11/06/2007
Am I missing something here? Why the heck isn't Jono Gibbes being fast-tracked into the All Blacks? Has the world gone completely crazy? Or more to the point have our national selectors?The phrase "locking crisis" has been banded about with indecent haste since Ali Williams (broken jaw) and Keith Robinson (blown calf) joined the scrapheap of All Black second-rowers at the weekend. Unlike James Ryan and Jason Eaton, they may be back in time for the World Cup. But it's going to be touch and go for both.
Which leaves us with two world-class locks still standing in the All Black ranks, in the form of Chris Jack and Troy Flavell. And not much left in the way of room for error as the Tri Nations kickoff looms following this weekend's final training match in Hamilton.
Unlike some of you out there I'm refusing to even acknowledge Reuben Thorne as a legitimate test second-rower. No offence, but I'm not even convinced he's a decent No 6 let alone able to foot it with the gargantuans of the game in the middle of the engine room.
Now we hear the reinforcements have been called in from the Junior All Blacks in the form of Greg Rawlinson and Ross Filipo. (Again the fact they've decided to summon two of them reinforces my belief Thorne is no legit lock.) Sorry, folks, but this pair just don't do it for me and this is where I start wondering what the flaming heck Gibbes has done to deserve such a sidestep.
Presuming he's fully fit, it's extraordinary to me that the All Black selectors haven't whistled him up with indecent haste. Were they watching the Super 14? New Zealand's best team, by some margin, when the round-robin ended was the Chiefs. And Gibbes was a key performer for them in combination with the now-nobbled Robinson.
Gibbes is everything the All Blacks need in this time of "crisis". He's experienced, he's hard, he's athletic, he's a big-game player, and he's a proven performer. Granted, he has had his own injury issues of late, but hey if you're a New Zealand lock these days, who hasn't?
The South African Rawlinson is a solid performer. But nothing more. And he's off to play his football in the UK at the end of this year. Besides, I'd prefer a Kiwi if it's about finding someone to win us the World Cup. Filipo is an honest footballer, no doubt, but he's badly undersized for the test level and has major question marks over his ability to take the step up in class.
For mine, if Gibbes wasn't available - or wanted, for that matter - I'd be more tempted to look at Otago second-rower Tom Donnelly who's a big, raw-boned lad who looks to have more than a hint of test potential about him. Let's face it, we're only one more twist of fate away from having to throw one of these blokes in against Victor Matfield and Bakkies Botha, which is definitely no place for the faint-hearted.
In the meantime I'm not panicking, despite this worrying trend for our second-rowers to meet horrible fates. Surely now the luck is due to change.
And the reason I'm not panicking is because Troy Flavell is still running round.
This guy could now be the answer to our prayers. He's that important.
Let's consider his performance on Saturday night at the Cake Tin. He played 50 minutes in the end, and made a damn good fist of it. You could tell, even amid all the carnage and mayhem and one-way traffic, that he has a class about him that could be vital in much stiffer contests to come.
And if ever there was an excuse for him to fail he had it at the weekend. He'd turned up at the ground expecting to sit in the stands and watch, like the rest of us. He'd even pumped some serious iron earlier that day, expanding as much energy as he could given the frustrations of the waiting brief handed to him by Graham Henry.
Then Robinson goes down in the warmup, Flavell's suddenly told he's playing and before too long he'd not just riding the pine, but out there running round in anger. He never even missed a stride.
That to me is a good sign. A great one even. The guy's a brute with extraordinary skills for one so, er, huge. But he's also been round the block a few times now and nothing rattles him so much these days.
That's a good thing. For I suspect all of a sudden Troy Flavell is a very important man indeed in this All Black setup.
*Disclaimer - Views expressed within this story are not necessarily the views of this Blog
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