Bon voyage Leicester Fainga’anuku

Leicester Fainga’anuku is shifting to French club Toulon.
Photo: PHOTOSPORT

Analysis – Rugby’s worst kept secret finally broke this week with the confirmation that Crusaders strike weapon Leicester Fainga’anuku is shifting to French club Toulon at season’s end. If anyone didn’t already know, Dane Coles made it clear during Saturday night’s Hurricanes win over the defending champs anyway.

While players leaving to take up contracts overseas is obviously nothing new, this is an interesting case in a World Cup year. It draws parallels with Charles Piutau in 2015: a player who had been seen as a potential key cog in the All Blacks over the next four seasons and probably more. A consistent utility back who was good for a double figure try tally every Super Rugby campaign and was never far from form XVs.

Piutau’s exit from New Zealand rugby is fairly well-known. He apparently tried to leverage the interest from overseas clubs to bolster his contract with NZ Rugby, only to have his bluff called and told to not let the door hit his rear end on the way out. So, after stints at Wasps and Ulster, he has been at Bristol for the past five years and at one point was the highest paid player in the game. As soon as he had made his decision, he was no longer considered for the All Blacks.

That was then and this is now, though. Steve Hansen’s almost limitless power as head of the empire was built on being the world champions at the time, with a strong case for being the best All Black side ever. They would retain the World Cup without Piutau, but with enough ease to seemingly justify what was, in hindsight, a fairly rough end to his playing days in New Zealand (obviously the bad blood has subsided, Hansen recently picked Piutau for his World XV team that played at Twickenham).

So where does this leave Fainga’anuku? The All Blacks are, quite famously, no longer the holders of the World Cup and face an uphill battle to try and change that later this year. Fainga’anuku is part of a pretty crowded picture for midfield and outside backs, somewhere that the All Blacks have never been short of talent. But his form makes him a compelling case to be selected regardless of what he’s going to do next year.

After all, he wouldn’t be alone. Ardie Savea, Beauden Barrett, Brodie Retallick and Richie Mo’unga are all automatic selections for the World Cup if they’re fit, and they’re all heading offshore next year. The key difference being that between them they’ve played 326 tests between them to Fainga’anuku’s two, but exactly where do you draw the line around what is an elegant exit and one where the future of the side is considered when it comes to a player’s selection?

Really though, Ian Foster might not have much of a choice right now. The one thing in Fainga’anuku’s favour is that the All Blacks use an awful lot of players in a World Cup year, as every precaution is taken to protect those that will be in the top side when the tournament rolls around. Sevu Reece, Luke Jacobson and Braydon Ennor all debuted in the first test of 2019, while Josh Ioane sat on the bench. This may well be Fainga’anuku’s way in, with a tough Rugby Championship campaign looming beforehand. If he keeps up the sort of form that he’s had in Super Rugby, it’ll be extremely hard to leave him behind when the All Blacks depart for France.

If that is the case, it’s highly unlikely anyone will be too upset.

But while there’s a lot of water to go under the bridge between now and then, Fainga’anuku’s case does feel like a bit of a turning point. He is only 23, after all. If his time at Toulon works out alright – there is no guarantee of that, though – he has the ability to come back in a few years and pick up where he left off. That’s where it gets interesting, because while a few senior All Blacks have done that in Japan in recent years and Dan Carter had his sabbatical in France almost a decade and a half ago, that was only for one season at a time.

This may well be the model for fringe All Blacks going forward and it will cause a fairly hefty shift in pathway protocol for NZ Rugby. World Cup or not, this might be the real lasting legacy this coaching regime leaves behind.