Jonathan joins the great 3,000 points club

WHEN the season began, the number of goalkickers still adding to a personal points total in excess of 3,000 amounted to five: a South African (Morne Steyn), a New Zealander (Jimmy Gopperth), a Welshman (Dan Biggar) and a pair of Englishmen (Stephen Myler, Owen Farrell).

The other week they were joined by a sixth, Jonathan Wisniewski. Unlike the aforementioned, he never played for his country but then neither did a few others who scored every bit as prodigiously, like Romain Teulet, Glen Jackson and Brock James.

Wisniewski is retiring at the end of the season shortly before turning 36. If the gods are with him, his club, Lyon, will make it all the way to the Top 14 final at the Stade de France in June and see him off in fitting fashion at the end of a long road of many twists and turns.

Since starting at Toulouse 16 years ago, Wisniewski played for six other clubs – Provence, Castres, Colomiers, Racing, Grenoble and Toulon – before Lyon. Apart from a fleeting appearance in the France squad of 2010, their last Grand Slam year, he has gone about his club business without interruption.

His family has its own claim to World Cup fame which will endure irrespective of whether France become the second European nation to win the Webb Ellis Trophy, 20 years after England became the first.

Maryan Wisniewski established the family’s penchant for scoring goals during the FIFA World Cup of 1958.

France, along with Jonathan’s great uncle, reached the semi-final against Brazil in Stockholm only for the match to coincide with Pele’s first international hattrick.

Wisniewski, senior, now 84, has seen France’s footballers win the World Cup twice, 20 years apart. Similar success on the rugby field is long overdue.