Queensland Reds exiles still worth a second look

Now that Queensland and Australian rugby has severed all links with the so-called Picone Three, they should invite them back.

Izack Rodda would have expected to walk back into the Wallabies next year. Picture: Stuart Walmsley

Now that Queensland and Australian rugby have severed all links with the so-called Picone Three: Izack Rodda, Harry Hockings and Isaac Lucas, and effectively left them with no choice but to go overseas, they should do the only sensible thing under the circumstances. Invite them back again.

That, at least, is the opinion of veteran sports agent Sam Halvorsen, the former manager of George Gregan, Ricky Ponting and Mitchell Johnson. Like many in the Australian rugby family, he has looked on in bewilderment as the three Queensland Reds players, all managed by Anthony Picone, took a decision to put certain money ahead of the jersey — both maroon and gold — and decided not to accept the 60 per cent pay cut negotiated between the Rugby Union Players Association and Rugby Australia.

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That in turn caused the Reds to stand the three down and when the players last Friday announced they were walking away from the Queensland team, they were then cut loose by interim RA chief executive Rob Clarke.

“If they wish to go overseas, then that is their decision,” Clarke said on Saturday. “There is no avenue open to them in Australia at this time. We all have to face the consequences of our decisions in life, don’t we? I’m not going to speak on behalf of those players, they can speak for themselves. My job is to protect the game … and to build a foundation for the future.”

And that, effectively, was that.

Except that everyone who knows the three players speaks extremely highly of them and believes they have all been badly advised. If they made their decision thinking they would access the reliable money on offer in England or Japan and then return to Australia in a year or two to pick up their Wallabies career, in the case of Rodda, or launch themselves into Test football with the aim of being selected for the 2023 World Cup in France, then they may have badly miscalculated.

Rodda is 23, Lucas and Hockings 21, old enough to sign legal documents but young enough not to take on board the full ramifications of their actions.

In a way, Halvorsen’s advice comes a little late. Since it became clear that the three players, alone of the 192 rugby professionals in Australia, had not agreed to the pay cut some three weeks ago, everyone from Wallabies coach Dave Rennie down has spoken to them, trying to talk them down from the ledge. Coaches Brad Thorn, Jason Gilmore, Daniel Heenan tried their luck, so too QRU CEO David Hanham.

All presumably warned them of the huge controversy into which they were walking. Perhaps the players thought it was all a bit overdramatic.

Even when Queensland fans began to turn on them savagely on the internet, they still were seemingly taken by surprise. But now they’ve had a couple of days to reflect on their actions and they would be well aware that every warning they were given was real. Which brings us to Halvorsen.

“They don’t have a contract now and if they have not signed with any other club then they are free agents,” Halvorsen told The Australian. “So Queensland should make an approach, in my opinion. That’s what I would do. Go and start again. Do you want to reconsider? Those players, after their bad press, they were painted into a corner. Give them a chance. Young blokes make mistakes.”

The question is, as Halvorsen indicated, whether they have signed a letter of intent. Not Rodda, perhaps, because he is being shopped around England with little apparent success. But almost certainly Lucas and Hockings have, with a Japanese club. Perhaps it might be worthwhile for World Rugby to have a quiet look at whatever it is they have signed. It is, after all, against World Rugby legislation for any person or club to induce a player to break a contract with an existing club.

Still, Reds captain Liam Wright announced the replacement players that have been brought in to replace the trio, former Ipswich Grammar halfback Kalani Thomas, Australian Schools captain and outside centre Josh Flook, Queensland Schoolboy player of the year Mac Grealy and Brothers lock Ryan Smith.