NEW Force halfback Josh Valentine knows all about fine lines. He couldn't quite get on the right side of one last year and it perhaps cost him Test selection. He crossed one last week and suddenly found his sexuality called into question.

First, the interesting one. Letting loose the playful sides of their personalities, Valentine and Force fullback Drew Mitchell last week quipped their way through a Fox Sports interview crammed with double entendres, and then allowed themselves to be filmed frolicking together in the water.

"We were just meant to be swimming together but by the time they edited it, it made us look a bit gay," Valentine said. "It certainly called into question our sexuality. We got absolutely stitched up and we're pretty filthy about it."

He sounds anything but filthy and, if anything, the light-hearted episode has helped to further ease him into the Force squad he joined after a frustrating season with the Waratahs last year.

Which brings us to that other fine line, the one that separated Valentine from the starting halfback position at the Waratahs and maybe even the Wallabies.

"I was told I was millimetres away from getting selected each week," Valentine said.

But a millimetre is as good as a mile when it comes to rugby selections. Because then NSW coach Ewen McKenzie wanted a contrast of halfback styles in his match 22, and Valentine was seen as a similar player to Luke Burgess, when he missed the starting role he also missed the soft landing on the bench, McKenzie opting instead for the physicality of Brett Sheehan.

While Burgess went on to make his Test debut for Australia, gathering 12 caps in his first international season, and Sheehan also was taken away on the Wallabies spring tour as a back-up halfback, Valentine languished on the outer, making only one Super 14 appearance for the Tahs after having played in 12 games the previous season.

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