I do feel for Fearns, but he handled it all poorly
The old saying goes that an Englishman’s word is his bond, but those days are long gone as the end of the ‘Carl Fearns to join Gloucester’ saga shows.
Apart from the fact that in any walk of life it’s a pretty shabby state of affairs to renege on your word, especially when a contract is signed, should Fearns be hung out to dry or should we have some sympathy for the situation in which he found himself ?
Fearns signed for the West Country club, proclaiming at the time how excited he was to be coming back to the Premiership, with director of rugby David Humphries explaining that Fearns had England ambitions he hoped to fulfil.
However, his current club, Lyon, then seemed to suddenly wake up to the fact he was leaving, and brought out the cheque book: no one knows how much of an increase on his Gloucester salary that represented, other than that it was huge. Some estimates suggest they simply doubled what was already a decent wedge.
Clearly the English club have had their recruitment plans thrown into disarray just a few weeks before the start of the new season, but one would imagine they’ve been royally compensated for their loss. The money will be welcome, but this is a situation that’s familiar to fans of any club promoted to the Premiership – how do you find the right quality of player at short notice? If someone is available then more often than not it’s because they weren’t high on anyone else’s shopping list.
However unpalatable Fearns’ actions have been, I think we need to have some sympathy with him. He’s 27, and when he next runs out for Lyon, just like every other professional rugby player he’s just one false step, or one tackle, away from a career-ending injury. His new Lyon deal is rumoured to be three years at mega bucks, and that’s enough to set him and his family up for the rest of their lives – in accepting it he has almost certainly scuppered his chances of ever playing for the full England side, and that can’t have been an easy thing to do.
Clubs make decisions all of the time that have a devastating impact on players, such as hanging on until the last possible moment before deciding not to offer a contract extension, or ‘letting them go’ because of injury. They do that because professional sport is a tough and unforgiving business, so it’s hard to crucify a player for putting what he sees as his own best interests first, although that will be scant consolation for Cherry and White supporters, and there is little doubt that Fearns’ handling of the situation was pretty poor.
When the Lions played the Crusaders the referee was the Frenchman, Mathieu Raynal, and he rapidly came to the conclusion that the tourists were on top at the scrum, penalising the home side accordingly. A few days later, against the Highlanders, there was an Aussie ref in Angus Gardner, and things couldn’t have been more different. How can it be that a game with one set of Laws can be managed in an entirely different way by two referees, both thought good enough to officiate at Test match level?
The Crusaders lock, Luke Romano, made the point that in Super Rugby the front rows are allowed to lean and ‘pre-engage’, whereas in the north that generally gets pinged. In contrast, the Lions prop, Kyle Sinckler declared himself mystified by some of Gardner’s calls in the Highlanders game.
There’s no right or wrong in this one, just total confusion. If a team play in one way and see the opposition being penalised, and they then play in a similar way in the next match, but it’s them that are conceding penalties, then we’re in deep trouble. At present, neither the tourists nor the New Zealanders are happy with the officials.
For the first Test we have South African Jaco Peyper, nobody’s favourite ref, and then we’ve got Jerome Garces and Romain Poite for the next two – right now there’s a chance that the tour could be decided by the choice of officials!
Surely World Rugby exist to ensure consistency across the game in the Laws, and therefore in the refereeing? Let’s have one common approach to refereeing scrums to which both north and south commit – how hard can that be?