Maturing Basta is now model of consistency
Brendan Gallagher makes the case for a recall of Mathieu Bastareaud
All things taken into consideration now would probably be a good time to tip a cap in the direction of Mathieu Bastareaud, once the
enfant terrible of French rugby but now a senior statesman and oasis of calm and good fellowship at Toulon where he has succeeded Jonny Wilkinson as the cult figure.
Guy Noves surprised a few when he recalled ‘Basta’ to the squad last week but really no explanation is needed. At 29 he is still some way from the knacker’s yard and to these eyes is a far superior player to the unruly bull of a centre who made his France debut back in the 2009 Six Nations.
Basta has been the form centre in France for a couple of years but, like many, suffered badly during France’s catastrophic World Cup quarter-final defeat against New Zealand two years ago. He has not played for Les Blues since.
Physicality is still his forte but you get much more these days. Presumably he will be competing directly with Remi Lamerat as the big man in midfield with the youthful Damian Penaud and the silky Geoffrey Doumayrou contesting the other spot.
Basta can sometimes appear both a comic and comic book character, which means there is a danger of not taking him seriously as a player although he has always been respected as a force of nature.
Yes, his default mode is trucking the ball up but he has added some clever touches to that basic game, improving his passing and off-loading. How could it be otherwise when
he spent so long playing alongside Matt Giteau while other partners in the Toulon midfield have included Juan Martin Hernandez and more recently Ma’a Nonu. Playing outside Jonny Wikinson for three years was no hardship either, that’s the company he has been keeping.
And here’s the thing. Amid the long cast list of world stars and stellar talents down at Toulon, Basta, along with Jonny during his spell there, has been the hard core performer week-in week-out, a model of consistency and commitment at the most volatile of clubs. At some stage this season he will be completing 200 games for the club.
Much more than that, although not the captain, it was Basta who started rolling his sleeves up and smashing fist into palm by way of encouragement to the others when the Toulon train threatened to go off the rails last season, especially when Giteau was absent injured. He dragged them out of a few scrapes with a succession of MoM performances.
His maturing as a player and individual are a great credit to him. It could have all gone so horribly wrong. Bastareaud was a confused, mixed-up kid with a weight problem, low self-esteem and one or two mental health issues.
On France’s 2009 tour of New Zealand, a week after helping France to a famous win in Dunedin, he went on a bender in Wellington, arrived back at the team hotel in the early hours and somehow smashed his face in, either falling off his bed and smashing into furniture, or possibly following an altercation with colleagues.
Whatever, he panicked and invented some cock and bull story about being attacked by a group of youths in the street near the hotel which was quickly dismissed when CCTV footage showed him arriving back at the hotel unmarked and unconcerned. A humiliating retraction followed, he returned home in disgrace and a couple of weeks later came what was reported as a suicide attempt.
He was a young man in a bad place and although the recovery proper didn’t get underway until he prised himself away from Stade Francais and headed to Toulon in 2011, recover he did.
Gloriously so as an individual and significantly so as a player. He is popular and highly valued at Toulon and perhaps it’s not too late for that to be the case with France as well.
“His default mode is to truck the ball up but he has added some nice touches”