Matt Giteau: Kid Dynamite is all grown up

Jonny Wilkinson may not have known what he was unleashing when he mused aloud near the end of last year that Matt Giteau was such an “exceptional” player, that he didn’t quite know how Australian rugby could have ever let one of the most gifted playmakers in Wallaby annals disappear to work his wonders in Europe.

At the time, the Wallabies’ policy was still to ignore the claims for any player operating on foreign shores but the continued tales of how the fully matured talent of their grown-up Kid Dynamite was now exploding all over the fields of France was evidently making them feel as though snubbing Giteau was practically a criminal act of neglect.

In Toulon, he had become “L’indispensable Monsieur Giteau”, the driving force behind a march to a third successive European club title. He had been voted the best player in the whole of French rugby. The town adored him, and his revered clubmate Wilkinson’s bewilderment at how his brilliant old rival had slipped through the Wallaby net must have helped persuade Australian Rugby Union administrators, at that point overseeing a crisis in the underachieving national team, to think again.