Gregor Paul: The truth about Brodie Retallick’s messy career

OPINION:

It was sweetly bitter to see Brodie Retallick slam into the air from a handful of Waratahs ball carriers on Saturday afternoon, knowing he was going to be the old player, yet it’s inflexible that he would.
retire from test rugby later next year.

Retallick, all 2.04 m and 123 kg, with his collection of broken bones, broken tendons and torn muscles, stands as an unmissable testament to the failed strategy of stamping the Southern Hemisphere’s footprint across the globe.

His is a career that has fallen victim to the era of administrative excess that has swollen Super Rugby to farce, and he has been so plagued by injury over the past five years that it has been impossible to determine what he has left to offer the international game.

For the last five years, there has been hardly a period when he has not returned from any serious injury and just as it seemed safe to pronounce that he has returned to his shining best, another injury disaster has hit and caused. all, most likely Retallick included, once again uncertain.

The pattern has been consistent since 2017 – he plays a handful of games and then something breaks and it was a six-to-eight-week stretch in rehab before he returns and the next injury happens.

He’s right in the thick of that sequence now, having played a few games at the start of the season before a badly broken thumb saw him miss nine weeks.

There he was in Hamilton, however, roaming in the middle of the field, taking away stray Waratah runners who had strayed into his considerable airspace and in doing so he generated hope, self-confidence even that despite all the stoppage and the accumulated. additional damage, he remains a uniquely talented force of nature that can still deliver the special mark of massacre that the All Blacks urgently need.

Retallick wounded the Waratahs. He entered their heads with his presence and effect, pulling out two memorably good gears where the full force of his enormous frame thundered into thorax.

Waratahs defender Ben Donaldson will still feel the impact of Retallick’s shoulder later this week and tackles of that nature produce the tiny wins that turn games and build a deeper sense of intimidation.

There were a number of timely steals and strong rocket clean-ups from Retallick as well, and his 80-minute stint gave both an optimistic nod to his future and a sad reminder that his immediate past was so stubborn from injury that he denied him permission. an opportunity to be the player he may have been.

The All Blacks are a different proposition when he is at or close to his best and so a nation must hope the rugby gods finally smile kindly and say he has endured enough and give him a safe passage to the 2023 World Cup.

Even if such an almost miraculous, hassle-free path opened up for Retallick, it would not be enough to persuade him to reconsider his plan to stop trying rugby after the World Cup and perhaps even all of rugby.

The interrupted nature of his career will always carry a tinge of sadness and a sense of what could have been.

Retallick was unbreakable and unstoppable when he appeared in Super Rugby in 2012 as a 21-year-old and for the next five years was a snap, a bang, a slap and easily the best lock in world rugby.

But in 2017 the combination of his cataclysmic intensity and schedule that made him go through all over the world and spend too much time playing and flying and not recovering enough saw his body suddenly and dramatically become vulnerable.

Super Rugby’s great economic strategy is going to end his career, but what everyone should be hoping for, and what his performance over the weekend has alluded to, is that at least it will be comforting that he will end the last 18 months of his career with the same effect. he started 10 years ago.

Next weekend will provide the best indication so far of what Retallick can still offer. He and his impressive Chief Locking Partner Tupou Vaa’i will go head-to-head with Sam Whitelock and Scott Barrett and give the All Blacks voters the perfect opportunity to assess the beak of their four best second rowers.

Whatever they thought three weeks ago may have changed after Retallick’s high impact against the Waratahs and will most likely change again after the Christchurch semi-final.

Another 80 minutes of Retallick and he will return in the fourth shirt to play Ireland and the whole balance of the series will change, as his presence, savagery and physicality are the basis on which the success of the All Blacks over the last decade. was built.