Two down — Wendell Sailor and Mat Rogers — and one more to go … Lote Tuqiri.
Three rugby league stars demanded and got a king’s ransom to play rugby and, supposedly, inspire the Wallabies to become the best rugby team in the world. They have taken the money but they haven’t run. The experiment of a rugby league revival of the Wallabies has been an abject failure. Tuqiri played well in the 2003 Rugby World Cup tournament but the other two players have never been worth their place in the Wallabies, and only occasionally with the Waratahs. Worse than this, the three have denigrated and traduced the ethic of rugby, which is a team game, but their show-pony attitude to their performances and their playing demands, more ball for Tuqiri and playing five-eighths for Rogers.
The fact is though is that all three are one-dimensional players. They are runners, of different styles admittedly, but with no passing skills, limited catching and positional skills (in the case of Sailor and Rogers), poor defensive skills (Sailor and Rogers) and no passing skills (all three players). They have tried to play rugby union in a rugby league style. Brad Thorn, a fine man and one of the few league forwards who made a successful transition to rugby, said that the hardest thing he had to learn in rugby was to pass before he was tackled. The league instinct and method is to run until tackled.
Thorn, with great coaching from Robbie Deans at Canterbury, learnt the ensemble rugby game. But the three Australian league stars have never learnt or understood the ensemble game and, as a consequence, have not developed into star players. My theory to explain this is that the Australian three have not bothered to understand or embrace the ethic of rugby, which is that it is a team game where the jersey (loyalty to your club and national side) is a paramount concern. Sailor gave the game away a couple of years ago in South Africa when he, Tuqiri and Matt Henjak went out drinking the night before a test. There was an incident involving Sailor and Henjak and Henjak got sent home. Sailor explained that he’d never go out partying the night before a league final if he was playing for the Broncos.
This disregard for the culture of rugby has been made increasingly apparent with Tuqiri’s complaints that he doesn’t get the ball enough playing for the Wallabies. Has he ever heard of getting yourself into the game to get the ball? And, anyway, how often do league wingers get the ball. I watched one of the Kangaroo tests against NZ and Greg Inglis hardly had a touch in the first hour of the game. Tuqiri has made it clear he wants a huge increase on his already huge salary to continue playing rugby after 2007. More valuable members of the Wallabies are decidedly unhappy with these demands and the seeming acquiescence of them by the ARU. The good chemistry that strong teams need to win tournaments like the World Cup no longer applies to the Wallabies. And the blame in large measure can be pointed directly at the League three.
The ARU needs to call Tuqiri into headquarters and tell him bluntly that there is no way he going to get more than he is getting now; that the reduced offer for after the 2007 season will take into account his performances for the Waratahs and the Wallabies, which need to improve substantially; and that the bad-mouthing of rugby must stop immediately. Rogers has had some excuse over the last couple of years for his erratic performances on the rugby field. He has lost his mother and his father. His marriage is on the rocks. His brother is in trouble with drugs. The constant travelling involved with big-time rugby have not helped him stabilise his personal life. So the ARU and the NSWRU did the right thing in letting him go back to league.
If only the ARU and NSWRU were as insightful in their treatment of Tuqiri. It’s time for him to put-up on the rugby field and shut-up off it or (and hopefully this is what will happen) go back to the league.
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