Enjoy Rocky, ‘cos you won’t have him for long

SOMETIMES in this journalistic game you look back upon things you wrote years earlier and wonder how you could possibly have got it so wrong.

(“The All Blacks are certainties to win the 1991/1995/1999/2003 & 2007 World Cups.”) Other times, you write things, where, looking back, you know that you absolutely nailed it.

“In every Test this year Rocky Elsom has played better than the last, and he has never played better than right now. In short, we see the Kiwis their Richie McCaw, and raise them one Rocky Elsom.”

“In a struggling NSW side, Rocky Elsom was seen ‘to fill the unforgiving minute, with 60 seconds’ worth of distance run’, for the full 80 minutes.”

“Rocky Elsom has emerged as the most powerful forward in the Wallaby pack this season. Into everything like pepper’n’salt, gathers like a hoover and stings like a wasp. Something like that, anyway...”

And, the one I’m proudest of: “Rocky Elsom is the hardest working bastard in Australian rugby.”

Nailed it! For when you look back upon the totality of Elsom’s career, being just about the hardest working bastard the game has seen pretty much sums it up. Plenty of players are hard-working, a lot of them are bastards, but when you are hard-working and a bastard – and I very much mean that in an admiring, Australian sense of the word, rather than making reflections on his fine parentage – then you come as the complete package.

Raised in the fine Australian rugby nursery of Nudgee College, Brisbane, Elsom first came to public notice when he was picked in the Australian Schoolboys side in 2000, at which point he switched to rugby league! Two lost years playing for the NRL Bulldogs followed, before he came to his senses and returned to rugby union to play for the Waratahs.

From the beginning, he was a stand-out for his aggressive nature. When Elsom, playing mostly at blind-side, hit opposition players they stayed hit, and sometimes had to be carried off. He impacted on rucks like a runaway truck, scavenged for ball to the point that he really did rival McCaw, and was devastating with the ball in hand, making suicide runs right into the teeth of opposition forward packs – his shoulder dropped, his back feet spinning like the back wheel of a motor back as he charged in.

Even when on losing sides, Elsom always seemed to take the view that if you couldn’t beat a team the very least you could do was to take a piece of them home with you to show your mother, and I personally always admired the fact that even when down by 20 points, Elsom kept going right to the last minute, long after others had dropped their heads.

He was, in short, the “mongrel in the pack” that according to Australian lore every rugby team needs, and he wasn’t long in making his Wallaby debut – against Samoa in June 2005.

From the opening try he scored on that day, for all of the next four years, he became a mainstay of the Wallaby pack with highlights including scoring three tries in the space of just 42 minutes in the 2007 World Cup against Japan, and last year being voted by his peers in the team as the Wallaby of the Year, as well as being voted by the public in the same year as the Wallabies’ outstanding player.

And yet, through all this, did we get to know him at all, tell each other “Rocky” stories, discuss the whys and wherefores of his life beyond rugby? Funny you should ask – not at all. In the six years he has been playing elite rugby, I actually don’t recall a single notable quote from him. He was not the player to buddy up to the press and come out with killer one-liners, nor a man to attend any social functions where there were likely to be photographers of the clicking and rolling variety. Nor has he ever been involved in any controversy that I can remember, with no real atrocities against his name for on-the-field behaviour and not even a blip on the radar for bad off-field behaviour.

As near as I can determine, his entire existence has been lived out on the rugby field. I suppose he may have a wife and maybe even children, but I don’t recall ever seeing them or reading about them. For hard-working men like Elsom don’t have time to tell the press about their private lives, or invite the cameras into their homes. They must get to the next ruck, or make another suicide run before the final whistle blows.

In 2008, of course, came the sudden surprise that the ARU was releasing Elsom from his contract on “compassionate grounds”, so he could play with Leinster. It seemed rather odd, the ARU showing compassion to the All Black, French and English forwards who, because of that release would be spared Elsom’s attentions that year, but one supposes they must have had their reasons.

The fact that Leinster have done extremely well with Elsom on board has surprised no-one in Australian rugby circles, but if I may attempt to summate our mood on the subject, it would be this – good luck to you, but don’t get used to it. We want him back. It is all very well for Elsom to have had this pleasurable jaunt playing in the European competition, but as the countdown shortly begins to the 2011 World Cup in New Zealand we will be wanting our best and brightest back, and foremost among those is Rocky Elsom.

Peter FitzSimons is an acclaimed author and columnist with the Sydney Morning Herald, and a former Wallaby.