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Tim Sheens, in his role as Wests Tigers coach, sat in a press conference in June of this year and praised his hard working lock Chris Heighington. It was State of Origin time and Sheens was urging the New South Wales selectors to pay serious attention to Tigers hooker Robbie Farah, centre Chris Lawrence, prop Keith Galloway and Heighington.
He said that if Heighington continued to be overlooked for representative honours in Australia he would give serious thought, as he has for some time, to playing for England.
The forward qualifies for an English jumper through his father who was born in Durham. He also holds an English passport.
Well break out the pint glasses because it seems that Heighington has been delivered straight into the enemies’ hands.
It seemed amusing to me that when it came time to add players from the now eliminated Titans and Tigers to the Australian train-on squad for the up-coming four nations, Heighington wasn’t among those set to receive the green and gold kit.
How much influence Sheens, who is also the Australian coach, had on the selection of the train-on squad remains unclear, but surely this would be a bitter pill for Heighington to swallow.
I’m not saying that Heighington should be in the starting side for Australia’s first game of the four nations tournament against Papua New Guinea at Parramatta Stadium on October 24, but surely he deserves to be given the honour of being included in the train-on squad.
I also don’t expect Sheens to pick every Tigers player who has done him proud this season, but equally if there was such a push for him to gain representative honours then this was his time.
The 28 year old will struggle to put together a better season than the one he has just produced.
He has been one of the Wests Tigers best players this season. He gets through a mountain of work each week and offers plenty in attack.
Up until the Tigers preliminary final loss to the St George Illawarra Dragons on Saturday night he had managed to eliminate the many errors that once permeated his game. The errors returned at ANZ Stadium, but surely one bad game couldn’t count that heavily against him.
Teammates, Lote Tuqiri, Farah, Galloway, Lawrence and Todd Payten were all added to the squad along with Titans forwards Greg Bird, Ashley Harrison, Anthony Laffranchi, Mark Minichiello and halfback Scott Prince.
Heighington playing for England would actually be a boost for the tournament.
The smaller the gap between the international teams the better, but I fear England’s potential gain could end up being a big loss for Australia.
You can follow luke on twitter @luke_doherty and on Sky News Australia.
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