MONEY WELL SPENT
By The Bard
August 16 2016
In 2009 I put together a team of expensive misfits and was really struggling to fit them all in. A bench and a reserve team could have easily been found! I thought it would be interesting to have a look and bring it up to date, and it is a real credit to the new management that only a couple of players have changed in the 7 seasons they have been in place. Have I missed anyone? Have I offended anyone by including their favourite? As I said at the time, although some of these guys had some good matches, could they look King Richard Hill in the face and say they had put as much in as he did every week?
No.1: Tony Daly. Scored the winning try in the 1991 World Cup final for Australia against England at Twickers, and was still in the squad in 1995. A pretty decent CV by all accounts. Unfortunately by the time he joined us, he had the physique of John Daly and was playing like Arthur Daley. After a season of non-descript performances at Enfield, he left pretty quietly.
No.2: Raphael Ibanez. One of my biggest let-downs. When we signed him my first reaction was “what do we want with another pension-plan seeker”, and then I saw him put in a series of incredible performances in RWC2003. Inspirational leadership, a strong scrummager, excellent in the tight exchanges albeit with a dodgy throw. Sadly all we got was the dodgy throw! And then to cap it all, he announced that unless everyone else got their fingers out and got us into the Heineken Cup, he was off! And this at the end of a season when he had been a beacon of mediocrity.
No.3: James Johnston. You could hear them choking on their gin and tonics down at the Stoop when we pinched JJ to go with the recently acquired Billy Vunipola from Wasps. The consensus was that we needed some bulk to compete with the French teams in Europe, and boy didn’t we get some. Surely JJ would leapfrog Matt Stevens to become first choice? It just never happened, and he even failed to stay ahead of the venerable Petrus when Stevens left. He endured some scrummaging nightmares (Sale in Europe stands out) and whilst realising looks can be deceptive, he appeared to cut a lonely figure at the final whistle most weeks. On the bright side, he won the last ditch penalty in Paris to set up the glory for Marcello. Worries that he’d do an Ibanez and rediscover his form at Wasps were thankfully misplaced….
No.4: Scott Murray. Looked to be a 2001Lions certainty when he joined us from Bedford in 1999, as one of the most promising locks in world rugby. He was never going to be a workhorse, but got rather too close to show pony status for most tastes. We hoped he would secure our lineout ball and plunder everyone else’s as he did for Scotland. All that happened was our lineout started resembling a Morris Dance, with the inevitable disastrous consequences and you could argue it has taken years to recover from it. Left along with many others at the end of 2002 and never looked like fulfilling his early promise.
No.5: Craig Quinnell. A funny case, this one. Signed in the summer of 2002, he was out of the exit door before we’d eaten our Christmas pudding. In fairness, he did put in one outstanding performance at Vicarage Road. Unfortunately it was for Cardiff in the 2000 Heineken Cup match!
No.6: Chris Jack. I’ve put him there because Eddie Jones occasionally did, but unlike Maro this was because he’d been pretty poor at lock. His signing was a massive statement of intent, and whilst he hadn’t got a World Cup winners medal surely we all knew everything to do with the All Blacks had to be better than we could produce? Showed his commitment early on by missing a game so he could fly home to open the village fete or dog show, or whatever it was. The best you could describe him as was Tom Croft but without the pace. And as befits many of his ilk, got back home and said we were rubbish!
No.7: Troy Coker. Another Aussie World Cup winner, joining us at the start of the 1998/9 season. Made a try-scoring debut against Northampton, but things soon started going wrong culminating with a sending-off at Newcastle. Left by mutual consent 10 weeks before the end of the season, bizarrely complaining that the league was full of overpaid moderate players. Capped it off by predicting the downfall of English rugby in 2000!
No.8: Taine Randell. A truly stellar signing, the ex All-Blacks skipper looked just the man to take us back to the heights of 1998. And he did put in a couple of really outstanding performances, but there were just too many nondescript ones along the way. Always appeared happier on the cat-walk than at the coal-face; why do these New Zealand forwards always think they are wingers?
No.9:Nick Walshe. Unlucky in having to fill the shoes of Kyran during his long absence with a back injury, Nick was one of the rather modest crew we recruited from Quins at the start of the 1999 season. He competed with Matthew Powell for the starting berth, and for reasons I never understood generally won the day. Lost the ball at the back of the scrum after we’d forced Tigers off their own ball in the first minute of our must-win game that season, for Tim Stimpson to pick up and run in a try under the posts.
No.10: Jannie de Beer. Another one who ended an England World Cup campaign. What we failed to understand was that all he could actually do was drop goals- and only in France. Patently struggling with a knee injury during his time with us, I guess the only highlight was the David Flatman try at London Irish when he ‘tapped and went’ after they turned their backs at a penalty expecting the inevitable kick.
No.11: Lord Dan Lucan. Who else were you expecting? Always going to struggle to win hearts as he was bought in to replace crowd favourite Brendon Daniel. Immediately went missing, and only seemed to get fit when an International was on the horizon. Really made friends by asking to leave after he’d spent a couple of seasons on the treatment table.
No.12: Andy Farrell. How could you? The man achieved everything in Rugby League, but what we hadn’t appreciated was the toll it had taken on his body. Missed the whole of his first season with foot and back injuries, and then when he was fit we couldn’t actually decide what to do with him. He continued to suffer a string of injuries that could fill a whole series of Casualty, and I doubt whether he played 5 games on the trot. On the pitch he polarised opinion; undoubtedly a good defensive co-ordinator, but I doubt even his biggest fans would back him in a 50 metre sprint. No questioning his effort and commitment, and he certainly fulfilled my prediction at the time that he would make an excellent coach. What we didn’t realise at the time was that his greatest gift to Sarries would turn out to be his son!
No.13: Gavin Henson. Looked an incredible risk at the time, it possibly only happened because we’d been surprised by how his fellow Osprey Galactico Justin Marshall had done so well. A spell on the dance-floor delayed his arrival, and he almost scored with his first touch. Sadly and predictably it all went downhill from there, legend will have it that he fitted the word ‘I’ into a sentence 50 times and he could not name a single team-mate. Left in January and still found time to get chucked out of Toulon the same season!
No.14: Nathan McAvoy. The Great Britain Rugby League international joined from the all-conquering Bradford Bulls in 2003, and made his debut for us as a replacement against Wasps at Fortress VR. He only got as far as our 22-metre line before damaging his knee making a tackle. When he returned, he seemed convinced that the area behind the try-line was land-mined, and he never looked like crossing it. Returned to the land of Whippets and Pigeons within 18 months of his arrival.
No.15: Mark Mapletoft. I was going to go for Kenny, but I didn’t think he got near the criteria of being a signing with any expectations attached to him. Tofty joined us from Glos having enjoyed considerable success as their fly-half. At the same time Thierry Lacroix was signed in the job-lot from Quins, and poor old Tofty got the short straw and had to play 15. It just didn’t work; he wasn’t the best under a high ball and rarely made any breaks into the line. Finally got to play at 10 towards the end of the season and looked a different prospect altogether.
He jumped ship to Quins after a season and then soon moved on to Irish, where of course he returned to haunt us on far too many occasions. Came back to us as a coach and is now at Quins.
Never did rate McAvoy - I wonder why!!
Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 2016:09:08:07:46:43 by Darraghgirl.
Cheers Steve.
It's a long time since Sports network paid anything!
Thanks
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Thanks Steve, makes a change from my diatribe!!
Never did rate McAvoy - I wonder why!!
quite right he has been in some rubbish films
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