AFTER ONE SEASON and one game in France, Johnny Sexton has one of the most important decisions of his career to make.
Halfway through last season it looked like Sexton might buy himself out of his own contract, such was the poor level of play Racing Metro had reached up to then. Since, he has a helped lead a bit of a renaissance, as the Parisian outfit made the Top 14 semi finals last year, and have started this campaign brightly.
Racing have offered Sexton a four-year contract, so the decision is whether Johnny will come home, or likely see out his playing days in Paris. To forecast what choice he might make, we studied past examples of players who had to decide between sticking it out in a foreign land, and coming home to where everybody knew their name.
Ian Rush — Juventus
We have to start with the man who was alleged to have said that playing in Italy was “like playing in a foreign country”. He may not have said that exact quote, but his statistics indicated he may have believed it deep down. He scored 14 goals in all competitions during his only season in Turin but returned immediately to Liverpool where he quickly regained his prolific form of over 20 goals per season.
What makes his lacklustre season so mystifying is that he looked the part over there. Jet black hair, immaculately coiffed, and a nice lean ‘stache. That man could pass for a full-blooded Italian. Here is one of the few bright spots during Rush’s time in Italy.
Geordan Murphy — Leicester
The greatest Irish rugby export of all time, Murphy got a trial as a teenager with Leicester and never played club rugby in Ireland again. This is the best case scenario for any player moving abroad; granted there was no language barrier but Murphy fit seamlessly into the Leicester culture and quickly became indispensable.
Leicester were so far ahead of the Irish provinces for the formative years of his career that there was no pressing need for him to return, and by the time that axis had flipped, he was so established that it didn’t make much sense for him to come back. This is an example of the audacious skill that the provinces missed out on.
My only tangential connection to this story, is ending a childhood friendship after a mate told me his father had been the Leinster underage coach who could have brought Murphy into the set-up. I still occasionally consider filing a class action lawsuit against the coach with Irish rugby fans for letting him get away.
Cristiano Ronaldo — Real Madrid
Every summer the rumour of Ronaldo to Manchester United seems to resurface. In fairness, a lot of these are from less than reputable transfer gossip peddlers but even last week, David Moyes said that he had legitimately targeted the striker.
(I know Ronaldo isn’t from England so it is a little different to the other examples but he made himself in Manchester so it was worthy of inclusion.)
Since joining Real Madrid, Ronaldo has scored 254 goals in 248 games. Perhaps, if he had struggled like Rush he may have looked to leave, but with Real strengthening further this year, it looks like the Portuguese forward might be there for a few more years at least.
Gethin Jenkins — Toulon
Say hello to Ian Rush’s rugby equivalent and the worst case scenario for Johnny Sexton’s first season in France. Jenkins moved to Toulon with a reputation for being a mobile but tough prop who would excel as part of such a star-studded pack.
He ended up spending his year on either the treatment table or the bench, while also making about 1000 broadsheet newspaper lists titled “biggest flops of the season”.
The Welshman had to practically beg to be released from his contract a year early and Toulon’s comic book mogul owner Mourad Boudjellal was only too happy to dump that weighty anchor overboard. It’s not all bad for Jenkins though, he still went on three Lions Tours and scored this great try at the 2011 World Cup.
Steve McManaman — Real Madrid
Steve McManaman left Liverpool on a free transfer in the summer of 1999 and enjoyed four solid years at Real Madrid. You could argue that given his production in Madrid, he wouldn’t have been particularly useful had he returned to the Premier League a little earlier but McManaman was particularly influential in his first season, which culminated in a Champions League win and this goal in the final.
Had McManaman decided to return to Liverpool following that triumph it would have been interesting to see how he would have fit in. Considering that Liverpool team won a treble, the only logical conclusion is that they win a quintuple.
Dan Carter — Perpignan
Dan Carter only played one season in Europe, on a six month “sabbatical” with Perpignan that ultimately ended when he ruptured his achilles tendon. Carter never really needed to play club rugby in Europe but having him regularly lining out in the Heineken Cup would have been unbelievable fun and erased the role Perpignan played in the worst game of rugby in the history of the Heineken Cup*.
Alas, Dan Carter decided to remain in New Zealand to you know, concentrate on the whole World Cup thing. Would you not have thought of the greater good, DC?
*That game is of course, Toulouse vs Perpignan in the 2003 final at Lansdowne Road. The game itself wasn’t the worst but the fact that it came at the expense of a home Leinster-Munster final made it unbearable. It remains, to this day, the only live sporting event that I have ever fallen asleep at.
