Owen Farrell: boring leader of the bored

Owen Farrell, the England rugby captain, is in trouble as World Rugby has challenged the decision which saw his red card rescinded. The appeal puts his place in the forthcoming World Cup squad in jeopardy and a feeding frenzy of criticism has engulfed Farrell. But where does he sit in the tradition of rugby troublemakers?

Will Carling, trapped as he was between negotiating the advent of the professional era, dotting down between the Royal posts and personifying a certain sort of public school, officer class Englishman, often found himself migrating from the sports pages to the main book. Carling was also, briefly, stripped of his role after condemning the RFU as “57 old farts” – just before a World Cup.

Lawrence Dallaglio, who still bobs to the surface of the gutter press from time to time, went one further. He lost the captaincy after a tabloid sting during which he confessed to being a drug dealer. Apoplexy at Ampleforth, temper at Twickers.

Martin Johnson was often pilloried for what one might euphemistically describe as his robust approach to the art of the tight five forward. Not one step back, several ahead. Often straight over the prone body of an unfortunate opponent.

What all three had in common though was that they were serial winners. Carling announced himself by leading England to a romping victory over Australia. He went on to back-to-back Grand Slams in 1991 and 1992, a first win over Wales at Cardiff in over 30 years, a third slam in 1995 and a World Cup final England should really have sealed. England went zero to hero and it was forbidden for anyone else to win at Twickenham.

Johnson led the British Lions to a series victory over the mighty Springboks in South Africa. Selected, as tour leader Ian McGeechan later said, for being the only man the Boks would actually have to look up to. More followed, of course. A Grand Slam sealed in emphatic fashion in Dublin in 2003, with a World Cup following later that same year, wins at home and, crucially, away over all the southern hemisphere giants.

Johnson was “an orc”, commanding “a Dad’s Army” of the biggest, nastiest sons of bitches to form a scrum since, well, Will Carling’s pack had gone toe-to-toe with Les Bleus in a ferocious World Cup quarter in Paris.

They were English and they were winners. And, by implication, that meant they were “arrogant,” “overrated,” and “filthy” and their captains were their embodiment.

Even at home, the tabloids, piqued perhaps by the intrusion of rugby on football’s back page hegemony did stings and the salacious. The broadsheets sniffed at Johnson’s physicality and his tendency gloweringly to say “next stupid question” at press conferences.

Which brings us to Owen “Faz” Farrell of Saracens, England and the Lions. In deep, deep trouble for his bad habit of high shot, no arm tackles in an era when brain injury is to the fore. His latest, against Wales in a World Cup warm-up, went like a traffic light from yellow to red and then back again to green. At which point World Rugby intervened and the whole cycle is on again while Farrell sat at red again and waited out the game in Dublin this weekend.

High shots, of course, divide. They divide rugby into those who say it’s dangerous and even cowardly. Get down round those pumping knees and make your point from there and not by decapitation.

They divide the hemispheres too. Way down south, they allow for a margin of forgiveness. It’s no surprise three Australians formed the panel that initially cleared Farrell. It irritates the Pacific Islanders whose “headhunter” rep sees their suspensions and bans markedly more severe than nations who can turn up to disciplinary panels with a leading KC.

They divide the Progressive Rugby brain trauma campaigners from those who claim that the essence of the game is physical and its essential nature and dynamics make unintentional head contact inevitable. It’s a man’s game where we dive for tries, not penalties. And they divide officials who lurch from knee-jerk red cards to inexplicable leniency.

But add Owen Farrell and you get division squared. Here’s a fact. He’s not liked. His own father, the rugby league great and Ireland coach, Andy Farrell has described the character assassination accompanying his son’s latest brush with the rugby law as a “disgusting circus”.

I’ve never met the man myself. I’ve spoken to people in the game who have and know him well and their ample loyalty and praise seem genuine enough. But it’s unarguable that Farrell attracts a level of opprobrium that has moved beyond sporting critique and into the personal, the more odd because he enjoys little to no media profile beyond his 80 minutes on the field. He throws no dwarves, he dates no models, and his single espoused cause is a blameless support of Joining Jack, a muscular dystrophy charity.

It’s undoubtedly the case that he’s not a media natural. He smoulders away charmlessly at post-match interviews and his Wigan tones can carry the NCO aggression that has irked refs and undermines one of his principal duties as captain in managing them.

There has been some suggestion that his very “northernness” prickles the West Stand sensibilities of Twickenham. Even teammate Danny Care, a Yorkshireman, has described him as ‘the Wigan foghorn’ in the team environment and there are certainly those who think his strength of personality and tight relations with a northern coaching team give him overmighty influence and too central a place.

True or not, he is universally acknowledged as a “warrior” and by players and coaches as a “great leader”. The former is an ambiguous compliment for a man who plays the considered, play-making position of fly-half and whose captaincy of both Saracens and England demands a cool head.  

It also manifests in his recidivist tendency to the hyper-aggressive tackle for which he has been suspended on numerous occasions. Whatever the admirable Kevin Sinfield, his coach with England and former rugby league man might try to allege in his defence, this reputation is not a figment of the media imagination. It’s an observable fact. I saw at close hand “the one that got away” against Andre “the giant” Esterhuizen in a last-gasp win over SA and it would have stopped a runaway Kruger Park elephant. Illegally.

The fact that he is once again the story – and not for leading his side to a famous victory – the fact that his travails have left England distracted and him out of the side do not mitigate in favour of great leadership.

This is a shame because he is a very fine player. He has been, down the years, on occasion superlative and for great lengths of time, consistently excellent. There is simply no second-guessing that fact. He was central to a famous to-the-wire Lions series in New Zealand. In the early days of Eddie Jones a pivotal figure in Slams and championships also. His smirking face down of the haka in a crushing defeat of the All Blacks at the last World Cup was perhaps a zenith and his form for Saracens in last year’s Premiership beyond praise.

Ah. Saracens. For a spell perennial champions of England and Europe – and in a style mischaracterised as the rugby equivalent of 1-0 to the Arsenal – they got caught doing what everyone had long suspected and rigged the Premiership salary cap. How else could they keep turning out squad after squad of international calibre when everyone else lost their best to the call of their country? Demotion followed. And accepted defiantly, grudgingly and unrepentantly.

Guilt by association. Worse because the return to glory – led magnificently by Farrell – has coincided with a dip in his international form. His normally metronomic kicking went awry. England, which lost first in the end-of era chaos of Eddie Jones then the retro kickchase of Steve Borthwick (Saracens and the north), have lost shape and direction. If Carling and Johnson were the personification of victory, Farrell, no longer is. His characterisation is now the boring leader of the bored. Worse, it’s often a boring defeat. Sing when we’re winning.

Worse still, he is perceived as bed-blocking. He can claim no longer to be either best 10 or best 12. Impish boy prince Marcus Smith can make magic happen better. Yet he cannot shake Farrell who is often moved to 12, denying Smith the muscular gain breaker outside him on whom his game thrives. Smith struggles with game management but that cannot be said of the excellent George Ford, returning from long-term injury, and who combines the best of Smith and Farrell. He gets his chance on Saturday.

Farrell is responsible for little of this and to that extent, his father is right about the circus. The schadenfreude is deeply unpleasant. But as England is forced, perhaps fortuitously, to look now for Plan B and Plan C, for perhaps the first time Farrell faces being the problem and not the solution.  

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