Bernard Foley may have just bitten off more than he can chew. A self-described Wallabies newcomer, the 25-year-old this week inked a deal that will see him play three years of continuous rugby. Three consecutive seasons in the toughest provincial competition in the world, punctuated with a World Cup, two Rugby Championships and two seasons in the labour-intensive Japanese Top League.
Factor in the title-winning season he just put in with the Waratahs and the unbroken run of 14 Tests he played for Australia in his second season in the gold jersey and by the time his new deal runs out in 2018 Foley won't have come up for air for four years. What is it Peter Brock used to say? Bite off more than you can chew then chew like hell? Consider this Foley's feverish spell at the feed trough.
"I've always been excited about new challenges and experiences. That's why you play footy, to get experiences, and at the end of my career if you can look back and say you've done a number of things, that excites me," he says. "I've only just started in this place and this culture [at the Waratahs] and hopefully it's going to be the start of something very big."
Foley says that a lot - "I've only just started in this place" - and with just one full season of Test rugby under his belt, it is hard to argue. "I've only just started playing Wallabies and consistent Super Rugby," he said at the unveiling of his game-changing new deal at Sydney's Allianz Stadium on Thursday.
Admittedly it's been a swell couple of years. After learning the ways of Super Rugby from the relative comfort of fullback in 2012, Foley at No.10 was an integral part of the Waratahs' journey to the top during the following two seasons. He was thrown a Test debut in 2013 in Rosario - about as far away from prying eyes as you can get - and took it with both hands, scoring a try and working his way into the No.10 jersey since then. But why the rush to pack it all in now when, by his own admission, his best football is still some way off?
Perhaps Brocky has the answer this time, too. The singular drive that drove "Peter Perfect" could be fuelling the boy from Dural. "I want to be known as a consistent footy player that's playing in a side that's always challenging," Foley says. "Not just being a one-off, being a world-class player who performs each week. Being able to do that hopefully leads to higher honours down the track."
Foley's deal, which included a surprising two-year stint with Ricoh Black Rams in Japan, did not go unnoticed across the ditch. The extent of the Australian Rugby Union's flexibility with their 18-Test playmaker, when most imagined it would take an Israel Folau to find the extra bend in the contracting arm, caught many by surprise. "For the ARU to tailor-make his package to keep him means they obviously rate him extremely highly, but I think that's fair," Hurricanes coach Chris Boyd says.
As a Super Rugby coach in New Zealand, Boyd knows well the challenges of balancing the needs and wants of the individual with the needs and wants of team and country. He has given his blessing to veteran centre Conrad Smith's move offshore to Pau at the end of the World Cup and believes, on balance, that the ARU has no choice but to be creative with their best players. "Individualism and flexibility is an absolute must and a key and the only thing that could be an enemy to that is potentially setting precedents," Boyd says. "Relativity is easy to use in a team environment when there's no flexibility, but in the market place that revolves around both our countries and has us competing against the Euro, you'd be mad to think you can use just one model. The ability to package up things that are mutually suitable to the player and union is the only way forward."
Which is where Foley's experience will set the tone for much of what happens down the track in Australia. Eddie Jones and Andy Friend, two Australian coaches well-acquainted with the Japanese system, warned last week that clubs paying big sums for big names were expecting big commitments in return. Friend cites Schalk Burger, whom he coaches at Suntory Sungoliath, as the best example of what is expected from foreign players who take up lucrative offers in the Top League.
"Schalk didn't start back with the Stormers until round four this season, because his commitment is primarily with Suntory," Friend said. "We [Suntory] released him for the Springboks spring tour last year, but we asked him to come back before the last Test and he did. Then he played for the Boks when we weren't playing. He's gone there with that attitude, that Suntory is his primary commitment. My view of the attitude [in Australia] is that it's 'I'm a Super Rugby player and a Wallaby but I can sneak across and pick up some sneaky yen'. That's a different view and I'm not sure how it will go down in Japan."
Japan's entry into Super Rugby means the Waratahs are not expecting their star No.10 to miss any part of their seasons. But a potential tug-of-war looms in 2016 when the new Top League season starts halfway through the Wallabies' Rugby Championship campaign.
It has prompted discussions about the ARU daring to tread where the home unions of the UK and Ireland have in relation to the Heineken Cup, and using World Rugby's Regulation 9 to compel provincial clubs to release players for Test matches. Foley is hoping it doesn't come down to splitting his loyalties. A diligent and consummate professional, he believes there is enough of him to go around over the next three years.
"I wouldn't have done it otherwise," he says, when discussions come around to the feed trough he's staring at. "From every season I can pick something up and improve as a player. That's the reason I've signed for long term here, because that's all I want to do, be in a successful Waratahs side that leads to a strong Australian conference, which allows the Wallaby jersey to contend and win back a few trophies that we haven't had in the last couple of years."
