Brian O’Driscoll and Ronan O’Gara were both nearing their 27th birthdays when they explored their options in France. Though they were just two years older than Jack Crowley is now, their circumstances were materially different. O’Gara and O’Driscoll were established Test players who had both played for the Lions by then. Entering the final year of their IRFU contracts, they were ripe for the market.
Neither of them really wanted to leave Ireland, but they both felt it would be foolish to submit to that feeling without testing it. In O’Driscoll’s case, he was recovering from shoulder surgery and Leinster were still a basket case. Michael Cheika had just been appointed as their fourth coach in four years.
“I tell him that Leinster have been a shambles for two years,” wrote O’Driscoll in his autobiography, “and that we’ve got no meaningful future unless something drastic happens”.
The gap between club and international rugby is widening - here's why it matters
Crowley might identify with elements of that feeling.
O’Driscoll and O’Gara both wanted to pursue their scoping exercise discreetly, although O’Driscoll was happy for some whispers to float on the wind. As he discovered, whisper-management is like herding cats. His meeting with Toulouse was conducted behind a veil of secrecy; Biarritz, however, turned it into a banquet for gawpers.
“The plan is, I go to France and sit in the stand at Stade Aguilera when Biarritz host Stade Francais,” wrote O’Driscoll. “If somebody takes a photograph, all well and good. Word will get around. Speculation will follow. The union will get the message that I wasn’t there for the good of my health without me having to spell it out in capital letters.”
In the event, O’Driscoll was invited to a pre-match corporate lunch attended by about 200 guests, at which the club president announced O’Driscoll’s presence, invited him to be photographed alongside the French championship trophy and then insisted that he perform a ceremonial kick-off wearing a Biarritz T-shirt, just in case nobody had noticed. The game was live on French TV and, according to O’Driscoll, the IRFU took “a dim view” of the whole circus.
The IRFU’s bottom line, though, was that they didn’t believe O’Driscoll would jump.
O’Gara’s long-distance courtship with Stade Francais had been going on by phone for a year before he met the club president, Max Guazzini, for dinner in Paris. It was the Thursday night before Ireland played France in the 2004 Six Nations. Guazzini insisted on privacy, which suited all parties. Nothing leaked out at the time.
O’Gara said he didn’t use the overtures from Stade as leverage in his contract negotiations with the IRFU, but he had a ballpark idea of what their offer would be, and he wasn’t prepared to accept the IRFU playing fast and loose with his market value. In the event, they didn’t.
In their hearts, O’Gara and O’Driscoll didn’t want to leave, and, ultimately, that may be Crowley’s position too. Did that weaken their hand in negotiations with the IRFU? Not so much that it mattered in the end.
Crowley’s circumstances are different, though. By 2004, O’Gara was on top in his duel with David Humphreys, who was heading for his 33rd birthday. Paddy Wallace still hadn’t been capped. Effectively, there was no third-choice outhalf. O’Gara was so consumed by Munster’s pursuit of the Heineken Cup that he had no desire to abandon that quest, but the IRFU also knew that O’Gara would be Ireland’s outhalf for the next World Cup and beyond. Everyone’s needs coalesced.
In Crowley’s case, the €600,000 reportedly on offer from Leicester is far greater than the contract on the table from Munster and the IRFU. He has not been offered a central contract and there is no prospect of a sugar daddy emerging from the shadows to bump up the numbers.
How much leverage does Crowley have? Five months ago, he was Ireland’s first-choice Test outhalf, and now he’s not. In his four starts for Ireland during the Six Nations, Sam Prendergast didn’t do enough to suggest that the pecking order is set in stone, and in the game time afforded to Crowley he didn’t do enough to suggest that their preference for Prendergast was a gross error of judgment.
The duel between O’Gara and Humphreys was hot and heavy for three or four seasons, and then it fizzled out; with O’Gara and Johnny Sexton the argument didn’t last quite that long. But in both of those cases there was a significant age gap between the protagonists – five years and nine years. Crowley is just three years older than Prendergast and they both have their best days ahead of them.
In a situation like this over a decade ago, Sexton didn’t blink. The IRFU offered him an extra five grand a year with the same match bonuses, or an extra €25,000 a year, with no match bonuses. Also, it was only a two-year deal when Sexton was looking for at least three years and preferably four. He knew what the highest-paid players were getting and the IRFU weren’t prepared to put him in that bracket.
“Was I annoyed? Yes. They were taking the piss,” wrote Sexton in his autobiography. “But was I surprised? Not really. The message they were sending me was: you’re a home bird, you’ll never leave. Or maybe it was: go ahead and leave. We’ll gladly let someone else pay your salary for a while.”
The offer on the table from Racing 92 was reportedly in excess of €700,000. He took it. Sexton’s overseas sabbatical in Paris only lasted two years but during that time he wasn’t excluded from the Irish squad. As the Ireland 10, Sexton was miles ahead of the alternatives. If Crowley leaves the IRFU won’t make that exception for him.
Everyone’s career has a different trajectory. Crowley hasn’t achieved as much at 25 as O’Gara and Sexton had done. Sexton had already won a Heineken Cup with Leinster; O’Gara had led Munster to two finals. But the Munster squad Crowley is part of bears no comparison to the players and leaders that O’Gara and Sexton were surrounded by.
He needs to improve. There is room for growth. Is that more likely in a struggling Munster set-up or in a thriving Leicester team, but without Test rugby? Going abroad didn’t improve Sexton. On the other hand, Crowley has the chance to double his wages and play on a winning team.
Do the IRFU think he will leave? They never do.
