Hail the blueprint for the new rugby man

GOD has been good to John Eales, it seems. Not only as Eales granted his own share of sporting ability, but yours, mine and a few more people's besides. You can well imagine him at school. You know the sort. There was always one in the class. Good at every game they deigned to play.

Matt Doyle, the former Irish tennis coach, always believed that youngsters should be a Jack of all sports as a means to becoming a master of one. Eales is the perfect example.

Eales was both a handy batsmen and bowler in his cricketing days at school, and a track runner of some repute, which might partially explain the unusually adhesive handling ability for a man of 6' 8" and his magnificent agility and running ability in open play.

Within a year of his fledgling international career, the then 21-year-old had a World Cup winner's medal in his pocket and universal acclaim as a lock with no peers - to which is now often added the sobriquet "best forward in the world". Coach Bob Dwyer was moved to say of Eales that he was "close to being the most significant person in world rugby".

The epitome of a modern second-row forward - ie. a fourth back-row forward - he can even kick goals as well. As Bob Templeton, Australia's assistant coach at the World Cup two years ago, put it: "Sickening, isn't it? Here's a bloke who can run, jump, catch, pass, tackle and kick goals - and he's still only 24."

Eales came to the Wallabies' current European tour as the leading scorer in the recent Super 12 series, with 170 points for Queensland from three tries, 25 conversions and 35 penalties.

With anybody else it would almost make you angry. But there isn't even a hint of arrogance or smugness about the unassuming 26-year-old who has assumed the Australian captaincy in this difficult, transitional era for the Wallabies.

"Eagles" they call him, appropriately enough for such a soaring talent who works as a promotions manager with Qantas Airways. Despite the handle, it has always been his nature to keep his feet on the ground.

Against Scotland a fortnight ago, he became Australia's most capped lock - another personal landmark. "It's great to get the recognition. It's not the reason you do it. You set your own goals as you go along. They're probably the most important ones - if you can achieve them. But it's nice to be recognised."

At 6' 8", wearing the Wallabies' green tracksuit bottoms and bright yellow tracksuit top in a packed foyer in the Burlington Hotel at lunchtime, it is hard not to be recognised. Everyone looks, some stare, but he seems oblivious to it - or just used to it.

It's Tuesday, the foulest day of the year, and though you wouldn't have put the cat out, let alone the players of Leinster and Australia later that evening, Eales has just showered and lunched after a two-hour training session at Monkstown that morning. Hardy stuff.

"It's pretty warm back there, about 36 degrees," says Eales of his native Brisbane. "It's usually pretty warm in Brisbane through to about March, or even the end of April, so we have to play in pretty hot temperatures."

The weather is one of the disadvantages of being an Australian rugby tourist then, not that Eales is inclined to complain about that or anything else. He's enjoyed the experience of two months on the road in Italy, Scotland and Ireland, with Wales to come. The bonding process of the squad has been good, and if he has not always been happy with the performances, then "having eight from eight is very satisfying".

Based on the formbook, nine from nine would seem a foregone conclusion come 4.30 or thereabouts today, but Eales isn't having that. "We're really looking forward to it, but we know the Irish are going to be pretty fired up. They're a very good side, they're a lot better than we saw against Western Samoa last week."

Does his advocacy of Ireland's chances not have a whiff of diplomacy, though?

"Naw, naw. As soon as we start thinking different we're a long way towards getting beaten. I think Ireland just looked like a team that hadn't played together for a while," he says. (With eight changes, the same may apply this afternoon - but never mind).

Western Samoa had the advantage of being on tour, which is something the Australians have as well, and they're bound to have come on from a singularly uninspiring 29-19 win over Scotland a fortnight ago.

Eales expresses, albeit in his own mild way, the Australians' simmering disappointment that a fixture with England was not included in the tour schedule. Not alone are the English the one Home Union team with whom they have a score to settle, dating back to last year's World Cup quarter-final, but it would mean this afternoon's contest would be the second leg of a `Grand Slam'.

As it is, the Irish game has to be taken on its own merits. Hence, perhaps, the risk of complacency. But Eales, as one of just three Australian survivors from their great escape of the Lansdowne Road World Cup quarter-final in 1991, appreciates better than most Ireland's almost perverse ability to occasionally stand logic on its head.

Ask him for his highlights from that World Cup and Michael Lynagh's late try in that quarter-final is the first to spring to mind. "It could all have just turned around if we hadn't scored that try in the last couple of minutes."

