The bloke in question and his trademark sidestep (not quite as good as that of his famous uncle) |
With the Waratahs enjoying a well-earned bye in the Super 14 this week, let’s take time-out to consider the Mark Gasnier matter.
I for one am very strongly opposed to the ARU offering a base package of about $300,000-$350,000 plus many incentives to lure this player from Rugby League.
Poaching League players is bad policy in principle, for it is an expensive ’fast-food’ option that distracts and detracts from long-term investment in building Australia’s rugby ranks.
Don’t get me wrong. I am all in favour of Leagies who wish to try their skills in the game they play in heaven. Let them come, and trial, and if they prove themselves, I say welcome and good luck.
I also don’t really mind too much if provinces want to reach into their own pockets and poach League players, so long as it’s not my province. I might even shrug and put the issue aside if, once in a while, the ARU grabs a League player who is so obviously outstanding that he will adorn the world code and attract interest to the game. Lote Tuqiri is a good example.
What I couldn’t be more strongly against is the ARU underpinning bids for Leagies with guarantees of inside runs to play with the Wallabies. Impossibly, I’m even more firmly against this when the player is of dubious ability.
I don’t know much about Mark Gasnier, but my straw polls among League watchers tell me that he is no certainty to make the international rugby grade, a view which Spiro Zavos recently eloquently endorsed. I’ve found that it’s not difficult to even find League supporters who think Gasnier’s crap, and who say things like ’good riddance’ and ‘rugby is welcome to him’.
In these circumstances, it is completely outrageous to read that: ”If Gasnier moves across at the end of the NRL season, he is expected to get his rugby initiation in midweek matches during the Wallabies’ end-of-season tour of Europe in November.”
What the? No rugby experience, no rugby track-record, no rugby played at any level, and we find that this therefore possible complete rugby turkey is being enticed with the promise of a walk-up start as a hallowed Wallaby!
This disturbing report tends to confirm what everyone in rugby circles has long suspected about Lote Tuqiri, Mat Rogers and Wendell Sailor; that is, in their transfer packages there was at least an implicit guarantee of a starting position in the Wallabies. To close watchers of the game, this could be the only explanation for why the hapless Sailor was continuously selected over the great Joe Roff back in the World Cup year.
This is terrible policy, not only because it gets in the way of selecting our best national team – as it often has in the case of Sailor – but also because it crushes the spirits of rugby players on the verge of selection. Players accept judgements about their ability, even if they disagree with the judges, provided they accept that the system tries its best to play fair. Guaranteed starts rot the rope that holds the code together.
Further, in the long-run, unproven preference not only risks undermining the whole integrity of the selection process, if it happens frequently enough it will encourage younger talents to actively seek out League success as an alternative route to the Wallabies, positively eating into rugby’s ranks.
Poaching League players with offers of starting positions in the Wallabies, in sum, amounts to a serious corruption of the selection process, to the fundamental detriment of the game.
It is wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong. It is a disgrace to what should be the greatest honour in all world rugby – a Wallaby jumper.
I wish someone in a position to do something about it would get as mad as me, or at least as mad as hell, and refuse to take it anymore, forthwith.
Put me in the League watcher completely comfortable with his departure. The boy’s no Andrew Johns, thats for damn sure. Also as a League partisan, union buying up players like this just ups the derision in which we already hold you. Lose-lose.
Anyway, since the strong suspicion is players enter into these discussions mostly to force up their price at their present club I wouldn’t be surprised to see clubs start calling their bluff.
I hope St George does exactly that but the latest is they are petitioning Eddie and Channel Nine to cough up $$$ and try to keep him. Mugs! People tune in solely to see a Johns or a Bowen or someone like that, Gasnier adds zero bums outside Dragons fans.
I can’t see why the ARU is so excited over Gasnier. He’s hardly a playmaker, just a big hard runner. There’s plenty of those in union already. Can’t say I’d fork out the big $$$ to get him over to union.
I guess I should acknowledge that, in light of comments, I redited the piece. Nothing at all has been removed, and nothing of substance has been added. Some re-paragraphing and amplification is all.
