Gareth Thomas strongly linked to crusaders...

toomevara

It seems that former Welsh union captain Gareth Thomas is to cross codes to the Crusaders, would be a big coup if it happens....Be a big ask at 35 though.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/rugby_league/super_league/celtic_crusaders/8518962.stm

WakeyTyke

Afraid this is has all the hallmarks of being a publicity stunt, on par with Dwain Chambers.

Can't really see what he will bring to the Crusaders other than short-term media exposure and a chunk of their salary cap eaten up.

AdeT

WakeyTyke wrote: »

Afraid this is has all the hallmarks of being a publicity stunt, on par with Dwain Chambers.

Can't really see what he will bring to the Crusaders other than short-term media exposure and a chunk of their salary cap eaten up.

I agree that it's predominantly a publicity stunt.

He's old but Crusaders might get a season or two out of him. He's an aggressive player and his ability to play anywhere in the backs (besides 9&10) in Union says to me that he might a well rounded skill set suited to the 13 a-side game.

If they were to sign him, get a load of fans in the door for a season, they can then work towards keeping those fans. If he were to enjoy his time in RL, he's a very good brand advocate to have in Wales.

Lots of Ifs but Crusaders have to make a couple of bold calls over the coming year or two in order to really make a mark on the Welsh mindset

thomond2006

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport2/hi/rugby_league/super_league/celtic_crusaders/8518962.stm

amacachi

I dunno, could be a lot of money for little return. Can't imagine him giving a great return at his age.

toomevara

Done deal, apparently...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2010/mar/05/gareth-thomas-crusaders-cardiff-blues

WakeyTyke

Penciled in to play in their next home match against the Dragons on March 19th.

Will be interesting to see what position he plays, though logic would point to full-back, but wherever he plays it is certain that Walters will plan around exploiting his inexperience.

toomevara

Some interesting gossip doing the rounds that Andy 'Buggy-Boy' Powell may be considering a move to Crusaders.

amacachi

toomevara wrote: »

Some interesting gossip doing the rounds that Andy 'Buggy-Boy' Powell may be considering a move to Crusaders.

Is Union in Wales completely broke or are Crusaders planning on bankrupting themselves? Can't see any other possibilities tbh.

Stev_o

Powell would do well on the field and thats about it.

amacachi

Stev_o wrote: »

Powell would do well on the field and thats about it.

Where the hell have you been?

WakeyTyke

According to his Wikipedia entry,

"Powell has a unusual style of number 8 play. He is known for his high body position going into contact, always looking for the offload which is suited to Wales' style of attacking play. He has come in for harsh criticism of this lately however, as this high body position can often lead to turnovers, and many believe that he tries to take on too much responsibility himself with ball in hands."

Sounds like he could do well in RL with a good coach like Noble, though I can't express an opinion as I don't follow the 'kick and clap' game.

toomevara

WakeyTyke wrote: »

Sounds like he could do well in RL with a good coach like Noble, though I can't express an opinion as I don't follow the 'kick and clap' game.

Terrible hands, and loses the ball in contact alot. Also very one dimensional. All tolerable enough in the 15 man code, but I reckon he'd really struggle in League.

Stev_o

amacachi wrote: »

Where the hell have you been?

Christ i wonder that myself Dont worry iv still been watching SL and in particular Wigan but thats for another thread !

toomevara

Good interview on Boots'n'All with Thomas this week. Certainly seems up for the challenge. Here's hoping it works out.

Stev_o

Obviously the big question will be on his fitness, he ll be required to make 15th plus tackles and be expected to either make good yards at centre or a lot of touches at FB. Now how many RU backs that you know of have made 15 plus tackles in a match plus getting through a lot of ball carrying.

The second big ask will be the mental side, this is a completely different ball game he needs to know what his team will be doing 4 sets ahead and thus whether he should go for the power play or steady it on. More then likely we ll see him force the balls carelessly in his first few matches. Should be interesting experiment but i really won't be expecting much from him, if it had of been Shanklin or Roberts (who imo badly needs to follow Gibbss path and get into League where he can learn how to get the hard yards plus improving his all around awareness and then go back to Union) it would of been a huge huge signing.

amacachi

Stev_o wrote: »

Obviously the big question will be on his fitness, he ll be required to make 15th plus tackles and be expected to either make good yards at centre or a lot of touches at FB. Now how many RU backs that you know of have made 15 plus tackles in a match plus getting through a lot of ball carrying.

