Western Force resigned to losing skipper David Pocock to Brumbies as coaching hunt continues
A sense of dread is growing at Western Force that the Super Rugby club has run out of ways of persuading David Pocock to stay and that it is only a matter of time before the Wallabies captain announces he is joining the Brumbies.
Force officials are conferring with Pocock on a daily basis but their earlier optimism that he had far more reasons to stay in Perth than to go has given way to grim resignation.
As one Force source told The Australian: "It's almost as though he has made up his mind but can't bring himself to tell us that he's leaving."
The departure of Pocock at the same time as foundation captain Nathan Sharpe's retirement from Super Rugby - all of this overlaying the loss of coach Richard Graham to Queensland Reds and the increasingly drawn-out saga of finding his replacement - would create a perfect storm for Force.
Officials are adamant the club is strong enough to ride out the tempest but the public's perception would be of a team spiralling out of relevance.
Certainly his departure would free up a considerable portion of the salary cap but by this late stage in the season all the big names of Australian rugby are already locked in with other franchises and the Force would need to head-hunt a high-profile international player to minimise the damage.
But Pocock is so much more to the Force than merely a world-class openside flanker.
He is inspirational leader and highly-regarded role model, a 24-year-old finalist for Young Australian of the Year who has established his own charity and spoken out publicly on issues such as global warming and the plight of his former countrymen in Zimbabwe.
No overseas recruit, no matter how well-credentialled, could possibly fill all the roles Pocock plays in Perth.
Yet at the end of the day Pocock is a professional rugby player and joining the Brumbies in Canberra is starting to look like his smartest career move.
It would expose him to the coaching of Rugby World Cup-winning former Springboks coach Jake White who, in just one season, has taken the Brumbies from the laughing stock end of the Super Rugby table to the cusp of the finals.
That the Brumbies fell at the final hurdle, allowing the Australian conference win to slip through their fingers with their last-round loss to the Blues, has hardly diminished White's exceptional coaching achievement.
The Force, by contrast, is having nothing but dramas finding a coach to take over from Graham.
Heineken Cup-winning former Leinster coach Michael Cheika was offered the job but turned it down, leading to speculation New South Wales Waratahs coach Michael Foley would pass the poisoned chalice to someone else and quit Sydney to move to Perth.
But the fact Foley has made no such announcement nearly two weeks after the Waratahs wound up their Super Rugby season suggests he too has decided to pass on the Force offer and remain with NSW.
Indications are John Mulvihill, the former Force assistant coach under John Mitchell, will not be brought back, so unless former Ireland Test coach Eddie O'Sullivan suddenly resurfaces as a contender it is difficult to know where the club will find a credible coach to pull the side together.
Most observers had assumed Pocock was playing a central role in choosing a new coach but it is understood that while he has been appraised of every development and given his approval to all the names on Force's short list, he is remaining at arm's length from the process.
That said, the club already has acted on some of his requests to beef up its football department.
Officials still are hoping Pocock will simply find it too painful to turn his back on the club he joined as a foundation player in 2005.
