The last time Australia played at Twickenham, Matt Giteau was up in what they call the Carling Room, hosting a table at the Captain’s Club. Convivial as Giteau is, and excellent as the three-course lunch no doubt was, it still seemed a strange thing for him to be doing given that down below the Wallabies were losing, and Brad Barritt was bossing the midfield. Only a few weeks earlier Giteau had been picked as the player of the year in France, after a season in which he had been instrumental in Toulon’s twin victories in the Top 14 and the Heineken Cup. But the Australian Rugby Union had a longstanding policy that it would not pick players based overseas. Which was why Giteau was stuck making small talk last November in the corporate box.
“I was having a few beers,” Giteau says. “It had been maybe my third year not playing international rugby so it was normal for me, just like going to any football game and watching it as a supporter, that’s where my mindset was at. I just went to watch the boys, the atmosphere and see the game on the other side of the fence.” Giteau quit when Robbie Deans left him out of the squad for the 2011 World Cup. Soon afterwards he moved to France which meant, as he said at the time, that he had “brought a curtain down on my chances of ever playing for my country again”. So at Twickenham last autumn he wasn’t thinking about making a comeback. “No, no, not when I was having a few beers, it never crossed my mind.”
Everything changed in April when the ARU decided that exiles should be eligible, so long as they had won at least 60 international caps and had put in at least seven years’ service in Super Rugby before they moved. Giteau wasn’t the only player in line: there was also Drew Mitchell, his great mate at Toulon, and George Smith, who was playing with Lyon. Even so, the new policy soon became known as the “Giteau rule”. And soon enough Giteau was back. He played his first Test in four years against South Africa in July, started Australia’s first match of the World Cup, against Fiji, and will surely feature again this weekend, against England, the same opposition whom he made his debut against way in 2002.
“I don’t really know how the rules changed for us really, I’m just grateful that they did get changed,” Giteau says. The head coach, Michael Cheika, had a hand in it. Giteau mentions his team-mate Steffon Armitage, cast out of England’s squad because of their own restrictions on overseas players. “He’s made it pretty clear he wants to be in the England team. Everyone wants to play for their country, so it doesn’t matter whether it’s rugby, cricket, everyone wants to play for their country.” But Armitage, once he moved, was not given another shot.
Giteau was, and is grateful for it. “When you’re playing consistently I think you take it for granted – it’s a shocking thing to take it for granted, playing for your country. But now that I’ve been given a second chance, just little things, like getting your kit again, I felt like I was 19 when I first came in again. I certainly take nothing for granted now.” Not even his place in the team. “Michael’s created that kind of competition and intensity at training where no one really knows where they stand, so you’ve got to perform well at training to get picked.” There are, Giteau says, “so many great players in my position that I’m competing against, that alone is hard enough. I’m just trying to do that and get selected.”
The edge Giteau has over most of those other players, such as Matt Toomua, is his experience, especially in big matches. Giteau was part of the Wallabies’ squad that reached the final in 2003. “For me it all happened really fast,” he says. “And before I knew it I was selected for a couple of the easier games, then on the bench for the biggie games. So it seemed like really easy, playing 10 minutes here and there, and then all of a sudden we were in the final. While I was devastated losing it I thought: ‘I’ll get the opportunity at the next World Cup,’ but it doesn’t happen that easy.”
This is one lesson Giteau is trying to pass on to his team-mates. “It’s such a tough competition and that’s the one thing that I’ve learned, that you’ve got to cherish every game and play every game like it’s a World Cup final.” In 2007 he was part of the Australia team that lost to England in the quarter-finals. “I just remember it being a sunny day, a good day to play football and we maybe tried to play too much. We were outplayed that game, we were taught a lesson in tactics by that goal‑kicker, I can’t remember his name.” The joke at the expense of another great mate from Toulon, Jonny Wilkinson.
Giteau says he learned a lot from England’s former fly-half in the time they spent playing together. He’s called Wilkinson a few times in the past few days “but he won’t answer my call this week, maybe next week”. If Australia win, Giteau says, he plans to make his mate “feel really guilty” about it.
