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Brumbies Mark Gerrard flies throgh the air after scoring. AAP Image/Alan Porritt
The Roar has been told that Mark Gerrard wants to come back to Australian rugby in 2011, with the aim of giving the Rugby World Cup squad a real crack. This is, or should be, good news for the game here.
One of the Super Rugby clubs, the Melbourne Rebels, perhaps, should make him a workable offer.
Gerrard has just helped his team, NTT Communications, to win promotion in the Japanese Top League for the first time. In my opinion, he still has a lot to offer a Super Rugby side as a player who can play in all the positions in the backline, except perhaps halfback, with some expertise.
This versatility, providing he can get a contract and play well next season, would also be useful for the Wallabies bench. It is probably, too, late now for Gerrard to contemplate a starting position in the Wallabies. But he would be a most competent member of a squad and the reserve bench.
Gerrard came to prominence as a gifted teenager who was given a Waratahs contract by Bob Dwyer, a good judge of talent. He made his Super Rugby debut as a teenager.
But with the Waratahs and the ACT Brumbies, a team he joined in 2003, his ability to play in most of the backline positions told against him.
He never really nailed down one definitive position. The Brumbies used him as a fullback and winger. So did the Wallabies.
My hope then and now – providing he comes back – is that some coach will try him out as a five-eighth.
A spate of injuries, after he became a Wallaby, meant that he did not establish a permanent position for himself in the national side. But he seems to have recovered well in Japan and is now a refreshed and better player, a bit like the New Zealander Leon McDonald after his Japanese stint.
Gerrard has nice soft hands, a graceful, incisive, clever-stepping running game and a monster low-slung kick. You would like to think that Rod Macqueen who converted a former centre/halfback/fullback into Australia’s best first five-eighths since Mark Ella – Stephen Larkham – might take a punt and try to do the same thing with Gerrard.
One has to presume that the possibilities for a number of players including Gerrard who want to come back to Australia, or are offering to come back, relate to the creation of the Melbourne Rebels, Australia’s fifth Super Rugby franchise.
The new franchise can recruit up to 10 players who are not eligible for the Wallabies.
But you’d hope that before this option is taken, players who are Australian and eligible for the Wallabies, and who have played for their country, will be considered.
Mark Gerrard falls into this category. Chris Latham, still playing brilliantly in the UK is another, and so is Dan Vickerman currently finishing off a degree at Cambridge University.