Spooner is left with few options

RUGBY: Proof, if it were needed, that in the professional rugby game the players are ultimately pieces of meat has been vividly provided by the recent case of Nathan Spooner. At the end of this month the twice-capped former Wallaby outhalf will find himself out of contract with Leinster and facing an uncertain future after a bitter parting of the ways with his fellow Australian Matt Williams.

Player and coach are still at loggerheads over the circumstances surrounding the arrival of Argentinian outhalf Felipe Contepomi and Spooner's release.

Williams admits that Spooner will probably "never talk to me again", but maintains that Contepomi's agent approached him only on Tuesday of last week, and that as of last Friday the deal with the Puma outhalf had not been signed.

However, Williams also concedes that contact had been made before then, but that the Argentinian didn't want to divert his attentions from Bristol's relegation fight, "as the club had been very good to him, and that was very honourable of him (Contepomi)".

Spooner, for his part, believes Williams was "hedging his bets all along in case Contepomi didn't come through. I think he could have told me a little earlier; that's the only issue I have. The IRFU and people like Ken Ging and John Hussey have been very good to us, and I've had a great two years in Ireland - which, unfortunately, has ended very unpleasantly."

Another bone of contention is what exactly was said when the coach met Spooner and his wife, Eloise, in Old Belvedere last Friday after Spooner had been tipped off by his agent of a story in the Bristol media that Leinster were negotiating with Contepomi.

Spooner claims Williams said it was "out of my hands" and that the decision had been made by the IRFU contracts committee.

"Eloise asked him (Williams) three times if it was his decision and he wouldn't say it was. I'm glad to see he's since admitted that it was his decision."

Williams, in turn, maintains that it was the IRFU's decision insofar as he had sought contracts for both Contepomi and Spooner, but that "not unreasonably" the union didn't sanction contracts for both players and that the preference for Contepomi had been the coach's.

"It was a hard decision, it's left me sick to my stomach, but it was the right decision for Leinster."

A curious aside to this is the apparent reluctance to risk even a one-year extension of Spooner's contract when set against the eye-opening, four-year deal agreed with Contepomi. No doubt the Argentinian's eagerness to complete the next four years of his medical studies in Ireland reduced his asking price in return for an extended contract, but very few, if any, Irish players have four-year contracts and possibly only Brian O'Driscoll would be granted one.

To the suggestion that the decision means Leinster have abjured their responsibility to help produce an outhalf until the 2007 World Cup, never mind this year's event, Williams points to the lack of outhalves in the system.

"Leinster's record in producing internationals cannot be criticised and the arrival of a world-class Test flyhalf will further help the players in the other 14 positions."

Be that as it may, most of Spooner's team-mates - and not just others who are disillusioned - feel he was treated shabbily.

There is also the implication that he's not the same player since a second shoulder reconstruction, but Spooner vehemently rejects this.

"The shoulder is fine. It's never going to be 100 per cent again, but I was back playing last November after six months, the standard period of recovery, and the surgeon said it was great, the doctor, Arthur Tanner, said it was good, and the physio, Frances Moran, said it was good. It's as solid as a rock and I don't think I'm avoiding tackles with it at all."

In any event, Spooner and his agent (Nick Taylor) have little time and few options to find him alternative employment. English Premiership qualifications stipulate that if a player does not have a European passport he has to have played Test rugby in the preceding 18 months, which Spooner obviously hasn't as he's been with Leinster for two years. So his agent is in touch with counterparts in France.

"After that Italy might be an option, but otherwise we might have to head back to Australia, and if there's nothing doing there, then I have to face the possibility that I might have to retire."

Having abandoned legal studies two years into his professional rugby career, and with only a small business supplying nutritional supplements back in Australia, it's an unpalatable thought.

But as a 27-year-old who four years ago was playing Super 12 and for the Wallabies, and only last season was rightly hailed as Leinster's best outhalf since Paul Dean in the mid-1980s, it surely won't come to that, will it?