Well said Chris.
While Gasnier is a great league centre I don’t see anything that would make him a great rugby centre. And if he is being promised a Wallaby jumper then it is a disgrace. Cheapens the whole ideal of representing your country.
I think the idea is fundamentally sound. After all Rogers and Tuquiri have certainly added a lot to Australian Rugby, and Barnes promises to as well. Even if you disparage (reasonably, perhaps) Sailor’s contributions to the Wallabies, he is probably well worth his place in NSW just in terms of profile, as well as (in NSW) his on-field contributions.
But I admit that I can’t see the attraction of any current league players, and Gasnier nearly least of them. Surely inbetween Mortlock, Giteau, Huxley, Staniforth, Turinui and Tune and even Tuquiri and Rogers, Australia doesn’t lack centres! And a few of them can run pretty hard too.
So while the idea is sound, and I thought Barnes a particularly good choice, I also think that they should be concentrating on a whole host of other things, such as player development, such as recruiting U-19 front-rows from England and South Africa (although our own U-19s weren’t bossed around in any scrums, I suspect that the English and French both had their best front-rowers tied up at clubs).
A particular priority should be increasing the player payments so that we can have ex- and almost- wallabies actually playing in Australia and contributing to a) keeping the current wallabies sharp and b) developing the next generation of wallabies. See eg: NZ.
CS,
I suspect the reason why Rof wasn’t selected was the lack of pace he had indeed apart from the RL trio there was little pace in the three quarter line.
Gasnier does have pace in abundance and the ability to beat a man and he aint small.
mind you it don’t matter. Your half and stand-off were past their best in the last world cup and they are still being selected.
forget about the precious backs though. Get some grunt and technique up front however it is too late for that.
rugby needs Guus hiddink!!
Complete nonsense, Homer – except perhaps the second point, about which I know little. But, as Patrick says, we presently have a traffic jam of rugby talent in the centres. Sam Norton-Knight could be added to Pat’s list.
but no real pace CS.
Three quarters need pace like fire but most of all they need the forward pack to go forward and that comes ever so slowly.
If he wants to go to the fat slow man’s game let him, apart from that I stand by my comments in the last union topic.
I’m actually a big fan of league – when I was coaching Rugby I found it very instructive, and I think my team benefited a lot from the amount of League we played in training. This has been the case ever since ‘the modern game’ started to develop, and for a while I think one might well have said that Rugby was ‘following’ League in many aspects of the play. This was most evident in defensive patterns, kick-returning and, ‘patterned play’ as exemplified by the Brumbies (and now the Crusaders).
But ‘following’ no longer – who would now dispute the role of the scrum and the lineout, and the vital importance of contesting the breakdown? Rugby has indeed learnt much from league, but league has little, if anything, left to teach.
Modern Rugby is extraordinarily fast, especially when one considers the immense strain of the contested tackle – the much longer periods of upper-body contact are extremely sapping, and yet the Rugby players are not noticeably slower after 80 minutes than their league counterparts.
There’s pace to burn there, Homer.
Patrick’s last comment is key. Mat Rogers was recently interviewed at length on his experience in the game. The extreme comparative pace of rugby was his recurring comment on the difference between the games. You receive the ball at a faster pace and the defence comes on you at a faster pace, and this takes a lot of getting used to, even for a footballer as talented as Rogers.
CS, you are confusing the pace of the game with blind natural pace of a person.
There aint many in thugby that have it.
Mortlock for example is about as fast as I am.
By the way why does the site not recognise this site when the e-mail comes through.
Is this out of Bounds?
Well, we would have to obtain clocked speeds to resolve this, Homer. In general, I would exppect that the backs in union are faster than those in league. This follows because they are more specialised, a fundamental difference bretween the codes. Mat Rogers was regarded as a fast league player, but would only be as fast or perhaps slower than players such as Giteau, Norton-Knight and Turinui, and is appreciably slower than players such as Lote, Hewat and Rathbone.
