Loyalty is a word that does not count for much in the world of modern rugby, and when a game goes professional, perhaps that is no surprise. However, by any standards, the way that Wasps have brought James Haskell’s career at the club to an end, as revealed in The Times this morning, is about as cold-hearted as professional decisions go. Loyalty didn’t get much of a look-in here.
To be absolutely clear: Wasps haven’t sacked Haskell. His contract comes to an end at the close of this season and Wasps have decided not to renew it. It is their right to make that decision. From the end of the season, Haskell belongs to them no more than anyone else.
And it is the job of Dai Young, the Wasps director of rugby, to recruit the best possible team and there is a salary cap to which he has to adhere. He clearly doesn’t want to spend on Haskell and believes that his back row will function better with other personnel — and you can understand why he has come to that decision.
Haskell wants to play international rugby and Young would rather not lose a player to the two big windows for the autumn internationals and the NatWest Six Nations. And then there is his age: Haskell will be 33 next season. Rugby World Cups are littered with anecdotal evidence that you can be in your mid-thirties and still a world champion — Richie McCaw was 34, so was Neil Back — but signing a 30-something for a season at a club is a different matter. It is more of a gamble than signing a younger player. There is one senior English club where it is almost policy to avoid recruiting players in their 30s.
So I get it. Haskell comes with risk.
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However, it is also a fact that, in two stints, Haskell has done 12 seasons with Wasps. He didn’t just stick by the club when they uprooted from High Wycombe to Coventry, he became one of the front men for the move. He stood in front of large numbers of indignant fans and told them why they should back the move to the midlands. Stay loyal to us, he beseeched them. The irony of it.
What gets me is that Haskell is no longer an expensive commodity. Some players in their 30s are looking for a last big, juicy contract; Haskell isn’t. He just wants a one-year deal to stay in the Premiership.
His goal is to make it to the World Cup and to do so, he needs to be playing Premiership rugby. That is why he would have taken a one-year deal with Wasps and even accepted a pay cut. Is it too old-fashioned to suggest that, after years of being synonymous with the club, Wasps could have elected to help him, given all that he has done for them?
Haskell now has a problem. He has no club for next season. Wasps’ announcement today, that Haskell is leaving, was highly unusual. Usually, when clubs make these announcements, they say: Player X is leaving us to join Club Y. Here, though, Haskell is leaving, no destination confirmed.
He has had London Irish chasing him, but, understandably, to keep his international career alive, he does not want to join a club that may well be in the Championship next season. He has had interest from France, but that, too, signifies the end of his England days. If he doesn’t get an English club, I’d expect him to pack his bags and head to Asia or Australasia instead.
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His situation throws up a number of questions:
1) If he gets no English club for next season and goes instead to France, will that trigger England’s “exceptional circumstances” policy regarding players playing abroad? England’s stated policy is not to select players who play outside England, but if Haskell has no option but to play outside the Premiership, that is a pretty exceptional circumstance, is it not?
2) Could the RFU buy up Haskell on a central contract and then lease him out to a club? That is a highly complicated option, doable but very hard to see how it could work.
3) Is Haskell good enough to go all the way to the World Cup anyway?
The answer to question 3) is, of course, subjective. Haskell seemed to be fading from the international scene last autumn, but now he seems to be back. Certainly it is touch-and-go whether he can push the best of his career quite that far.
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Ideally, though, he should at least be given the chance to try. Nowadays, though, idealism and loyalty do not count for much.
