late in the Mandela Cup match in Perth – a strikingly similar situation to the Wilson tackle – where the covering Gregan looked every one of his 32 years as he galloped across in vain. The breaks around the fringes of the scrums are less and less, and when he does make it through, it is the defence lacking rather than Gregan being too good.
The distribution, once an embodiment of the calmness and wisdom required for an international scrum-half, has been bypassed by the game's evolution. Defences are quicker out of the blocks these days, flankers more physical, and Gregan's methodical sideways step-and-pass only puts his fly-half under extra pressure now.
Modern scrum-halves – New Zealand's Byron Kelleher and Wales' Dwayne Peel are the epitomes – need to be invisibly fast, to have the ball outore.
Gregan's climactic hour should have been the World Cup final in 2003. Instead it became Martin Johnson's, but Fabien Galthié also took his leave from the game in that tournament's semi-final, and nobody thought any the worse of him for not being the winning captain. It was a case of bowing out gracefully at the right time, rather than needing glorified closure. Jean-Baptiste Elissalde and Dimitri Yachvili were both ready and waiting, and Galthié knew it.
It is has to be about what is the right time for the team. Tana Umaga possibly could have carried on through until the 2007 World Cup, but with Ma'a Nonu, Conrad Smith, and Mils Muliaina all champing at the bit, Umaga could lay no claim to a divine right to his position. He took his own closure from leading the team up to its current status and called time when both replacement captain and replacement centres were primed.
Compare that to Lawrence Dallaglio, whose own search for closure – he probably would have been captain in November 2003 had it not been for the News of the World drugs sting in 1997 – has seen him exposed as an ageing lumbering giant, rather than the high-power battering ram he used to be.
Some of the rings run round him near the end of last season were just comical. Not once when he came on for England in the Six Nations did he have a positive impact on the game, and most of the time he just shot his mouth off and undermined the captain. He has irreversibly tarnished his legacy through stubborn refusal to accept that time has caught up with him.
Gregan is on the verge of doing the same.
Matt Henjak should have been the Gregan replacement, and the off-field misbehaviour which has seen him fall out of favour with the ARU smacks of vented frustration just as much as youthful indiscipline. Under-19 prodigy Josh Holmes is apparently the next in line behind Sam Cordingley – who is also 30 – but he will not have the experience to take into a World Cup unless he gets a chance soon. As far as captaincy goes, Chris Latham has inspired Queensland with leadership, loyalty and excellence for years, and is now doing the same for Australia. It would be a natural progression for him to take the armband of the national side.
John Connolly has inherited this problem from Eddie Jones rather than letting it develop himself, but the longer he perpetuates it, the more responsibility he assumes. Solving it is perhaps his biggest test as the new coach, but the noises so far are hardly encouraging. Both captain and coach must sit down and take a long hard look at this position, before the waiting replacements lose interest, and before Gregan is remembered as the scrum-half who just couldn't let go rather than one of the greatest ever.