The second big ask will be the mental side, this is a completely different ball game he needs to know what his team will be doing 4 sets ahead and thus whether he should go for the power play or steady it on. More then likely we ll see him force the balls carelessly in his first few matches. Should be interesting experiment but i really won't be expecting much from him, if it had of been Shanklin or Roberts (who imo badly needs to follow Gibbss path and get into League where he can learn how to get the hard yards plus improving his all around awareness and then go back to Union) it would of been a huge huge signing.

That more or less sums up what I would expect from him. Even on Boots n All in training he looked like a Union player, tackling low, prepared to go to ground easily.
I'm not expecting much from him but I am hoping for it to an extent, great publicity. Only thing is if he does come in and run in a load of tries everyone will think League is easy. :pac:

toomevara

He's starting this weekends game...Crusaders reckon they'll double their gate on his appearance alone...fascinating prospect and Sky are showing it.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/rugby_league/super_league/celtic_crusaders/8565870.stm

couerdelion

Anyone see how he went?

I switched Sky on after the game and heard that he had got a debut of 30 mins but they never said how he went.

amacachi

couerdelion wrote: »

Anyone see how he went?

I switched Sky on after the game and heard that he had got a debut of 30 mins but they never said how he went.

Off the top of my head he touched the ball 4 times I think, one pass and tackled 3 times. 2 of the times he was tackled he put his head down and got clattered, leading to his substitution.

Stev_o

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aEKB8zx142E

That's a sure way to get your self injured for a whole season. He has to have the confidence that he can ride those tackles and not try bury his head.

toomevara

Stev_o wrote: »

That's a sure way to get your self injured for a whole season. He has to have the confidence that he can ride those tackles and not try bury his head.

He was interviewed on the super league show on Sunday night and definitely seems to have taken that on board...tough learning method though! Interestingly Iestyn Harris was on the show too and said that Thomas exhibits the classic difficulties that all union players have, the tendency to go low into a tackle and to go to ground too soon rather than try make every possible inch in the tackle, because still subconciously worried about ball retention, feeding it back etc..

couerdelion

It's a difficult transition to make especially as Harris has said in regards to RU players looking to retain ball and go to ground quickly. I sometmes have the same problem when I go back to playing union and try to make every inch in a tackle before laying it back sometimes too late.

I really do hope he makes a success of the transition to League and has a fruitful couple of years.

Stev_o

According to Alfie in todays Times it looks like the Castleford crowd are up to their usual pikey behaviour, this time the crowd has been quoted to been shouting slurs about Thomas's sexuality and the like. Not a club that can hold itself up in high regard.

toomevara

Really interesting article. Here it is in full for anyone who's interested. As for the Cas incident, appalling and for me as unacceptable as racist chanting. I hope Cas/ the RFL are made aware of this and take action to prevent a repetition and against the knuckle draggers who think its acceptable....

Gareth Thomas in a Better Place

Paul Kimmage.

The most famous rugby player in Britain arrives for the interview with his hands in his pockets and a blue hooded tracksuit pulled tightly over his head. It’s 8.15 on an icy Wednesday morning in Wrexham and Gareth “Alfie” Thomas has a training session scheduled for 10.

“We’ve met before,” I smile by way of introduction.

“Have we?” he replies, surprised.

“I asked you about your tattoos but you wouldn’t tell me.”

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“And I won’t tell you now,” he smiles.

“You did tell me something Scott Johnson [a former member of the Wales coaching team] once said about your life.”

“About the rollercoaster.”

“That’s it. He said, ‘If you paid to go on a rollercoaster, Alfie, and it went in a straight line, you’d want your money back, wouldn’t you? Now take a look at your life — it’s money well spent, you’ve had a pretty good ride.”

