Mark Gerrard back?

[RugbyReg]

From the Roar:

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 be 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.

 

[NNEV]

you see a lot of people who start out as "gun" number 10's who then slide out and back when its found they cant cut it.
it'd would be interesting to see someone who basically started out wide and back to come up the line.
gerrard was good. lets hope he gets a decent team around him if he does come back

 

[Scotty]

Didn't he get a game at 10 for the Wallabies?

 

[RugbyReg]

yeah v the Ospreys wasn't it? Just a mid week game. Had a shocker apparently.

 

[Ash]

Yeah. Think he's been tried a few times as an inside back at provincial level too and it didn't work?

Would be great to see him back as fullback for the Rebels, though.

 

[naza]

This smells of being Spiro's brain turd of the week.

I've seen Gerrard at 12 for Warringah Rats at least twice. He was poor, not up to 1st grade standard. If he can't handle that, I don't see how he works as a provincial flyhalf.

Macqueen observed Larkham excelled even when deprived of space. Gerrard needs room. Spiro can fuck off with his constant 'it worked for Larkham' ridiculous thrashwank miracle positional change proposals.

 

[Biffo]

Mate, you have it right. Thanks for the eloquence.

I was going to post something about Gerrard's future being 10 years behind him. Your thoughts are far better.

I think Macqueen can do better than Gerrard for a fullback.

 

[DPK]

This smells of being Spiro's brain turd of the week.

I've seen Gerrard at 12 for Warringah Rats at least twice. He was poor, not up to 1st grade standard. If he can't handle that, I don't see how he works as a provincial flyhalf.

Macqueen observed Larkham excelled even when deprived of space. Gerrard needs room. Spiro can fuck off with his constant 'it worked for Larkham' ridiculous thrashwank miracle positional change proposals.

word of the week, without a doubt.

 

[cyclopath]

This smells of being Spiro's brain turd of the week.

I've seen Gerrard at 12 for Warringah Rats at least twice. He was poor, not up to 1st grade standard. If he can't handle that, I don't see how he works as a provincial flyhalf.

Macqueen observed Larkham excelled even when deprived of space. Gerrard needs room. Spiro can fuck off with his constant 'it worked for Larkham' ridiculous thrashwank miracle positional change proposals.

word of the week, without a doubt.

Word of the week? Clearly you are unfamiliar with naza. It is his word of the millenium. Albeit a bit eye-watering with his calloused internet fingers!

 

[liquor box]

This smells of being Spiro's brain turd of the week.

I've seen Gerrard at 12 for Warringah Rats at least twice. He was poor, not up to 1st grade standard. If he can't handle that, I don't see how he works as a provincial flyhalf.

Macqueen observed Larkham excelled even when deprived of space. Gerrard needs room. Spiro can fuck off with his constant 'it worked for Larkham' ridiculous thrashwank miracle positional change proposals.

word of the week, without a doubt.

Word of the week? Clearly you are unfamiliar with naza. It is his word of the millenium. Albeit a bit eye-watering with his calloused internet fingers!

It made it to urban dictionary- http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=thrashwank

 

[disco]

I think it would be good for Australian Rugby if Gerrard came back. Would love to see Latho play one more season of super rugby also.

 

[Gagger]

The idea of Gerrard at 10 is a complete brainfart, especially when we don't have a fullback to bless ourselves with

 

[Lee Grant]

I would always have Gerrard in a Wallaby squad but never play him unless it was raining. Then he would be our most valuable player. It didn't surprise me too much that Scotland beat us on a damp day at Murrayfield, just as we were beaten by goal kicks at Landsdowne Road a few years back.

We don't have players in Oz at 10 or 15 who are good in the wet. Haven't had a good one since Noddy Lynagh though Burke and Latham were OK. The best Australian players on a wet track are Brock James and Paul Warwick and they play in Europe. Before Gerrard left for overseas he was the best in the country - who can forget his MOTM performance in Sydney for the losing Brumbies 2 years ago, and a couple of others in Canberra that year?

He'd be OK for Melbourne at fullback. He's slow but his experience will ensure that he's not caught out of position too much. They wouldn't get a speedy counter attacker but they would get a premium from his booming kicks when the inevitable ping pong that breaks out.

