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Scott Staniforth would love a win over his old team on home soil, writes Phil Wilkins.
Scott Staniforth knows now he was never cut out to follow in his father's footsteps to be a West Wyalong farmer, to harvest grain and shear sheep.
Instead, his life was channelled into fields greener than the home paddocks of the family wheat and sheep property of Baaloo Park with 12 years of professional rugby union, first with the Waratahs in Sydney, then with London Irish, then back to Australia with the Western Force and, ultimately, to Japan.
When the thickset speedster disappeared into northern hemisphere rugby in 2004, victim of NSW Rugby's obsession with rugby league wingers, Staniforth was the last to anticipate he would return for a second World Cup for Australia and now be on the verge of playing 100 Super rugby games.
At 31, Staniforth is almost certainly paying his last visit to Sydney as an active international for the Force's clash with the Waratahs, a player of 12 Tests, one of the most respected men of Australian rugby, an invaluable Force utility back without taint as winger, outside-centre and inside-centre.
Tomorrow night, Staniforth returns to the Sydney Football Stadium to play against his original franchise for which he played the first of 61 games in 1998.
With the Force placed 10th on 19 points due to their agonising 81st-minute loss to the Hurricanes, nothing would suit Staniforth more than to assist the Force fulfil their Australian "grand slam" ambition, victory in the one tournament over the Waratahs, Brumbies (25-16) and Reds (39-7).
It is typical of Staniforth that, with 100 Super rugby appearances in sight should he play in the Force's last five games, he is concerned only with performing with distinction in his final season for his team.
Although his contract with the Force was to run until the end of next winter, he is saying farewell to Australian rugby by mutual amicable agreement to join Japanese club Yokogawa.
Time is marching on for Staniforth. The pain in his left knee told him so. Two surgical explorations for the removal of cartilage either side of Christmas reinforced his belief that it was best to move quickly. Hence, two years with Yokogawa.
His parents, Peter and Dinah - sister of another West Wyalong man, the ex-Test back-rower and rangy Australian sevens representative, Tony Gelling - and Scott's sister, Katie, will make the trip to the SFS to watch him in action.
He is a player without regrets, happily settled in Cottesloe in Perth with wife Emma and three children, without a vision of returning to the land, instead planning to work as a builder of commercial office interiors in Perth.
Staniforth admits with a grin: "Of the four boys, I was the house-bound child on the farm, the one who hung around the house the most."
With drought and fly-blown sheep and the price of super phosphate rising, perhaps it wasn't such a bad idea.
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