“There is no truer saying than that,” he laughs, “especially now. Every day I wake up and there is something new and exciting thrown at me. I have opened myself up to a whole new world and people want to know about the next step of the journey.”

But it’s the last step of his journey that has brought me to Wrexham this morning. The month is May 2004. Gareth Thomas has just finished the season as Wales’ leading try scorer and has made a furtive trip to a gay bar in Soho from his home in Bridgend. London is his escape, a place he visits from time to time to be himself. There is just one problem. He has not quite figured who that is yet.

His heart is pounding faster than in the opening minute at Twickenham as he steps through the door. He feigns a foreign accent and orders a beer and hands the barman a fistful of coins as if he doesn’t understand the currency. Fear can make you do some crazy things and he has rarely acted crazier.

He fears the barman will out him: “Hey! You’re Gareth Thomas!” He fears someone will point a finger: “Hey! That guy plays for Wales!” He fears his wife, Jemma, will discover his secret and feels sick at deceiving the person he cares most about in this world. But that doesn’t mean he can stop. He returns a month later and a month after that.

The first time he sleeps with a man brings a scrubbing not seen since Macbeth. He stands under the steaming shower and pummels his skin for an hour. He brushes his teeth and scrubs his tongue until it bleeds but he can’t remove the stain. He returns home to Jemma and the guilt almost consumes him.

“Was it fair to ask her to marry you, knowing you’d had secret encounters with men?” I ask.

“I couldn’t handle who I was and would create a different person when I was with Jemma,” he replies. “I know it was wrong and it hurt every time I did it but that was the only way I could get through it.”

“But was it fair to ask her to marry you, knowing you were gay?”

“Yeah, because I loved her,” he insists, “I really did. I took my vows seriously but ultimately I could never have been with Jemma if I wasn’t able to sleep with a man because I would have blown up. I would have exploded.”

The month is May 2006. He is walking near some cliffs in Bridgend trying to sort the mess in his head. He hasn’t played for his club, Toulouse, since rupturing an artery in February. Jemma has suffered a third miscarriage in the four years they’ve been wed. The strain of his double life has become intolerable.

This is my fault. Somebody is taking it out on me because what I have done is wrong. I am responsible for Jemma’s miscarriages by all this lying. I can’t keep hurting her like this. It has to stop.

He tells Jemma he is gay that evening and they return to Toulouse a few weeks later, determined to make a go of it. “People split for a lot less reasons than that,” he says. “The foundation was still there. We still loved each other. I wanted to make a go of it, I think both of us did, but ultimately Jemma decided that it wasn’t going to be.”

The Irish second-row Trevor Brennan, is his closest friend at Toulouse and calls at his house one morning in September before a game at Clermont Ferrand. Jemma has been gone a while now. He is living alone.

“Anything you want to say to me, bud?” Brennan inquires on the drive to the team bus.

“No,” Alfie replies.

“You’re sure? There is nothing you want to say to me?”

“No, nothing.” And then it hits him.

Jemma has told Paula [Brennan’s wife] F***! He knows.

Later, they are sitting in their usual spots on the team bus when he feels Brennan’s eyes on him: “I’m your friend, Alfie. Don’t forget that.”

He looked at the Irishman and shrugged. “He wanted me to tell him,” Thomas says. “He wanted to hear it from my lips but I was still struggling to deal with it myself. I couldn’t say the word ‘gay’ — saying it would have been accepting it and I didn’t feel ready to accept it then. I was missing my family. I was missing Jemma. I was travelling back and forward [to Wales] all of the time. My life felt out of control.”

Two months later, after a hard-fought draw against Australia at the Millennium stadium, he broke down in the dressing room and told his old friend, Johnson, he was gay. The coach wasn’t surprised. Neither were his teammates. Delme Parfitt, the author of Thomas’ autobiography, had also been informed and suggested they deal with the issue in the book.

But Thomas wasn’t ready. “The people who bought the book had a right to know,” he accepts, “but the timing wasn’t right. I had only just split with Jemma. I didn’t want to be in the limelight because I was in bits.” And for the next two years it was the worst-kept secret in Wales.