 

[eddo]

I'd bring him back..

Certainly good enough for the Melbourne Squad. Much like Harrison will be a good mentor on the lineout (note: NOT how to do a line) Gerrard would be fantastic to have around.

 

[Scotty]

I would always have Gerrard in a Wallaby squad but never play him unless it was raining. Then he would be our most valuable player. It didn't surprise me too much that Scotland beat us on a damp day at Murrayfield, just as we were beaten by goal kicks at Landsdowne Road a few years back.

We don't have players in Oz at 10 or 15 who are good in the wet. Haven't had a good one since Noddy Lynagh though Burke and Latham were OK. The best Australian players on a wet track are Brock James and Paul Warwick and they play in Europe. Before Gerrard left for overseas he was the best in the country - who can forget his MOTM performance in Sydney for the losing Brumbies 2 years ago, and a couple of others in Canberra that year?

He'd be OK for Melbourne at fullback. He's slow but his experience will ensure that he's not caught out of position too much. They wouldn't get a speedy counter attacker but they would get a premium from his booming kicks when the inevitable ping pong that breaks out.

If James and Warwick are Oz's best players in the wet, then we may as well forfeit any game held in wet conditions.

And if Burke was only just OK in the wet, then you are asking a lot of your 'wet weather' player.

 

[Lee Grant]

If James and Warwick are Oz's best players in the wet, then we may as well forfeit any game held in wet conditions.

We do most of the time anyway. Are you saying that the games of Warwick and James are no good in the wet??

Get serious - or watch them play more. Fans of Munster and Clermont would be amused.

 

[fatprop]

Then again if you were serious at wet weather team, the superstar who is Tom Carter would come into the frame as well.

 

[Lee Grant]

PS - on Matt Burke - "OK" is probably faint praise - he's one of my favourite players but it was in comparison to the great Noddy as a wet weather player.

 

[Scotty]

If James and Warwick are Oz's best players in the wet, then we may as well forfeit any game held in wet conditions.

We do most of the time anyway. Are you saying that the games of Warwick and James are no good in the wet??

Get serious - or watch them play more. Fans of Munster and Clermont would be amused.

No, just saying that if we have to rely on players that would struggle to get a regular S14 spot as our wet weather wallaby specialists, then we are struggling.

The point is that you can't extrapolate form in a club competition into saying they are the nations best wet weather players. My feeling is that you are doing so more to show your knowledge of their games and form overseas, rather than the reality that they likely not international standard players.

 

[Lee Grant]

Go Tiger.

How about an opinion that James would walk into a French squad now on form if he were eligible? Your answer please - or haven't you seen enough of him to form an opinion?

Just because he hasn't played in a test doesn't mean that he is not one of the best in France. Only Trinh-Duc would be close. Beauxis plays fullback now mostly, Skrela has been crocked and Michalak has been comical. They had to bring granddad Elissalde back into the squad and to be fair he has strung a few good games together recently. Because of injuries to others James would have played against the Wallabies on the 2008 EOYT had he been eligible because the healthy Skrela was in poor form including goal kicking form - as we saw.

Ask Thomond78 if Warwick would struggle now, not before, now, to get into a Super 14 team. Munster don't pick their regular players for the Heineken Cup because they are average players. Warwick has been one of Munster's best players this season and now he has been preferred to the promising Ireland player Keith Earls at fullback, Earls' favourite position, with Earls havng to play elsewhere.

Ask him also how Warwick went to the horrible conditions they have had over there recently when O'Gara was rested in the Magners League and he played flyhalf.

Not good enough to start in the S14? Had the Force had access to James or Warwick on current form, not old Aussie form, they would have used their foreign marquee spot on a hooker, not a flyhalf. And the Reds would have nabbed one of them too when Barnes defected.


Anyway mate - I didn't even say they were the best Oz international players in the wet. I happened to know that they weren't international players. What I said was: The best Australian players on a wet track are Brock James and Paul Warwick and they play in Europe.

Who do you think are the best Oz 10s and 15s now on a wet track? Think of Murrayfield. Your answer please.