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http://www.theaustralian.com.au/new...rench-rugby-club/story-e6frg7o6-1225991342690
Start of a Wallaby exodus: Matt Giteau ready to sign with French rugby club
* EXCLUSIVE: Wayne Smith
* From: The Australian
* January 20, 2011 12:00AM
MERCURIAL Brumbies and Wallabies playmaker Matt Giteau is poised within days to sign with a French club although he will not make the move until after the World Cup in October.
It is understood the race for Giteau's signature has come down to Toulon and Bayonne although French powerhouse Toulouse has the resources to come in over the top at the last moment.
Although he is only 28, Giteau is entering his 10th season of international rugby and with 91 Tests to his credit, is Australia's most-capped current back and the sixth-most experienced Wallaby in history.
Yet if he is to reach his century, he will need to be selected for all four Tests in this year's abbreviated Tri-Nations and then play in virtually every match of a successful World Cup campaign.
Certainly there are no guarantees of that.
There was a time Giteau was not merely an automatic Wallabies selection, but virtually the first player chosen.
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No longer. He has struggled to win over coach Robbie Deans, who in recent times appears to have come to the conclusion Giteau has lost his mojo.
Former leading Australian swim coach Bill Sweetenham once theorised that if a swimmer made the Australian team two years ahead of schedule, it was almost certain he or she would quit international competition two years early as well and the same seems to hold true with Giteau.
He had only just turned 20 and not played a single game of Super rugby when Eddie Jones thrust him into the Twickenham Test in 2002 and there is now scarcely a major rugby ground in the world he has not graced.
Yet it still seems a waste that such a brilliant player should be slipping through the fingers of Australian rugby at a time when the youth-dominated Wallabies need all the experience they can lay their hands on.
That said, it was always expected that Giteau would accept a lucrative European contract after playing in his third World Cup. Possibly the only challenge that might have persuaded him to stay would have been the Wallabies captaincy and given the state of his relationship with Deans and ARU chief executive John O'Neill, that was never a possibility.
But what should alarm the ARU is the number of middle-generation Wallabies now weighing up post-World Cup stints overseas.
Such players as hooker Stephen Moore, centres Adam Ashley-Cooper and Berrick Barnes and winger Drew Mitchell should have been stepping up into the senior ranks once Nathan Sharpe and possibly Rocky Elsom retired from Test football.
Instead, all are being courted by British and European clubs and the ARU will need to move sharply if it is to head off a mass player exodus in October.
Giteau and his manager Rob Smith were unavailable for comment yesterday, but all the talk in Canberra is that Giteau is gearing up to make his last season for the ACT and the Wallabies one to remember.
He returned early from his Christmas break and has taken a strong leadership role in pre-season training, demanding a high level of precision from himself and his teammates.
Indeed, so impressive has he been during the build-up to this season that coach Andy Friend has named him in a scaled-down leadership group of three, alongside Elsom and Brumbies captain Stephen Hoiles.
Should Hoiles miss the season-opener against the Chiefs on February 19, Giteau will fill in for him as skipper.
A key to his renewed enthusiasm has been the appointment of his long-time mentor Stephen Larkham as the Brumbies attack coach.
Although Larkham was forced to return to Japan temporarily to see out the remainder of his
playing contract with Ricoh Black Rams and has only just started work with the Brumbies backs, ACT insiders already are adamant that the former Wallabies five-eighth will become that rarest of rugby beasts - a champion player who becomes a champion coach.
Giteau in particular is revelling in the clear direction Larkham is providing and early indications are that he has found his misplaced mojo.