The month is January 2009. He is having a drink with his manager, Emanuele Palladino, a former Italian A-team player, at a hotel in the Vale of Glamorgan and can sense a slight unease.

“Look, Alf, we’ve been together a while now, haven’t we?”

“Yes, bud.”

“And you know I will always be here for you.”

“Yes, bud.”

“But like everyone, I hear rumours and I was just wondering . . .”

“Yeah, it’s true.”

“You’re gay?”

“Yeah.”

“Alfie, you have got to get this out there. It will set you free.”

But Thomas still wasn’t sure. “It took me a long time to accept who I was and not to worry about what people were saying,” he says. “I had been weighing up the positives and negatives of going public for ages but could never get the balance right. And then Emanuele put me in touch with ChildLine, who were looking for positive role models, and I thought, ‘Maybe there’s a chance to do some good out of this. What if an international had come out when I was a kid playing rugby?’ Maybe I would still have hidden who I was but I would definitely have thought twice about it.” After securing a deal with the Daily Mail for exclusive rights to the story, Palladino’s next port of call was to Matthew Todd at Attitude, the editor of Britain’s leading gay magazine. “Gareth wanted to acknowledge the fact that he was gay to the rugby world,” Palladino explains, “but he also wanted to acknowledge it to the gay community. He wants to remain a rugby player but that is part of who he is as well.”

In a strange quirk of fate, Thomas was playing for Cardiff in Toulouse when the headline he had always dreaded hit the news stands in December. “It was a massive relief,” he says. “I struggled to sleep the night before and knew there was no turning back but it couldn’t have worked out better. I was in a place where I used to play and was sad to leave, and with a team who were brilliant to me and who really accepted me.

“I was also showing everybody — ‘I’m coming out in the morning and playing in the afternoon’. This wasn’t going to change me. I was doing what I was made to do.”

He switched codes to rugby league last month and describes the latest chapter of his life with the Celtic Crusaders as “exciting” and “scary”. “It’s exciting that I no longer have to lie to people and that people take me for exactly who I am. It’s exciting that I can be myself and don’t feel I have to involve myself when the boys are sitting around the table talking about women. But sometimes it can be lonely as well and you are always worrying about people’s reactions.

“We went to Castleford last weekend and it was the first time I’ve had a negative reaction from a crowd. I was warming up and somebody shouted, ‘Thomas, you’re gay!’ and I felt like turning around and saying, ‘I f***ing know! I told the Daily Mail. Everybody in the UK knows that!’ Then a crowd started singing [obscene things about me] and I’m not going to lie and say it didn’t hurt, but how sad is that? How sad are people for doing that?

“And they couldn’t confront me. They stood in their thousands at the back of the crowd but would probably say nothing if I walked past them in the street. And that makes me feel stronger.”

“What about today?” I ask, as the interview draws to a close. “Do you not find it hard waking up on a wet miserable day, alone in a hotel at the age of 35?”

“Yeah, it is, but this is how I’ve always lived my life. We go training today and my desire for rugby is the same as when I was 18. I don’t need to do it.

“I play because I still love it. And even the postman wakes up on s***ty days like this and thinks, ‘What am I doing here?’”

“What happens next?” I ask. “What does the future hold for Gareth Thomas?”

“I always thought it would be the same [for me] as every other international, with coaching and stuff,” he says, “but so many more doors have opened. I’ve started a management company with Emanuele and become a patron of Stonewall and ChildLine and I want to continue to help people.

“Because sometimes you look back and think, ‘What’s the greatest achievement of my career?’ And all the caps and all the tries fade into significance when you realise you have done something that will save people’s lives, just by being true to yourself.”

toomevara

Radio's reporting here that there's a strong rumour that Andy Powell is going to make the cross code switch to the crusaders.

couerdelion

Yep, disgusting behaviour from the Cas fans, especially for a game that prides itself on being more about equality and family entertainment than any other.

I expect Powell to sign. He'll never play Union for Wales in the near future so may as well play League. I think he'll be similar to Lauititi, but woth worse hands :-)

toomevara

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xmBg5HPEhvo

Start watching around the 20 second mark.....