AS commentators scrutinised the composition of the Australia squad ahead of the World Cup, one position highlighted as a potential weakness was fly-half. After all, the quest to find a successor in the blue-blooded lineage stretching back from Mark Ella to Michael Lynagh and Stephen Larkham, now the Australia backs coach, has been at best hit and miss. It should not be forgotten that James O’Connor filled the shirt on the 2013 British & Irish Lions tour.
The contestants vying for supremacy were the old troubadour Quade Cooper, the new kid Matt Toomua, the occasionally troubled Kurtley Beale and the clean-cut but increasingly influential figure of Bernard Foley.
In reality it came down to a shootout between Foley and Cooper — The Iceman versus The Maverick. Foley earned the nickname Iceman in homage to the Top Gun film character after his last-minute penalty which clinched the Super Rugby title for the Waratahs against the Crusaders in 2014. It was given to him by Nathan Sharpe but Foley has said in the past he’s not sure that it sits well. “I think Iceman dies, doesn’t he? You want to be Maverick,” Foley said of the name and the character played by Tom Cruise.
No you don’t, Bernard. A quick glimpse at the film plot reveals that Foley’s mind is playing tricks. In the end it is the Iceman who emerges as the top student at flying school and goes on to survive and thrive. It is The Goose who dies, while Maverick’s gung-ho tactics eventually bring him down to earth too.
So, in an Australian rugby context at any rate, life is imitating art.
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During any long and successful career, for which Foley now seems destined, there is invariably a game which an individual can or will look back upon as being the one that defined him, the one that confirmed, in the often capricious world of sport, that he belonged at the very top level.
For Foley that could well turn out to be the destruction of England’s World Cup dream. It is the one where he can consider that he “arrived”. For the Australia team collective it was the unbelievable eight minutes of defence when reduced to 13 men against Wales. It makes for a powerful and potentially unstoppable combination going into today’s quarter-final against Scotland.
In the Rugby World Cup to date, Foley has landed 17 of 19 kicks at goal and scored 56 points in three matches. His virtuoso display against England saw him amass 28 points, including two tries in a 33-13 victory.
Foley grew up in Sydney and attended school and university there, studying economics. After a couple of years in the colts programme at Sydney University, he went into the national sevens programme, spent two years on the international circuit and competed at the 2010 Commonwealth Games, winning a silver medal.
Thereafter he was picked up by the Waratahs; he played his first season there in 2012 at fullback. When Michael Cheika arrived as head coach the following year he soon moved him up.
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“You’ve got to react a lot quicker [in sevens] and you probably see the space and identify space a lot easier,” says Foley. “It was a great introduction to professional rugby. To be a young bloke, to travel, to play in some of the colosseums of rugby and hone your basic skills — you need great skills in all facets of the game in sevens or else you get found out — it’s been a really good learning experience for me and stood me in good stead for where I am now.”
But for a fortunate twist of fate, Foley might not be here now, at least in a playing sense. His father, Michael, who can trace the family tree back to Cork and Munster three generations ago, has been a devoted supporter of his second son and has barely missed a match in which Bernard has participated, even when confined to hospital after heart surgery.
Foley was 14 and playing in an important schools match. “Dad was not allowed to be released and they wouldn’t let him out for the day,” Foley recalls. “But he made mum sneak him out of the hospital and he came to watch me play. During the game, I got a kick in the side. I didn’t think much of it, I was just a bit winded, but then I started feeling pretty ill.
“Then when they were dropping dad back at the hospital afterwards, they said, ‘Why don’t you drop in as well and get yourself checked out?’ And they did all the scans and discovered I had a rupture in my kidney. The doctors said that if the cut had been just half a centimetre longer they would have had to remove my kidney.
“It was pretty frightening at the time. They asked me to provide a urine sample, and it came out bright red. I then had to spend 12 months out of non-contact sports and off the rugby pitch.”
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He not only survived the ordeal but prospered. Foley is the first to acknowledge the value there is in having Will Genia inside him and, even more importantly, Matt Giteau outside him. “We have to function well to lead the side around and do our job for this team, and that’s what we’ve been working on at every training session as a group, trying to improve the combination and co-ordinate our movements. It’s pretty intrinsic,” Foley says. “Matt brings a wealth of experience and it’s been great to work alongside him and bounce things off him. It’s been really beneficial. He can always step in and run the show from first receiver or from second fly-half and his left foot has been invaluable for us, too, because it provides those extra options in keeping defensive sides and backfields guessing.”
Cheika, whose transformation of Australia in the space of 11 months must surely make him the main contender to be named coach of the year, believes that Foley will only get better and, just as important, will become more consistent.
“I would expect him to keep progressing,” Cheika says. “He has shown real talent and also his gains are really consistent. He learns a lot from the dips he has. He is very cool, he is able to think fast and can bring it out in a cool, calculating manner. He also has a very good temperament. He can manage himself under pressure and that is something he is going to have to keep developing because it is always going to increase as you meet new opponents.”