Let me quote the key passage from Zavos (link in post above):
Gasnier seems to play more like Wendell Sailor than Lote Tuqiri. He has a limited passing and kicking game. His defence, judging by the 54-6 thrashing handed out to St George Illawarra by Newcastle, is hardly formidable. He has a turn of speed, an outside break and some size to smash into tacklers. My guess is he’ll be like Sailor, useful against weak sides but almost useless against strong sides. Not worth buying for big money. And of limited value to the Wallabies.
He sounds like Mortlock, without any of Mortlock’s skills.
Still, I’m not necessarily opposed to the guy coming over per se, only the level at which the transfer occurs and, most especially, the very idea of giving away a walk-up Wallaby jumper. That is serious heresy.
The only skills mortlock ever had was defensive. The only atacking skills was the occassional intercept!
Tuirine quick. his gut is bigger than mine!! Gitauu is a half or stand-of not a centre and never heard or seen the other
We don’t even need clocked speeds, especially since they are a very crude measure of what one calls ‘speed’ in any football code.
But cs’ specialisation point is important because it is obvious that probably the fastest thousand or so people in the world will never run at the Olympics, because they are chasing the higher earnings of a football code. This is not to say that Rugby wingers could do a 10 second hundred, although quite a few can do 11. No-one has yet managed to combine the super-specialised muscle development needed to run a 10 second hundred with the ability to turn, let alone to stand in the tackle.
But ‘speed’ in rugby means, really, a combination of reflexes, anticipation and pace over ten metres, not a hundred. Coaches tend to reduce it to the first two steps! For example Larkham is not what most people call ‘fast’ (although you would say so if you ran next to him!) but he is very quick on the field
The only skills mortlock ever had was defensive. The only atacking skills was the occassional intercept!
Morts has a crushing defence, yet he can also smash through the line, step, pass (like lightening, if necessary) and has an all-round kicking game, including a goal-kicking game. Intercepts are not his forte. Homer, you seem to be on drugs about this last point.
Tuirine [sic] quick. his gut is bigger than mine!!
Like many who have played against him, you’ve been fooled by his body shape, which doesn’t include a big gut but, rather, unusually large hips for a back. The upshot is that Morgan is an extremely deceptive runner, a characterisitic of many great rugby backs. Morgan Turinui has the unusual ability to make his own time (like Larkham, and Rogers sometimes). Put your prejudice out to pasture, and start watching how much ground the man covers. There is a reason Morgan scores so many tries, apart from his immaculate hands and strong midfield kicking game, and this is that he has a rare combination of deceptive pace and excellent rugby vision, such that he frequently gets himself into a position to cross the line.
Let me put the differences this way, for an old-timer like Homer. Johnny Brass’s rugby skills were so awesome that he could turn a klutz like Mark Harris into a good League centre; but even Brassy would never have been able to help Harris make it in union.
If Mark Gasnier is even half as suspect in his defence, passing and kicking as Zavos suggests, he has no future with the Wallabies, where he would be an All-Black picnic.
Basically, the ARU should commit half of all receipts to player payments, disaffiliate the VRU and set up a Melbourne team under a completely new administration, have annual week-long all expenses paid ‘holiday’ camps for the best 45 U-16 and U-18 players in each state and subsidise scholarships at top rugby schools, especially in Perth and Melbourne, for SA, French, Argentinian and English students, especially props.
As I think we agree, our centres are fine.
Re Turinui, he does have great anticipation. But I kid you not, try watching (you have to actually be there to do this, btw) how quickly players take their first two steps. Most Rugby backs today will have taken them before they even catch the ball – it makes a phenomenal difference to the speed of the game. Whereas league centres like Gasnier are still, often, standing still and hitting up like 1980 props, and they only get away with it because the static breakdowns mean you almost never get the ball whilst backpedaling.
Compare the almost-second string Wallaby backs against England.
Final word, another irony is that league taught Rugby how to tackle. The modern ‘aggressive’ tackle, driving from the legs into the chest, is a league invention. But in league you don’t care about winning the ball, since you aren’t allowed to anyway. So the best tacklers are now mainly Rugby players, like Mortlock or Smith or (the very best tackler of recent years imo) Umaga.