VIRTUALLY everything the amiable and easy-going Eales recalls from that World Cup comes with the rider "fortunate" or "lucky". Emerging through the Queensland state system, at the end of a couple of prodigious seasons on the `colts' team he was "fortunate" that the incumbent provincial lock, Bill Campbell, had just retired.

Equally, he was "fortunate" that a second-row Australian partnership with the tighter, more old-fashioned Rod McCall did not oblige him to alter his own looser style. He was also "fortunate" that he had Dwyer, Templeton and so many senior players to give him guidance and just plain "lucky" that his emergence coincided with the golden year of Australian rugby.

There's no doubt he got the breaks, but even so you make your own luck in this game. Despite being a rookie, Eales played in all six of Australia's games and by common consent was the lock of the tournament.

This reporter recalls the day in the Cardiff Arms Park when Eales and company routed the Welsh out of touch so much that the home side won only two line-outs all day.

Long before the game's lawmakers emasculated the line-outs by permitting "lifting', Eales had already obliged the opposition not to kick to touch. Invariably it meant Eales would win the ensuing throw-in.

Aside from making the line-out possibly even more boring and predictable than the scrums, the latest law changes have also succeeded in preventing Eales and similar line-out monoliths from competing on the opposition throw. He estimates the swing has gone from "about 70 per cent to almost 90 per cent".

Like the rest of us, he misses that competitive edge. "I certainly enjoyed the contest in the line-out," he admits, significantly using the past tense. "But for me I'd like to think that's just one part of the game. It's still very important to have some very solid line-out players in your team. It probably just emphasises the other things that guys have to be able to do.

It certainly has emphasised the many things he can do. He is a strong runner, formidable defensive player (if not, by his own admission, "the biggest hitter in the world") and the Wallabies' third-choice place-kicker on this tour. With Queensland, he inherited that particular job from Michael Lynagh.

"Someone had to do it and the coach told me to do it, so... He knew I could kick a bit from my school days and I still did a bit in practice. So it just took off again from there. Once I knew I had to do it I practiced a lot. I quite enjoy it and I'm also very happy not to do it. But if I have to do it, I don't mind."

"We need multi-purpose players in the sense that they can play in different circumstances and perform well," says Australian coach Greg Smith. "John Eales is a player who, if you're picking a world XV, he'd be one of the players from our squad that would definitely be in it."

With Eales's abilities undimmed by his absence for 14 months during 1992-93 with a shoulder injury, he regained his former lustre and was voted Australia's player of the tournament in their otherwise disappointing 1995 World Cup. During that tournament he landed four kicks out of four as an emergency place-kicker against Romania.

It's got tougher since, the low point being the opening 43-6 defeat in the Tri Nations to the All Blacks. He accepts that the All Blacks are a great side, and have inherited their mantle of the early 90s as the pacesetters of the game. With South Africa a close second Australia are in the third tier, somewhere alongside England and France.

Eales has had no problems coping with Australia's slide from the top. At his most effusive when discussing this Australian squad - average age 25 - he points to improving results despite the absence through injury at various points this year of eight established players.

Smith clearly envisages Eales as the team's captain up to and including the 1999 World Cup at least. Although Willie John McBride and Bill Beaumont, amongst others, made a decent fist of captaincy from the second-row, it doesn't seem the ideal perspective from which to captain a side.

If the truth be told Eales comes across as almost too nice, missing the requisite nastiness to compete in the modern-day jungle warfare that is international forward play, never mind captain the side.

Team-mates reputedly lampoon him for his politeness, the captain's orders coming more in the form of apologetic requests. In Nick Farr-Jones and Michael Lynagh, he has a couple of tough acts to follow. "They were great players and great leaders themselves. From my point of view, I've got to make sure that I still play well myself and then just move on from there," he says.

"I think everyone is different and as soon as you try to be someone else then you're not going to be natural and that's not why you were put in the position in the first place."

He's not the most animated. "No, not all the time. I suppose I can be if I need to be."

One last question then John? How does it feel when you read the personal accolades; such as the world's best lock, or world's best forward. "You feel flattered, but it doesn't mean anything if you don't keep performing. At the end of the day that means nothing to the team if I can't go out and play in the next game.

And that's John Eales for you. A great player, doing it all for the team, as foot soldier or as captain.