SPECTATOR SPORT
The last of the amateurs
Simon Barnes
NEWS that Will Carling, the former Eng- land rugby union captain, has retired has split the nation. Half of them think it is rather sad that someone still playing so well has decided to call it a day, the other half think he retired years ago.
Carling has always had a knack for divi- sion, and as he takes his leave he divides not just a nation and a sport, but his era. He was the first truly modern rugby union player; he is the last of the old school. He was one of the first of the professionals; he is perhaps the last of the amateurs.
The England rugby team before Carling had been a triumph of success-shy ama- teurism, marked by capricious selection, zero planning and scrupulous avoidance of anything that looked like constructive thought. Thinking, after all, was best left to professionals who liked that sort of thing. Thinking, when all was said and done, was a form of cheating.
Geoff Cooke, as England rugby coach, was to change all the above. Consistency of selection was the bedrock of his policy and Carling was not so much his captain as his trademark. The link between coach and captain sustained England through a decade of unprecedented success. No won- der they were hated.
Hated, that is, by the Undead who stalked the corridors of rugby union, clank- ing their chains and gibbering at the golden age that had never been. For Carling had become famous. He was recognised by peo- ple who did not belong to rugby clubs. This was surely disaster.
Worse was to follow. Carling, a smoothie subaltern, bought his way out of the army and set up his own management consultan- cy company. Motivation was his speciality. The fact that he was captain of the England rugby team was not a disincentive to hiring him. There were those that said he was bla- tantly trading on his fame. This was all ter- ribly wrong. Rugby union players were sup- posed to work for banks and estate agents, and to be given generous amounts of time off to train.
But Carling drove a Mercedes earned with the sweat of his own reputation, and some people hated that, couldn't wait for him to lose — and then we could get rid of him and Cooke both. Carling gave them the opportunity. He served it up to them on a plate with parsley round it. He said on air, tricked by a bit of televisual chicanery, that the sport of rugby union was run by '57 old farts'.
This, you would have thought, constitut- ed a mighty wind. But it was not enough to shift Carling. The outpouring of support from players, journalists, crowds from with- in and without the game, made the ques- tion of his sacking a major issue in the game.
Carling stayed put — and the game could not possibly stay unchanged. Revolution, and full professionalism, followed with jud- dering inevitability. With Carling the dam broke. Apres Carling, le deluge.
All of which makes it pleasingly ironical that Carling's eventual departure from the game came about because his throwback amateurism was unacceptable to his club, Harlequins. He has fallen out with the coach, Andy Keast, about such matters as his right to give priority to business over training.
It has been an unseemly falling out. It is not that Carling cannot play — he is reck- oned to be by far the best man in his posi- tion at the club. The fact is that his face no longer fits, he is a walking, tackling anachro- nism — in short, I suppose, an old fart.
Carling is like a hippy of the mid-1970s turning up to a punk concert in his velvet loons. Carling, the first modern rugby play- er, is on his way out. And rugby finds post- modernism every bit as hard as pre-Carling fartism. We shall soon be nostalgic for Car- ling's interregnum,
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