Can England end wounded Gregan’s stay of execution?
THE Reverend Matthew Mullineux wrote out an 11th commandment before leading his men into the first Anglo-Australian Test match — ‘ Thou shalt not stay in charge of a losing team’.
And so it came to pass in the light of victory for the Colonials that the curate from Blackheath duly did the honourable thing and resigned the captaincy. It turned out to be such a blessing that a British team dominated by Englishmen won the next three Tests and the series, whereupon their tiny ex-fly half let rip.
Standing on a chair to make himself seen during a dinner after the last match in Sydney — ‘I’m sorry I’m so small’ — the 5ft 2in clergyman proceeded to tell the Aussies their fortune. In what was more a sermon than a speech, he spelt out their dirty tricks, one by one.
‘First, the trick of holding people back when they come away from the scrum. Second, pushing the man in the line- out who hasn’t got the ball. This is not football.
‘Third — putting an elbow into a man’s face in the scrum. I am told that the Australian remedy for this sort of thing is to bite the offender’s hand, which is not our way of doing things. We have not yet mastered the art of cannibalism.’
The natives did their best to shout him down as just another pompous Pom, but the Rev Mullineux had unwittingly taught them a lesson which every Australian sporting organisation would take to its heart: that a losing captain has to go or, as in Ricky Ponting’s case, he has to do something exceptional to stay.
Their ruthless application of the dictum down the decades helps explain why they have collared the global market in team sports. Unceremonious would be too weak a word for some of the more brutal sackings, like that of the Victorian batsman Bill Lawry halfway through an Ashes series in 1971.
Nobody has been spared, until now.
George Gregan will be leading the Wallabies out at Twickenham as usual tomorrow, which makes him unique in Australian sport for a reason which has nothing to do with the monumental number of 115 Tests stacked up against his name.
Under his command, the wounded Wallabies have lost the last six — sensational in itself but doubly so given Gregan’s survival, despite having been exposed to the sort of public ridicule which the bumbling Captain Mainwaring used to invite with his cock- eyed running of the home guard at Warmington- on-Sea in Dad’s Army.
England will endeavour to greet Gregan by reminding him that, contrary to recent results, Twickenham is not the place to end a losing run of such magnitude. Yet again, the inimitable Eddie Jones has stuck by his man despite the clamour for his removal or, given the perverse nature of these things, because of it.
None of the ‘ bye- bye George’ brigade has been more strident than David Campese, who never got where he did by contradicting W C Fields’ golden rule about never giving a sucker an even break. ‘He’s got to go now,’ Campese said this week of the scrum half who used to be the best in the world. ‘I’ve been saying he’s got to go for a while.’
England have lost six in a row in their time but no captain has ever stayed to preside over all six. When they lost seven on the bounce straddling their centenary year in 1971, three captains went through the mincer: John Spencer for losing the first three; Bob Hiller the next two and Peter Dixon the two after that.
Surprisingly, England have been far less tolerant of unlucky rugby captains than Australia.
Fran Cotton and Richard Hill were given three cracks at it before the selectors looked elsewhere. Tony Neary did manage to last through four, all the more exceptional compared to the short shrift given to such luminaries as Richard Sharp, Bob Taylor and Dick Greenwood.
It makes Gregan’s stickability surprising and very un-Australian, which is probably precisely what Rev Mullineux will be thinking when he looks down on HQ tomorrow from his rocking chair in the celestial clubhouse.
p.jackson@dailymail.co.uk