I might regularly disagree with your positions, Patrick, but I appreciate your take on the game, which yields frequent and often surprising insights. Would you care to fill us in on your fuller rugby background, which peeps out from time to time, if only in the most general of terms?
Ha! More talk than action, I’m afraid, cs. I came to the game late enough, in mid secondary school. I loved it, though, and quickly found a club to play at as well.
After finishing school I coached their U-16s team and helped out with the seniors, whilst still playing at my club – made for some long saturdays indeed but coaching was a marvellous experience.
But I didn’t last that long – a long overseas trip broke my habit of training and saw me lose too much fitness and strength and, perhaps most significantly, failed to relieve a shoulder problem (caused by a casual tennis match, of all things) that was really holding back my weight training.
Now I think I’m probably only good for touch, and of course armchair commentary(!), although once my kids are old enough I will surely find time to help out their teams.
cs – two small points.
Zavros is dead wrong when he suggests Gasnier has no passing skills. While you can put me in the camp of extreme indifference to players chasing the easy money in union (rather than sticking with The Greatest Game that developed them) no one can doubt Gasniers talent.
Thankfully there are planty more Gasnier’s in League’s nursery.
Also, the pace of the game may now be fast (according to an interview with a current wallaby who needs to keep everybody in union circles on side) but when you play for a mere 31 minutes out of the 80 allotted you can afford to put a bit more into the brief passages of play… When you need a break simply tie up your shoes!
Tks Patrick.
you guys dont know how good yous have it over here in england i reckon there is only one half decent center in both codes if you all think gasnier is hopeless you should try a jamie noon or keith senior then you would quickly change your mind
Don’t worry – the last tour against England gave us all a chance to appreciate the ineptness of England’s backs! If you gave any Southern Hemisphere team that kind of forward dominance they would have run in a cricket score (or two!).
[In]Sincere commiserations, Jamie.
Hey Patrick, sometimes blogging gets weird. Check out Spiros’ excellent column today – it could almost have been cherry-picked from our chat.
he! I’m just very glad to see that conclusion spreading.
Good article in today’s SMH by Roy Masters that breaks down what Gasnier would earn in the NRL compared to the ARU. As Barrett is leaving the Saints some of Barrett’s salary can be given to Gaz.
Yes Shaun, Roy is an excellent journo (apart from all that silly rhubarb about comparative ‘toughness’, of course … no, I don’t expect you to agree on that). Down the pub watching the Brumbies last weekend, with the TunnelBall on the other screen, most of the blokes reckoned he wouldn’t switch.
well you guys will get to laugh your socks off when the england union team tour australia.as a supporter of both codes i have to say that you aussies are light years ahead of us and i say that because when i watch the super 14 compared to the heineken cup it is like watching two different the super 14 is how rugby should be played the heineken cup is dismal and so overated its like watching grass grow and same can be said for the guiness premiership and that is why the back play for england have suffered over here there is no emphesis for attacking play and thats why the northern hemisphere has gone backwards.in regards to gasnier he is a quality player however in tri nations final against the kiwis when he came up against an agressive defence he did nothing i actually think cooper is better and he is only where he is because of his name
Don’t be so glum! English and French topflight rugby is still very good – it is not as high-standard as some of S14, but that is mainly because S14 is (still) a genuinely ‘provincial’ competition, not (yet) a club competition as such. It is also very small – you have teams like the Crusaders, Waratahs Bulls and Brumbies who could all beat most national teams, because they contain half a top-tier national team! Even so, our S14 is pretty variable – you see teams make a lot of basic skills errors that in the ‘club’ competitions in Europe would not be tolerated. And the weather is important – your soft grounds are really big factors in the way you play – you’d be surprised at how few S14 forwards, outside of SA, seem to have really grasped how to maul the ball!
But there is a lot of cross-pollination: we are moving towards that ‘club’ attitude, perhaps most in Australia with the poaching of League players and the recent signing of Giteau. South Africa seem to want to move in that direction, but have just reneged from relegation, which would have been a big (and necessary, for them) step.
