No top-up for Nathan Sharpe as ARU snubs one of our best
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Nathan Sharpe, arguably the best all-round secondrower in the world, has not been offered a Wallabies contract top-up next season.
While the Australian Rugby Union has rushed to re-sign players who were threatening to go overseas following the World Cup this year, it has snubbed Sharpe who recently stated he would be turning his back on offshore offers and remaining with Western Force next season.
At 33 and with 93 Tests to his credit, Sharpe - who on Saturday against the Lions in Johannesburg will equal George Gregan (136 matches) as the most-capped Super Rugby player in history - is easily the oldest player in the youth-dominated Australian team.
That said, his form over the past two seasons has been the best of his career.
And he is still eight months younger than Springboks legend Victor Matfield and three years younger than All Blacks warhorse Brad Thorn, the only other locks in the game worthy of mention in the same breath.
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As a primary lineout winner, Matfield might just have the jump on Sharpe and while Thorn is the more damaging runner, no other secondrower carries the ball as often or as effectively as the Australian veteran.
As a lock and a lineout organiser he is the complete package and although the media hype in the lead-up to the World Cup will focus on wunderkinds Kurtley Beale, Quade Cooper, James O'Connor and David Pocock, the one player Australia simply cannot afford to lose over the next seven months is Sharpe.
Not that the durability of the 2007 John Eales medallist has been an issue.
Aside from 2009, when a shoulder injury limited him to five Tests, Sharpe has compiled double-digit Test tallies for the past six years.
Despite that, the Force captain and Australia's most-capped secondrower is not considered worthy of a guaranteed ARU top-up to be paid in addition to his Super Rugby contract.
He has been offered an incentive-based contract that will kick in if he plays half-a-dozen Tests next year but the ARU, which is in savage cutback mode on all fronts save for executive salaries, will be offering him nothing up front.
"It's disappointing," was all Sharpe would say yesterday.
Having absorbed the bitter disappointment of seeing a historic victory over the Blues dashed by an after-the-bell equalising penalty goal by Auckland kicker Stephen Brett in Perth on Saturday night (the match end in a 22-22 draw), Sharpe tomorrow will lead the Force to South Africa where its opening match will be against a Lions side prepared by the Perth club's founding coach, John Mitchell.
"It will be strange opposing John," said Sharpe, who played 62 matches under Mitchell.
"The Lions will be stoked at having just won their first game in nearly two years (25-20 against the Cheetahs in Bloemfontein) so we expect they'll be coming at us pretty hard."
Force coach Richard Graham is still awaiting the match stats from Bloemfontein, but before the Cheetahs game the Lions had passed the ball 170 times more than any other team in the competition, so the expectation in the Perth camp is that they will be in for a fast-paced, even frenetic game against the Johannesburg-based side.
Indications are the Force's two injured props, Tim Fairbrother and Matt Dunning, will be fit for the South African tour but seven backs cannot be considered because of injury.
The Australian
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