Inevitably, teams here will (as they do in Europe) be buying more and more of the talent they need, and I think soon we’ll see a few more Pato Noriegas, but from England. Also, to an extent it is inevitable that this will bring a move towards a more ‘error-conscious’ safety-first approach like that seemingly adopted in most of the North (although happily the weather should save us from the worst of it).
You guys buy a lot of our players, and even more of our coaches – in particular, those coaches come back here and that will have a big effect in the end, while obviously they have an effect on you guys whilst they are over there.
One thing I suspect we could see soon is an English club trying to get a Aussie League player.
im more of a league fan but i follow union too and to be honest it is a lot harder to convert to union then it is to league that is why it seems foolish to offer big money for novices for example andy farell big repution average league player in my opinion was given a 2 million pound 4 year contract this having being out injured for 6 months signs for saracens wigan knew he was past it a year later he still hasnt played union the only player who done anything of note was jason robinson.there is too many aussies over here no disrespect but the only aussie of real quality over here is jamie lyon the rest are here for a pay day and it is ruing rugby league in perticular ive nothing against them but if you look at the nrl or super 14 teams all of them have a majority of home grown players in key positions such as stand off or fly half
Hey Jamie, how’s former Tah and Wallaby star Matty Burke (Newcastle Falcons) going over there? All my mail is that he’s been braining them.
he being going well just a shame he doesnt have the quality around him without wilkinson everything gone through burke he is still an international class player we would love to have someone like him in our backline he is a great player
Truth be known, I’d still like him in ours. Peter Hewat may prove his worthy successor in the role of Wallaby custodian; he’s the player everyone’s watching.
we havent seen a lot of waratahs in uk this year they tend 2 show the crusaders or the brumbies mostly so i cant pass judgement but i agree the aru would be better keeping players such as burke from moving overseas them paying big money for unproven union converts such as gasnier
As predicted Gaz will stay with the Dragons (well at least with league – rumours abound of England). At least the ARU stuck to their deadline. Unfortunately they have been used as pawns for Gaz to get more money. Next time a leaguey pretends to jump I hope the ARU and NRL calls their bluff.
it wasnt a surprise to hear if he was so interested he would jumped straight away the aru should stick to developing their own players and the nrl clubs should stop dealing with these blood sucking agents the game survived when tuquiri,rogers and sailor left people watch the sport not the people who play it
Thank God for that!
Its good the ARU made some sort of symbolic gesture at a backbone re: deadlines but apparently the deal is back on if Gaz picks up the phone. Whatevs. Yawn.
Thank goodness, indeed. This saves rugby another distracting two or three years of holding a Leaguie’s hand, as he struggles to figure out what’s happening to him in football’s fast lane.
it doesnt say much for the talent in the rich mans game if like you said cs league players cant handle union why does the aru keep trying to poach them i have two words for you kick and clappers youth development try it or is it that no one in australia want to play a game where the ball is in the stands more then on the field
Joe, unlike League, where I’m sure you’re allowed to have the clappers, I’m afraid a basic prerequisite for commenting on rugby is that you need to know at least a thing or two about punctuation.
Ah, the oldest difference between the thug’s game played by gentlemen and the gentleman’s game played by thugs – one lot went to grammar school, the other didn’t ;)
cs
Lucky you didn’t call Joe a cretin, or you would have had the Blairite tribe down on you like a tonne of thick bricks.
Oh, I’m sure even they wouldn’t object to calling a League man a cretin, although to misspell the word in the context of cs’ comment would be embarrassing.
I only meant to say that I don’t know what the hell Joe is on about, and some nodding acquaintance with punctuation might help his cause. With that clarification, I’m off, like the clappers.
what i am on about is that you are getting all arrogant and upset because the aru are having to poach rugby league players to actually have an attacking back the fact is the only reason gasnier was thinking of moving over was due to money and the fact is union would need gasnier more then league would and your arrogant attitude is the reason why rugby union is so detested and why we league fans have such a laugh at your pathectic skill levels compared to the kangeroos and the nrl
Get off the booze Joe.